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 vowel?

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A vowel is a letter that represents a speech sound made with the vocal tract open. The vowels in English are A, E, I, O, U.

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What is a consonant?

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A consonant is a letter that represents a speech sound made by partially or completely blocking the airflow. Examples include B, C, D, F, etc.

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What is blending in phonics?

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Blending is the process of combining individual sounds to form a word. For example, blending the sounds /s/, /a/, and /t/ makes the word 'sat'.

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What is segmenting in phonics?

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Segmenting is the process of breaking a word down into its individual sounds. For example, the word 'dog' can be segmented into /d/, /ɔ/, and /g/.

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What are sight words?

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Sight words are common words that children are encouraged to recognize without having to sound them out. Examples include 'the', 'and', 'is'.

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What is a digraph?

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A digraph is a combination of two letters that make one sound, such as 'sh' in 'ship' or 'ch' in 'chair'.

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What is a blend?

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A blend is a group of two or three consonants that are pronounced together, where each consonant sound can still be heard, like 'bl' in 'black'.

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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.