Learning+to+Read+and+Understand+Phonics

__ Learning to Read __  There are many questions as to how to begin to educate children with the necessities in life. One of them is teaching the child how to read. Even long before the child enters school, they are immersed in print which they very quickly learn to recognise. A perfect example of this is the ‘M’ symbol for Mc Donald. Most children all know what that symbol means and want to eat there all the time! Furthermore, children are always being read to, especially nursery rhymes, thus they are also practising their oral language because they repeat what is being read to them. The children are surrounded by many ways in which they can learn to read which further develops their spoken language. These include: prints or symbols from billboards, signs, storybooks, newspapers, just to name a few. Their learning process is revolved around to what they are exposed to outside of school, together with their own experiences. Taking into account of the children’s home life, teachers then develop lessons which will further develop their reading skills.

In order for the children to learn how to read properly, teachers must teach the children about phonics. Phonics is the ‘instruction in the sound-letter relationships used in reading and writing. Phonics involves understanding the alphabetic principle.’ (Hill 2006, pg.210) The alphabetic principle ‘is the idea that letters in words usually stand for specific sounds.’ (Hill 2007, pg. 208) Phonics consists of teaching the child to match up sound to letter or vice-versa in order for them to learn about sound-letter relationships. As the children learn and familiarise themselves with the alphabet, it helps them to identify the letter, match the sound with the letter which then leads them to slowly sounding out words.  __Understanding Phonics__ To teach children phonics, they are firstly taught the most easily identified letters. Another technique is teaching them a number of consonants which have distinct characteristics and then the vowel. With this combination, it prepares the child for the ‘ground work’ for word-building activities. Various sounds in English language can be mapped to different letter combinations. Once the children have learned to ‘recognise’ the alphabet, there are more rules to learn as some words cannot be simply sounded out. This rule, or phonic generalisations is when an ‘e’ on the end of a word makes the vowel in the middle a long sound, like the word ‘take’. This is useful, but one problem with this rule is it only works 50% of the time, like the pronunciation of ‘have’.

Together with their previous experiences at home and what they are then taught at school about phonics, it will lay the foundation for more complicated words. This video is a quick glimpse into the daily morning literacy program called Reading First. 

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The teacher is introducing the content of phonics, called 'Onset and Rime', stage 2:

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