Reading Is Good

Phonics defines the relationship between written letters and spoken sounds. For instance, the knowledge that the letter “B” makes a “buh” sound is phonics.

Young children must be able to instantly translate a letter or letter cluster into the correct sound (and vice versa) in order to effectively read and write. This translation between letters and sounds is the central skill in phonics.

Phonics instruction in schools should be both explicit, with the relationships between letters and sounds directly taught, and systematic, where letter-sound relationships are presented in a pre-determined order. Research clearly shows that a school phonics program which meets these criteria results in stronger readers at an earlier age.

The Role of Phonics in Reading

There are two different ways that people ‘read’ words in text.

Skilled, established readers (typically from third grade through adulthood) read words mostly by simple recognition. The more we read, the more words we memorize. Once a word is committed to permanent memory, we can read it in a glance, allowing us instant access to the word’s meaning.

Educators call this collection of instantly recognizable words our sight vocabulary. By adulthood, these vocabularies are huge, allowing us to instantly recognize nearly every word we see in print.

Less skilled readers (up to about second grade) have relatively few words in their sight vocabularies. These readers rely upon decoding skills to read. Rather than instantly recognizing a word and processing its meaning, they first take the letters in the word and convert them into oral sounds. Next, they take the sounds and smooth them together into the pronouncable word (blending, see phonemic awareness skills). Only then do they process its meaning.

Obviously, the skilled reader’s way of doing things is more efficient. In fact, for educators the main goal of teaching children to decode words is so they figure out and commit more words to their sight vocabularies. Until they do, however, decoding is the only way they can read. Phonics is what these readers use for the conversion of letters into sounds, and is the cornerstone of decoding.

Decoding

For a detailed discussion of decoding, see the glossary article, Decoding: A Definition.

Explicit Phonics Instruction

A big deal is made in education research about explicit phonics instruction. This terminology is rooted in an old debate amongst early childhood educators over what is called the ‘whole language’ approach to reading. The whole language approach immersed students in lots and lots of reading, assuming they would pick up things, such as letter-sound relationships, automatically.

What current research shows, however, is that this approach doesn’t work nearly as well as coming straight out and teaching young children the things we want them to know about phonics. Being explicit in our instruction — ‘this is the letter B and it makes a ‘buh’ sound’ — leads to more reading success.

Systematic Phonics Instruction

The other buzz word in phonics instruction is systematic, which simply means that letters and letter-sounds should be introduced in a specific order that makes sense to how children will use, pronounce, and interact with them. Although there is no one, agreed upon order in which to teach letters and letter-sounds, a few conventions are generally followed. For instance, the letters S, R, T, M and B are usually amongst the first letters and sounds taught to kindergarten children because these letters are both the most frequently encountered and have some of the easiest sounds for young children to make. The important thing in systematic phonics instruction is that it not be random; some sort of logic should drive the sequence.

What Should Parents Be Doing?

Obviously, it’s not a parents job to take over teaching phonics to their child. But while the responsibility for phonics instruction lies with the classroom teacher and reading specialists in your school, there are still things a conscientious parent can do to help their child along.

Be Explicit

Don’t be vague when it comes to discussing letters and sounds with your young child. Be clear and direct in your efforts to help them master letter-sound relationships. Tell them the letter being discussed, tell them the sound it makes, and give them lots of examples of that letter and sound in action.

Note: This is what the Phonics Activities listed with each Book Review on our site aim to help you do. They’re worth looking at for ideas to get you started.

Be Systematic

This doesn’t mean that you need to go digging into the reading research to figure out what order to talk about letters and sounds with your child. That digging has already been done by the professionals in your child’s school district.

Instead, approach your child’s kindergarten, first, or second grade teacher and ask them to recommend the letters and sounds to work on with your child. The answer they give you will be based on both what they know about systematic phonics instruction and what they know about your child, in particular.