Learning to Read With Phonics

Teaching children to read accurately and fluently seems like such a straightforward and simple task but the reality is that many children suffer from some form of learning disability and really require a little more then what is offered in most schools. The “Whole Language” approach should be supplemented with a carefully planned Phonics program and although this is by now common knowledge, many teachers are not properly trained in this method.

Even children with mild forms of learning disabilities, such as dyslexia and/or hyperactivity/attention deficit disorder, will have a hard time learning to read. These children face more difficulties than others in creating relationship between sounds that they hear in words and letters that make that sound on paper. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has concluded in its survey that 95 percent of the children suffering from this problem can reach their goal of reading accurately if they are attended to at a very early age, preferably, before they enter 3rd grade. This institute recommended that ‘phonics’ should be included as the part of the curriculum and should be taught along with the whole language combination.

This message has by now penetrated into most schools and teachers will assure you with a "But we DO teach phonics!" The question is, "Do they believe and understand it well enough to teach it competently?" What phonics a child may be taught can be nullified by teacher policies that still emphasize the Whole Word approach. And there still are some whole-language schools in various parts of the country, where they proclaim, "But we DO teach phonics". It is not that many years ago (1995), that a student was penalized for sounding out words by having his desk put out into the parking lot!

This space will not suffice to provide you with a full description of the Phonics. However the following definitions will arm you with some terminology and relevant vocabulary.

PHONEME - Smallest unit of sound.
GRAPHEME – Letter or group of letters representing a one sound, such as: sh, igh, t.
DIGRAPH – Two letters which make one sound, such as: sh, ch, ee, ph, oa.
SPLIT DIGRAGHS – Two letters that work as a split pair: a-e as in cake and i-e as in kite.
TRIGRAPH – Three letters which together make one sound but cannot be separated into smaller phonemes eg. igh as in light, ear as in heard and tch as in watch.
SEGMENTATION – hearing individual phonemes (sounds) within one word, such as: crash consists of c-r-a-sh. The child needs to learn how to segment each word in its component phonemes and then to choose a grapheme to represent each phoneme.
I know, that sounds very hard and it is, particularly when you are learning disabled.
BLENDING – Means merging the individual sounds together to pronounce the word. A child must learn to “sound out” each grapheme, not each letter eg. th-i-n not t-h-i-n.
MNEMONICS – a device for memorizing and recalling something, such as a hand action of a drum (beat fist on table) to remember the phoneme /d/ and the instruction “think of your Mammy”, to remember the /m/.

There are approximately 44 phonemes in the English language, representing 26 letters, used in some 140 combinations.

The “whole word” or “sight-word” approach to reading instruction works fine for the majority of learners. However, some 20 percent (some estimate go as high as 40%) of present day children suffer from more or less disabling forms of learning difficulties and will end up as illiterates, or at best, poor readers, unless taught by teachers that are trained in and fully understand how to integrate phonics into their reading instruction.
Good teachers know that we should be aware of the pieces of sounds that comprise words. This awareness is called phonologic awareness. The people teaching phonics should first check this awareness in students then teach them with instructions in letter, sounds and building them to words.

Not only the teachers but also the parents play a very important role in helping their children to learn how to read accurately. There are many resources available on the internet that place emphasis on phonics. Most of these programs recognize and apply the latest up-to-date techniques and offer playful, entertaining lessons in game form. Most children love to play these games and will learn to become good readers while they are having fun. It is also recommended that you speak often with the child’s teacher and if possible, coordinate the home activities in order to ensure that they supplements what is done at school.