Season 2 Episode 2- Cracking the Code: Phonics
from Foundations of Reading Audio Guide- For Teachers and Parents Hosted by Jennifer Ewing
What Is Phonics? At its core, phonics is the teaching of letter–sound relationships. In other words, phonics is helping children understand that the squiggly shape we call m stands for the sound /m/. Once they know that, we can start blending sounds together. I’ll give you an example from my kindergarten class. One of my students, let’s call him Mason, loved cars but struggled with letters. We started with “m” because it’s in his name. I showed him the letter card, we said “mmm,” and I said, “That’s the sound at the start of Mason. Mmmmason.” His eyes lit up. That’s phonics — connecting something abstract, a letter, to something very real, a sound he already knows.
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