Teaching Phonics

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Phonics is described as “understanding letter-sound relationships, as well as larger letter pattern/sound pattern relationships” (Ruddell, 2009). Though in my opinion there is a lot more to phonics than this. There are several aspects to phonics, different types of phonics, negatives to the idea, and several ways to teach it. In this paper I will address all of these based on research I found, the discussion I had with my peers, and my own opinion.

There are different aspects to phonics that should be taken into account by teachers. The first is how important phonics is to children. It is said that “both phonics and fluency need to be taught, practiced, and nurtured in the earliest stages of reading instruction and provided to students at any age” who aren’t proficient in certain aspects of reading (Rasinski, Rupley, & Nichols, 2008). I believe this to be true and that learning phonics at an early age and gaining complete understanding of it before second grade will improve several other aspects of the reading process. This leads into another aspect that phonics is not only important to develop the basic skill of relating sounds to letters but to help children read. The National Reading Panel (the NRP) found that phonics instruction helped children learn and improve other very important skills to help their reading. These other skills included decoding, reading pseudo-words, word identification, spelling, oral reading, comprehension, and general literacy (Garan, 2001). This is a topic that was discussed in the self study discussion in class. We believe that with the knowledge of phonics a child will be able to have greater fluency, better understanding, and increased vocabulary (these all being other self study topics). With this...

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Works Cited

Garan, E. M. (2001). Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors: A Critique of the National Reading Panel Report on Phonics. Phi Delta kappan, 500-506.

Joseph, L. M. (2000). Using Word Boxes as a Large Group Phonics Approach in a First Grade Classroom. Reading Horizons, 117-127.

Krashen, S. D. (2002). Defending Whole Language: The Limits of Phonics Instruction and the Efficacy of Whole Language Instruction. Reading Improvement, 32-42.

O'Donnell, M. P. (2001). Do Intensive Phonics Programs Help Struggling Readers? The New England Reading Association Journal, 4-10.

Rasinski, T., Rupley, W. H., & Nichols, W. D. (2008). Synergistic Phonics and Fluency Instruction: The Magic od Rhyming Poetry! The New England Reading Association Journal, 9-14.

Ruddell, R. B. (2009). How to Teach Reading to Elementary and Middle School Students. Boston: Pearsin Education.

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