Phonics

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What is Phonics?

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Phonics is a method of teaching reading and writing by developing learners' phonemic awareness, which is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate sounds in spoken words.

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What is a Phoneme?

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A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. For example, the word 'cat' has three phonemes: /k/, /æ/, and /t/.

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What is a Grapheme?

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A grapheme is a letter or a group of letters that represent a phoneme. For example, the grapheme 'sh' represents the phoneme /ʃ/ as in 'shoe'.

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What is a Blending?

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Blending is the process of combining individual sounds (phonemes) to form a word. For example, blending the sounds /c/, /a/, and /t/ makes the word 'cat'.

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What is Segmenting?

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Segmenting is the process of breaking a word down into its individual sounds (phonemes). For example, segmenting the word 'dog' gives you /d/, /ɒ/, and /g/.

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What is a Rime?

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A rime is the part of a syllable that contains the vowel and any consonant sounds that come after it. For example, in the word 'cat', the rime is 'at'.

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What is a Syllable?

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A syllable is a single, unbroken sound of a spoken (or written) word. For example, the word 'banana' has three syllables: ba-na-na.

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What is a Consonant?

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A consonant is a speech sound that is not a vowel. Examples of consonants include /b/, /c/, /d/, /f/, etc.

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What is a Vowel?

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A vowel is a speech sound that is produced without any significant constriction of the airflow in the vocal tract. The vowels in English are A, E, I, O, U.

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What is a Digraph?

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A digraph is a combination of two letters that make one sound. For example, 'ch' in 'chair' is a digraph.