​Most teachers begin their careers with a limited knowledge of how to teach phonics. If you are blessed to teach a primary grade it is critical that you learn how to teach phonics. As I started my first full year of teaching, I found myself teaching 2nd grade. As I began this new chapter in my life, I realized how important phonics was to my students' ability to decode new words. Luckily, I was trained with Intensive Phonics and later Orton Gilligham. These programs unpacked a new area of instruction that sadly is hidden to most teachers. For some reason, many colleges don't see the need to include explicit instruction of phonics as part of the curriculum for new teachers.

​ Many words in the English language have very predictable spelling and decoding patterns that will help your students learn to read and spell well.  This page will help you discover some of the basic concepts of phonological awareness and phonics.  

Starting with the Basic Terminology

Basic Sound and Letter Terms
  • phoneme: the smallest individual unit of sound in spoken language (Ex. dog has 3 phonemes /d/ /ǒ/ /g/ and wait has 3 phonemes /w/ /ā/ /t/.
  • grapheme: a written letter or combination of letters that represents a single phoneme (Ex. b, sh, igh, ea, ou)
  • consonant: a speech sound where the flow of breath is obstructed. There 21 consonant letters in the alphabet. 
  • vowel: a speech sound where the air flows freely through the mouth. The vowels are: a, e, i, o, u, and y (is often a vowel). 

Phonological Awareness Terms

Phonological Sensitivity 
  • Onset and Rime: The natural division of a single-syllable word. The onset is the initial consonant(s) before the vowel, and the rime is the vowel and everything that follows it (e.g., in "cat", c is the onset and at is the rime).
  • Rhyme: The repetition of identical or similar ending sounds in words (e.g., cat and hat). [1, 2]
  • Alliteration: The repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of closely connected words (e.g., Peter Piper picked a peck...). [1, 2]
  • Sentence Segmentation: Breaking a spoken sentence down into its individual words (e.g., The-dog-ran-fast). [1, 2]
  • Word Awareness: Identifying individual words in a spoken sentence.
  • Syllable: A unit of pronunciation containing exactly one vowel sound. 
Phonemic Awareness
  • Phoneme Isolation: The ability to identify individual sounds within a word (e.g., identifying that the first sound in sun is /s/).
  • Phoneme Blending: Combining separate, isolated sounds together to form a whole word (e.g., hearing the sounds /c/, /ǎ/, /t/ and blending them to say cat).
  • Phoneme Segmentation: Breaking a spoken word down into its individual sounds (e.g., segmenting the word dog into /d/, /ǒ/, /g/).
  • Phoneme Addition: Adding one or more sounds to a word to create a new word (e.g., adding /s/ to the beginning of top to make stop).
  • Phoneme Deletion: Removing a sound from a word to make a new word (e.g., taking the /s/ sound away from stop to create top).
  • Phoneme Substitution: Swapping one phoneme for another to change the word (e.g., changing the /c/ in cat to /b/ to make bat).

Basic Phonetic Letter Combination

  • Digraph: A combination of two letters that make a single speech sound (e.g., "sh" in shop or "ai" in rain).
  • Trigraph: Three letters that come together to represent one sound (e.g., "igh" in night or "tch" in catch). 
  • Vowel Team (or Vowel Digraph): Two vowels side-by-side that work together to make one long, short, or unique vowel sound (e.g., "ea" in bread or "ee" in tree). 
  • R-controlled syllable (also called a "bossy R" syllable) occurs when a vowel is immediately followed by the letter r. The r "controls" the vowel, preventing it from making its standard long or short sound, and instead blends with it to produce a new sound. (ar, er, ir, or, ur)
  • Consonant + le (or "final stable") syllable is an unaccented syllable found at the very end of a multisyllabic word. It consists of a consonant followed by the letters le. In this syllable, the e is silent, and the consonant and l blend together to make a single sound (ble, cle, dle, fle, gle, kle, ple, tle, zle)
  • Diphthong is a two-element vowel sound—often called a "gliding vowel"—where you begin by articulating the position for one vowel sound and smoothly glide your tongue to the position of another vowel sound, all within a single syllable. (oi, oy, ou, ow, au, aw)
  • Silent e: A vowel pair where a consonant splits the letters, but they still work together to make one sound (e.g., "a_e" in cake). 
  • Schwa: The indistinct, neutral vowel sound (like /uh/) often heard in unstressed syllables (e.g., the "a" in about or the "o" in button)

Word Patterns

  • CVC Word: An abbreviation for consonant-vowel-consonant, creating short vowel words (e.g., cat, dog, mop).
  • CVCC / CCVC Words: Words following a pattern of Consonant-Vowel-Consonant-Consonant (e.g., lamp, nest) or Consonant-Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (e.g., stop, trip).
  • Morpheme: The smallest meaningful unit of language. Morphemes cannot be broken down any further without losing their meaning (e.g., "unbreakable" has three morphemes: un- (not), break (root word), and -able (capable of))

"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile." ~ Albert Einstein