Phonics learning for kids is a new way that children are learning to read and write English words. It shows the relationship between the sounds and the letters of our words. It’s a way for us to teach children to blend the sounds of the letters together to help them understand what the words say. In order for a child to be able to read, they need to be able to start with the basic phonic sounds, learning each individual one before they learn to blend them together to read the full word. When you are reading to your child, it would be a good idea to always stop on the three letter words and sound the different sounds out to help your child get familiar with these. Click here to read about why reading with your child is so important for their learning development. If they aren’t reading at home with you, they will be missing out on that extra time to get familiar with different sounds and words.
How Does It Work?
Children start by learning the different sounds, there are about 40 different sounds for them to learn. However, there are lots of sounds that have more than one way to spell them. For example; ‘e’ in ‘egg’ can also be ‘ea’ in your head. It’s an easier way for children to be able to blend the sounds together in a word so they can read it, that was the idea behind phonics when it was created.
Some common examples of phonic sounds that you can begin to sound out with your children are;
- OO
- CK
- CH
- SH
- WH
Once your child has learnt these, putting them together with the other letters in the word to read it as a word should become easier for them over time. For example once they know the OO sound, they can put it together with W and D to sound out the word WOOD. W – OO – D.
Confusion With Phonics
There might be a confusion with this because a lot of parents would’t have learnt to read and write with phonics, so they would have to learn it all new with their child. I myself learnt A B C when I was at school, so phonic sounds are all new to me too, I’ve had to teach myself them first in order to teach the children I work with. With a lot of words, its very tricky to learn through phonics as the sounds do not sound like they are spelt. For example, when reading the word ‘bounce’ you would spell it out like ‘b’ ‘ou’ ‘n’ ‘s’ and a lot of children would assume its spelt with an S, not a CE. And the word Apple, sounds like it should have the ‘ALL’ sound at the end. A lot of children would automatically spell it that way. Whenever anything in education changes, it can be hard to adjust to when try to teach it at home with your children.
There are also sounds that are different but sound the same. For example this activity shows you how IGH and IE are the same sounds, but the spelling is different. Feel free to print this out to use at home with your child.
How Do We Teach Phonics?
Phonics is all about breaking down the individual sounds and them putting them together to read the full word. For example apple is B – EA – CH, three sounds put together. The EA sound is actually sounded out as E, so children need to learn all the different sounds in order to be able to read.
Where Do We Start
Start with helping the children sound out the basic three letter words, sounding out each letter at a time and them asking them to put them together. At home, I would suggest playing some fun learning games to encourage your child to read and say some three letter words. Here is a game I have created which helps your child start to read, write and sound out some three letter words with phonics, you can print it for free.
Overall it is important to help your child start to understand phonics with reading so they can continue learning to read throughout their education. However, I personally really hope they don’t change the way words are taught again, as it makes it very difficult for everyone to adjust to these changes when it comes to learning and teaching.