Does phonics work? Will it help children learn the skills necessary to become proficient readers? There are a variety of approaches to reading instruction, and teachers and parents alike are still hunting for the best way to teach reading skills. While every child is different, phonics is one approach that works for all students.
Why does it work so well? Phonics starts with the basics. It utilizes “explicit instruction.” In addition, it equips our kids with skills that they can use anytime with any type of reading material. As a result, children understand how to approach reading, what to do when they encounter a word they don’t know and still feel confident about their abilities in reading.
Phonics Emphasizes Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize individual sounds in words. These individual sounds (or units of sound) are called phonemes. Phonemic awareness is important when it comes to reading because it helps kids when they are trying to decode words.
What does it mean to decode words? This is when children can translate symbols (like letters) into their corresponding sounds. With phonics, children learn different skills – like blending and segmenting – to help them decode words. In order to decode, kids first need to know what letters and groups of letters sound like. This awareness of sound is phonemic awareness.
Here’s an example. When children have strong phonemic awareness, they can hear the words sand and band and understand that these words have the same ending sounds. They know that both sand and band have an ending sound like the word and. Why is it important that they know this? Because soon they will be learning their letters! They will be learning that certain groups of letters create certain sounds. They will also learn that when these groups of letters appear in different words, they still make the same sound. It’s a lot easier for kids to connect letters to sounds when they have strong phonemic awareness! Kids with good phonemic awareness will understand that sand and band share the same ending sound – so it’s easy for them to learn that these ending sounds share the same spelling.
Phonics Uses Explicit Instruction
Reading is not a natural skill. Unlike speaking, reading is a skill that every child must be taught. Phonics works well for early learners because it teaches absolutely everything children must know to become proficient readers. It never skips information or assumes that any part of learning how to read is obvious. This ensures that every child knows exactly what she or he needs to do to know how to read. This approach is referred to as explicit instruction and it is the primary reason why phonics works for students of all levels and backgrounds.
Phonics teaches students directly about:
- Phonemes – the smallest units of sounds used to create words
- Graphemes – the letters used to represent phonemes in text
- Decoding – the practice of linking phonemes and graphemes together
- Blending and segmenting – a tactic to make decoding easier
With enough practice and instruction, children have a strong understanding of what reading is and have the tools to make reading doable. Reading scores do improve with phonics, simply because phonics gives students the tools that they need to read well.
Phonics Prepares Kids for Self-Sufficient Reading and Learning
One of the main reasons poor readers continue to struggle is simply because they lack confidence or are embarrassed about their inabilities. They associate learning to read with embarrassment and failure, and stay away from reading as much as they can.
However, phonics gives kids the skills that help them to feel confident. When kids succeed with practice, they’re excited to read and learn more! They become eager to read more challenging books and magazines. Because phonics delivers practical skills, kids quickly become independent learners.
In addition, phonics helps children learn how to handle material above their reading level. This is because phonics teachers kids skills and learning strategies that they will be able to use in school for years to come.
Phonics Helps Reading Scores, Not Reading Comprehension
It is important to note that while phonics works to improve reading in general, it does not directly aid in reading comprehension. Reading comprehension has to do with understanding language, understanding the definition of words and drawing conclusions about text passages.
Decoding helps children pronounce words written in text – and that’s the foundation of all reading! But next, it is important to help children understand what they read. In order to develop reading comprehension, we must do additional work outside of phonics. This additional work includes reading together, reading aloud, practicing vocabulary, and asking and answering questions about the reading passage.
To build reading comprehension strength, students should:
- Spend time reading lots of different books
- Expand vocabulary
- Be able to summarize stories
- Understand characters and setting
Phonics provides a basis for all of the skills in reading. After all, when students can’t decode the words on the page, they can’t do any of their own reading comprehension! But it is important that we supplement phonics with reading comprehension practice. Children must learn so much more than how to pronounce the words on the page – they must also know what the words mean, understand the ideas in the sentence, and build critical thinking skills.
Improve Reading Skills With Professor Pup’s Academy
With phonics, reading scores improve simply because students are given the tactics needed to handle reading material. Phonics teaches useful skills to understand how to decode, even words that they do not know. As a result, those who learn phonics are already better prepared to read.
At Professor Pup’s Academy, we offer high quality phonics education for all families. Our tablet-based apps are fun, engaging and effective! Parents can take comfort knowing that their children are getting the practice and instruction required to become strong readers.
Plus, we offer the first five lessons for free, so you know exactly how it works and whether it’s right for your children. To download the app, please visit the App Store or Google Play Store. Or, for more information, please visit our page for parents.