Discovering+phonics

The first step towards understanding phonics starts with being able to reconise, say and write the letters of the alphabet in both upper and lower case. The alphabet is made up of 26 letters as follows and represents approximately 44 sounds or phonemes (hill 2006, pg208)
 * [[image:user3971_1179191821a.jpg align="right"]]The Alphabet**

Lower case

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Upper case

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

An example of some work sheets that might be used to help children to learn to write the letters of the alphabet can be seen on the left hand side of the page. These types of sheets are availible at http://www.phonics.net.au/handwriting-lessons/page1/

The alphabet is made up of consonants (21) and vowels (5) and combine to make up to 44 sounds or phonemes. For example the word cat consists of three sounds that can be heard and are all single letters. eg /c/ /a/ /t/ so if we sound each letter c-a-t we get cat whereas the word duck is made up of four letters but still only three sounds are heard as the /ck/ combine to make one sound /d/ /u/ /ck/


 * Onset and Rime**

Once the alphabet and letter combinations reach a certain level onset and rime can then be introduced. The onset in a syllable is any consonant(s) that procedes the vowel. The rime consists of the vowel and consonant that come after the onset (Hill 2006, pg214). An example of this is d-ay the d making up the onset and the ay making up the rime. Now by changing just the onset we are able to create new words such as h-ay, r-ay, and s-ay and so on. Onsets can also be made up of more than one letter and if we use the same rime again we can start to create even more words like pl-ay and str-ay. "Children can use onset and rime as a stratergy to identify new words"(Hill 2006, pg214)


 * Blends**

When we combine two or three consonants in the onset we call it a blend. The maximum number of consonants at the begginnig of a syllable is three and the third letter is always 'r' or 'l' (Hill, pg216). For a full list of words with initial two consonant blends refer to figure 10.12 on page 218 of the book developing early literacy; Assessment and teaching. An example of some words are br-other to make brother, c-ry, dr-ess, fr-iend and gr-ade. Consonant blends are usually grouped in two catergories: those that occur at the beggining of single syllable words and those that occur at the end (Hill 2006,pg216). There are only three consonant blends that occur regulary as initial and final blends (Hill 2006, pg216)


 * 1) 'sp' representing /sp/ as in spell and grasp


 * 1) 'sc' or 'sk' representing /sk/ as in scale and ask


 * 1) 'st' representing /st/ as in stage and rust

All other blends can be identified predominately with one position or the other (Hill 2006, pg216)


 * Digraphs**

When two letters combine to make only one sound it is called a digraph. Digraphs can be consonant digraphs or vowel digraphs. Examples of consonant digraphs are ch, ph, sh, wh, th, and th although they are the same letters they can produce different sounds depending on preceding and following letters. some of the vowel digraphs are ai, ay, ea, ee, and oa. An activity that is good for children is to give students a digraph such as th, and then see how many words they can think of that contain that particular digraph as the picture below shows.