Importance Of Phonics

Phonics is the ability to recognise that letters can be represented into sounds that can then lead to recognizing words by blending. Teaching students the sound-symbol relationships among the English alphabet acquires the learner to develop skills that will assist with lifelong learning among literacy development. Educators need to have a deep understanding of the sound-letter relationships, and provide a program that implements approaches that are aligned with the national Australian curriculum framework and suits individual needs. There are two main approaches that have been found to cause a great debate on which provides an effective teaching strategy in learning how to read and write. These approaches are different in their methods but

In a part to whole approach, the learner will isolate the sounds to establish how each one is said and heard. This approach is based on blending the grapheme phoneme correspondence, and occurs before reading is taught. The children are taught at a rapid rate and it does not teach words by sight. The children will be taught eight sounds over the period of two weeks, beginning with mainly consonants and a couple of vowels. Each sound of a word is identified and taught, which enables the children to hear all sounds rather than only the initial sound. The learner will master the phonic code starting from a very simple to more complex systematic way (Dooner, 2012). There are programs that can be incorporated into the educational setting that support the synthetic phonics approach, such as Jolly Phonics and Fast Phonics First. The Jolly Phonics program can be implemented for children younger than five years old and can be used for all children regardless of their diverse abilities. Fast Phonics First is an interactive computer program that teaches phonics in a systematic approach. These online programs can be quick to pick up, as well as implement a multi-sensory and learning orientated environment that suits the learner’s daily lives (Dooner, 2012). Synthetic phonics can be found to be the most common among educational settings in