Phonics Hall of Fame … World’s 1st of its kind initiative
Phonics Literacy Organisation of Significance
Here are some questions anyone interested in Phonics needs to know?
# Who started Phonics?
# What is Phonics?
# What is Synthetic Phonics?
# What are the 40+ Phonics sounds?
# Can Phonics or Synthetic Phonics be linked or associated (only) with any "1" individual or teacher or author or publisher or company?
Who started Phonics?
Can anyone of current times claim to have started Phonics?
Can anyone claim to be the source of original Phonics?
Did any particular teacher or book publisher or author of Phonics books, start Phonics or Synthetic Phonics?
Can any particular teacher or book publisher or author of Phonics books or organisation, state that the 40+ Phonics sounds are ours. You cannot write a book on it.
Can any 1 say, we started it all (read Phonics or Synthetic Phonics)?
Can any 1 say, we are the only / exclusive source for Phonics or Synthetic Phonics?
Well when you talk to individuals lack of clarity is obvious. No one can be blamed for the incomplete or incorrect perceptions that exist. However, few may be benefiting, due to certain incorrect or incomplete perceptions! But that's true about most things in life, one may say!
Here is an attempt to throw light to have 'more informed' perceptions about Phonics.
We did some research, and found out relevant published details. These details do provide clarity. What follows are what wikipedia and others say on Phonics.
In 1655, French mathematician Blaise Pascal invented synthetic phonics. (Rodgers, 2001) Pascal's synthetic phonics referred to an approach associated with the teaching of reading in which phonemes (sounds) associated with particular graphemes (letters) are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesised). For example, children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn, and blend the phonemes together to form a word.
Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of the English language by developing learners' phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them. The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to decode new written words by sounding them out, or, in phonics terms, blending the sound-spelling patterns. Since it focuses on the spoken and written units within words, phonics is a sublexical approach and, as a result, is often contrasted with whole language, a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading. Since the turn of the 20th century, phonics has been widely used in primary education and in teaching literacy throughout the English-speaking world. Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching reading in the education systems of England and Australia. The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to decode new written words by sounding them out, or, in phonics terms, blending the sound-spelling patterns. Since it focuses on the spoken and written units within words, phonics is a sublexical approach and, as a result, is often contrasted with whole language, a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading. Since the turn of the 20th century, phonics has been widely used in primary education and in teaching literacy throughout the English-speaking world. Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching reading in the education systems of England and Australia.
What is Phonics?
Here is what Kathryn Westcott BBC News, Magazine states.
The phonics approach teaches children to decode words by sounds, rather than recognising whole words. The emphasis in early years teaching is on synthetic phonics, in which words are broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes).
Children are taught the letters (graphemes) that represent these phonemes and also learn to blend them into words. So, at its most basic, children are taught to read the letters in a word like c-a-t, and then merge them to pronounce the word cat.
A phoneme can be represented by one, two, three or four letters (such as "ough" in "dough").
Children are systematically taught around 40 phonic sounds and the combination of letters used to represent each sound.
Most sounds, however, have more than one way to spell them. For example, "e" in "egg" can also be spelt "ea" as in "head" or "ai" as in "said".
Graphemes are grouped together and children progress from one group to the other and will be tested at the end of year one, when they are six years old.
So is everybody agreed that phonics is the best way to teach a child?
No. The government's (read UK) phonics-only approach is controversial, with many teachers and educationalists advocating a more balanced approach in which other reading strategies are also used.
"Some children will need more phonics-teaching more than others," says Andrew Lambirth, professor of education at the University of Greenwich.
There are some who feel "reading" phonetically, decoding, is not the same as reading, says Lambirth. "It is not necessarily reading for meaning or for pleasure."
The books that have been devised in order to support synthetic phonics offer a restrictive diet, says Lambirth.
He says the worry is that some teachers will focus too much on these books in order to teach to the test and "may not include the other wonderful books that are out there."
"Teachers and parents need to complement the emphasis on decoding with the delights of meaning-making."
Another problem, says Dr Lambirth, is that the English language is not written in a consistently phonetic way.
What is Synthetic Phonics?
Here is what wikipedia states.
Synthetic Phonics uses the concept of 'synthesising', which means 'putting together' or 'blending'. Simply put, the sounds prompted by the letters are synthesised (put together or blended) to pronounce the word.
Synthetic phonics (UK) or blended phonics (US), also known as inductive phonics, is a method of teaching reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.
Synthetic phonics refers to a family of programs which aim to teach literacy through the following methods:
# Teaching students the correspondence between graphemes and phonemes.
# Teaching students to read words by blending: identifying the graphemes in the word, recalling the corresponding phonemes, and saying the phonemes together to form the sound of the whole word.
# Teaching students to write words by segmenting: identifying the phonemes of the word, recalling the corresponding graphemes, then writing the graphemes together to form the written word.
Synthetic phonics programs have some or all of the following characteristics:
# Teaching grapheme-phoneme correspondence out of alphabetic order, following an order determined by perceived complexity (going from easiest to hardest to learn).
# Teaching the reading and writing of words in order of increasing irregularity, teaching words which follow typical grapheme-phoneme correspondence first, and teaching words with idiosyncratic or unusual grapheme-phoneme correspondence later.
Synthetic phonics programs do not have the following characteristics:
# Encouraging students to guess the meaning of words from contextual clues.
# Encouraging students to memorise the shape of words, to recall them by sight.
# Teaching grapheme-phoneme correspondence on an ad-hoc basis and as applied to particular groups of words, when these words arise in other forms of reading instruction.
Synthetic phonics teaches the phonemes (sounds) associated with the graphemes (letters) at the rate of about six sounds per week. The sounds are taught in isolation then blended together (i.e. synthesised), all-through-the-word. For example, learners might be taught a short vowel sound (e.g. /a/) in addition to some consonant sounds (e.g. /s/, /t/, /p/). Then the learners are taught words with these sounds (e.g. sat, pat, tap, at). They are taught to pronounce each phoneme in a word, then to blend the phonemes together to form the word (e.g. /s/ - /a/ - /t/; "sat"). Sounds are taught in all positions of the words, but the emphasis is on all-through-the-word segmenting and blending from week one. It does not teach whole words as shapes (initial sight vocabulary) prior to learning the alphabetic code.
Synthetic phonics develops phonemic awareness along with the corresponding letter shapes. It involves the learners rehearsing the writing of letter shapes alongside learning the letter/s-sound correspondences preferably with the tripod pencil grip. Dictation is a frequent teaching technique from letter level to word spelling, including nonsense words (e.g. choy and feep)[4][5] and eventually extending to text level. It does not teach letter names until the learners know their letter/s-sound correspondences thoroughly and how to blend for reading and segment for spelling. Often when letter names are introduced it is through singing an alphabet song.
Synthetic phonics teaches phonics at the level of the individual phoneme from the outset; not syllables and not onset and rime. Synthetic phonics does not teach anything about reading as a meaning-focused process. It highlights decoding and pronunciation of words only. Teachers are to put accuracy before speed, because fluency (i.e. speed, accuracy,expression, and comprehension) will come with time.
Synthetic phonics involves the teaching of the transparent alphabet (e.g. /k/ as in "cat") before progressing onto the opaque alphabet (e.g. /k/ as in "school"). In other words, learners are taught steps which are straightforward and 'work' before being taught the complications and variations of pronunciation and spelling of the full alphabetic code. It introduces irregular words and more tricky words (defined as words which cannot be pronounced phonically – English has a surprisingly large number of these, usually the commonest words of all such as 'to', 'of', etc.) slowly and systematically after a thorough introduction of the transparent alphabet code (learning the 44 letter/s-sound correspondences to automaticity and how to blend for reading and segment for spelling). Phonics application still works at least in part in such words.
Synthetic phonics involves a heavy emphasis on hearing the sounds all-through-the-word for spelling and not an emphasis on "look, cover, write, check". This latter, visual form of spelling plays a larger part with unusual spellings and spelling variations although a phonemic procedure is always emphasised in spelling generally. Teachers read a full range of literature with the learners and ensure that all learners have a full range of experience of activities associated with literacy such as role play, drama, poetry, but the learners are not expected to 'read' text which is beyond them, and the method does not involve guessing at words from context, picture and initial letter clues.
Typical programme
# learning letter sounds (as distinct from the letter names); For example, mmm not em, sss not es, fff not ef. The letter names can be taught later but should not be taught in the early stages.
# learning the 40+ sounds and their corresponding letters/letter groups;
Above details are from wikipedia.
What are the 40+ Phonics sounds?
Here is what wikipedia states.
The English Alphabet Code 'Key': 40+ phonemes with their common 'sound pattern' representations.
This is based on the British pronunciation. The number and mixture of the 40+ phonemes will vary for other English speaking countries such as Australia, Canada and the U.S.A.
Vowels:
/a/ mat
/ae/ ape, baby, rain, tray, they, eight
/air/ square, bear
/ar/ jar, far
/e/ peg, bread
/ee/ sweet, me, beach, key, pony
/eer/ deer, hear
/er/ computer, doctor
/i/ pig, wanted
/ie/ kite, wild, light, pie
/o/ orange, quality
/oa/ oak, rope, bow, piano
/oi/ coin, boy
/oo (short)/ book, would, put
/oo (long)/ moon, crew, blue, fruit, few
/ow/ down, house
/or/ fork, ball, sauce, law,
/u/ plug, glove
/ur/ burn, teacher, work, first
/ue/ tune, unicorn, hue
/uh/ button, hidden
Consonants:
/b/ boy, rabbit
/c/ /k/ cat, key, duck, school, quit
/ch/ chip, watch, statue
/d/ dog, ladder
/f/ fish, coffee, photo, tough
/g/ gate, egg, ghost
/h/ hat, whole
/j/ jet, giant, cage, bridge
/ks/ box
/l/ lip, bell, sample
/m/ man, hammer, comb
/n/ nut, dinner, knee, gnat
/ng/ ring, singer
/p/ pan, happy
/r/ rat, cherry, write
/s/ sun, dress, house, city, mice
/sh/ ship, mission, station, chef
/t/ tap, letter, debt
/th/ thrush
/th/ that
/v/ vet, sleeve
/w/ wet, wheel, queen
/y/ yes, new
/z/ zip, fizz, sneeze, is, cheese
/gz/ exist
/zh/ treasure
Above details are from wikipedia.
Can Phonics or Synthetic Phonics be linked or associated only with any 1 company, or any 1 book publisher, or any 1 author, or any 1 teacher, or any 1 trainer or any 1 individual or any 1 brand or any 1 country?
NO WAY (details already shared clearly suggest this).
If you think otherwise, do share your proof with us. We will edit the remark, and also share your proof here. We are here to provide maximum clarity to one and all, in an unbiased manner.
Can any 1 individual or any 1 book publisher claim Phonics or Synthetics Phonics to be ONLY their way of teaching Phonics, and no one else can do so?
NO WAY (details already shared clearly suggest this).
If you think otherwise, do share your proof with us. We will edit the remark, and also share your proof here. We are here to provide maximum clarity to one and all, in an unbiased manner.
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