Quickstart

Phonics is a teaching method that helps learners understand the connections between letters and sounds (grapheme-phoneme correspondence) so they can read and write in an alphabetic system.

Hearing and manipulating the sounds in spoken words, which is essential for learning to read and write. For example: Hearing that get begins with /g/, ends with /t/ and has /e/ [add breve] in the middle and being able to blend the individual sounds /g/ /e/ /t/ to say the word get. [b card]

The English alphabet has 21 consonants: b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x y z.

The English alphabet has 5 vowels: a e i o u. Sometimes the consonants y and w replace vowels in words, such as by and bow.

When an r follows a vowel, it can change the sound of the vowel. Say toe and tore to hear the difference in the o sound. [er card]

A diphthong is two vowel sounds that glide from the first to the second vowel to make one smooth sound, such as oy in boy and oi in coin. The ee in see or oo in book are called monothongs because they make a single vowel sound.

Digraphs are two letters that make one distinct sound such as /sh/ in sheep, /th/ in thumb, or /f/ in phone.

A virgule is a slash mark. When letters are enclosed in virgules such as /m/, it means the sound the letter m represents in a word such as meal.

The individual and distinct sounds we hear in words are called phonemes. For example: bought has 6 graphemes b o u g h t and 3 phonemes /b/ /ō/ /t/.

A grapheme is a written letter or letters that represent a sound (phoneme). The phoneme /k/ can be represented by different graphemes, such as c as in cat, k as in kite, or ck as in truck.

Putting sounds(phonemes) together to make words is called blending. For example: blending /p/ /l/ /ă/ /y/ play. [o card]

Tearing words apart into individual phonemes is called segmenting. [j card]

Decoding is the process of using knowledge of graphemes and phonemes to read written words. 

Schwa is an unstressed vowel sound like the first sound in away or two of the sounds in banana. [schwa card]

Words can be divided into syllables. Syllables have one or more vowel letters but just one vowel sound.  [yu card]

CVC Words contain three letters in Consonant-Vowel-Consonant order. Some examples are mat pin cat ten but sit pot. [o card]

The vocal cords vibrate as air passes through them to make voiced sounds. For voiceless sounds, air flows freely through the mouth and the vocal cords do not vibrate. Examples of pairs of voiced/unvoiced sounds include: /b/ and /p/, /t/ and /d/, /g/ and /k/, /v/ and /f/, /z/ and /s/. [z card]

Decodable books use words with grapheme-phoneme correspondences that the reader has already learned. These books provide early practice for beginning readers to build word recognition, confidence, and fluency. 

These words may follow some phonics rules, but are tricky because they contain some sounds and letters that don’t follow the usual rules, so they cannot be fully decoded (sounded out). Examples: want, was, they, my, are