Phonics http://www.fcrr.org/assessment/ET/essentials/components/phonics.

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Phonics is the study of the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent.
Phonics instruction teaches students how to use the relationships between sounds (phonemes) and letters to decode unfamiliar words in text. It involves teaching students the basic correspondences between letters and sounds, how to blend sounds together to produce words, and how to use these phonemic decoding skills while reading text. Phonics instruction that is systematic, explicit, and incorporates appropriate guided and independent practice activities typically leads to higher achievement in word recognition and spelling. Phonics instruction and skills become more complex as students progress from learning simple correspondences between single letters and sounds, to work with initial and final consonant blends and various vowel combinations, and finally to larger chunks of letters in words. Good readers will be able to fluently apply phonemic decoding skills to help them identify unfamiliar words they encounter in text.

Elements of Effective Phonics Instruction

Letter Recognition
Students discriminate between the shapes of different letters Students identify letter names Students match lowercase and uppercase letter names

Letter-Sound Correspondence
Students give the sounds (phonemes) represented by individual letters Students identify the letters associated with individual phonemes Students blend the sounds of letters together to form simple words

Syllable Patterns
Students eventually need to learn common rules for dividing syllables in order to better read and spell multisyllabic words. Students blend sounds and segment syllables in words that include the following syllable patterns:

Closed: a syllable with a short vowel sound before the final consonant (e.g., picnic, subject, basket) Open: a syllable ending with a long vowel sound. It can be a single vowel letter. (e.g., open, super, gracious, moment) Consonant -le: an unaccented final syllable with a consonant before /l/ followed by silent e (e.g., little, puzzle, mumble) Vowel-Consonant-e: syllable with a long vowel sound and is spelled with a vowel, consonant, and a final silent e (e.g., compete, notebook, invite)

Word Analysis

Phonemic decoding skills are established early through extensive practice and instruction that involves relatively simple relationships in simple words. As students become more skilled, they progress to increasingly complex patterns of letter sounds and words. Initial instruction typically involves attention to:

Most common consonant sounds: Initially those from which a large number of words can be made (e.g., b, c, d, f, h, k, t, s) Short vowels: The sound qualities of /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ (e.g., bat, bet, bit, bob, bun) Long vowels: a sound which is the same as, or very similar to, the letter name of one of the vowels (e.g., hi, me, go, tube, cake) Consonant blends and clusters: two or three consonants grouped together with each letter maintaining its distinct sound (e.g., brick, street)

Schwa: the vowel sound in an unaccented syllable in multisyllabic words (e.g., umbrella, about, recommend) Consonant digraphs: a combination of consonants representing a single speech sound (e.g., th in that, ch in chin) Vowel digraphs (also known as vowel teams or vowel pairs): two or more adjoining letters represent a single vowel sound; these can be long (e.g., maid, load, bead) or short (e.g., book, saw, friend) Silent e rule: when e occurs at the end of a short word, it typically means the long pronunciation of the vowel is used (e.g., bike, same, cute) Diphthongs: two letters blended together that stand for one vowel sound (e.g., boy, bow, soil, about) R-controlled vowel: the modified sound of a vowel that immediately precedes /r/ in the same syllable (e.g., cart, for, better, fur, bird) Homonyms/Homophones: two words that sound alike, but are spelled differently and have different meanings (e.g., board/bored, flour/flower, ate/eight)

Students should be carefully instructed in how to apply phonemic decoding strategies when reading text. The general rule is that, when they come to a word they cannot immediately recognize, they should first try to sound it out. Once they have sounded out as much as they can, they should try to think of a word that has those sounds in it, and that also makes sense in the sentence they are reading.

Spelling Patterns / Rules

Students use patterns and rules to read and spell words which may include:

Doubling Rule 1-1-1

If a 1 syllable root word ends in 1 consonant with 1 short vowel before it, double the final consonant of the root word when adding a suffix that begins with a vowel (e.g., hot + est = hottest) Do not double the final consonant if the suffix begins with a consonant (e.g., wild + ly = wildly)

Final Y Rule

Final y after a consonant changes to i before any suffix (e.g., copy = copies, copied) EXCEPT one beginning with i such as -ing and ist (e.g., copy = copying, copyist) Final y after a vowel is not changed before any suffix (e.g., boy = boys)

Regular Plurals

Consonant digraphs: a combination of consonants representing a single speech sound (e.g., th in that, ch in chin) Vowel digraphs (also known as vowel teams or vowel pairs): two or more adjoining letters represent a single vowel sound; these can be long (e.g., maid, load, bead) or short (e.g., book, saw, friend)

FLS Rule

Silent e rule: when e occurs at the end of a short word, it typically means the long pronunciation of the vowel is used (e.g., bike, same, cute)

Irregular Plurals

Diphthongs: two letters blended together that stand for one vowel sound (e.g., boy, bow, soil, about)

Possessive Nouns

R-controlled vowel: the modified sound of a vowel that immediately precedes /r/ in the same syllable (e.g., cart, for,

better, fur, bird)

Contractions

Homonyms/Homophones: two words that sound alike, but are spelled differently and have different meanings (e.g., board/bored, flour/flower, ate/eight)

Consonant Generalizations
The letter y:

y at the beginning of a syllable makes a consonant sound (e.g., yellow, yes); y in the middle or end of a syllable makes a vowel sound (e.g., happy, cry)

-ck:

y at the beginning of a syllable makes a consonant sound (e.g., yellow, yes); y in the middle or end of a syllable makes a vowel sound (e.g., happy, cry)

-ch, -tch:

y at the beginning of a syllable makes a consonant sound (e.g., yellow, yes); y in the middle or end of a syllable makes a vowel sound (e.g., happy, cry)

-dge, -ge:

when a one syllable word ends in the /j/ sound, use dge after a short vowel, -ge after a consonant or long vowel (e.g., edge, surge, sage)

Hard and soft g, c:

when c or g is followed by the vowel e, i, or y, it makes a soft sound (e.g., citrus, cycle, general, ginger); when c or g is followed by the vowel a, o, or u, it makes a hard sound (e.g., cat, coffee, gum, good)

Morpheme Patterns
Students use morpheme patterns to make and read words that include:

Compound words (e.g., cup + cake = cupcake, bed + room = bedroom) Root words and inflectional suffixes (e.g., run + s = runs, talk + ing = talking) Root words and derivational suffixes (e.g., music + ian = musician, history + ic = historic) Root words and prefixes (e.g., un + believable = unbelievable, re + use = reuse)