Phonics

=** Phonics... **=

Phonics involves children connecting sounds with letters or groups of letters, and blending the sounds together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words. It focuses on the sound letter relationships used in reading and writing, and involves an understanding of the alphabetic principle.

//For example//, the word cup is spelt //c, u, p,// there are 3 letters and 3 sounds but in the word //truck// there are 5 letters and 4 sounds because //ck// represents a single sound. In order to understand this, children require some phonemic awareness and letter knowledge.
 * The Alphabetic Principle** is the idea that letters in words usually stand for specific sounds (Hill, 2006 p208).

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//For example,// when children listen to nursery rhymes such as "The Three Little Pigs", they begin to understand the stress and emphasis placed on particular words and the importance of timing for saying the refrain.  "**The wolf huffed And he puffed And he blew The house down"**
 * Phonological Awareness** is the ability to pay attention to the sounds of language as distinct from its meaning.

Children are demonstrating phonological awareness if they can identify that the individual words //huffed// and //puffed// sound the same except for the initial phonemes "//h//" and "//p//". A child will have an easier time learning phonemes and spelling if they can recognise separate letters. It is helpful if they understand letter-sound relationships because this helps them to remember what each letter may sound like. //For example//, the “**h**” in “**hat**” sounds like “**h**” in “**happy**”.

If children can notice these differences in sounds and they can clap to the beat of syllables, they are well on their way with their literacy development.