How to teach phonics to your child

Phonics instruction is frequently the first step in teaching a child to learn how to read. Best described as the relationship between letters, blends, digraphs, chunks and their spelling, phonics helps children learn to read because recognizing those letter-sound connections is the first step in decoding, or sounding out, words.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Alphabet flash cards
• <br>Magnetic letters
• <br>Cookie sheet
• <br>Decodable readers

1. Evaluate what your child already knows. Using alphabet flashcards, ask your child to identify each letter by its name. Very young children may not be able to recognize the letters and only know the alphabet in context of the A-B-C song. In this case, your first step is to teach your child to recognize the letters as he is singing them. Make sure to sing the song slowly so he can hear each letter as a distinct entity.

2. 

   Start connecting sounds to the letters that make them. One of the easiest ways to do this is to invest in an alphabet floor puzzle. Many of these puzzles are designed to look like trains, with each "car" containing a letter and a picture or two of items that begin with that letter. Once your child is adept at putting the puzzle together, you can play with it a little. For example, when you are cleaning up the puzzle, ask your child to find the letter that says "sss" and put it away first.

3. Increase the instruction by asking your child to tell you the sound a given letter makes. Some of the sounds may be harder for her to produce just from a developmental standpoint, but if she can make an approximation of the correct sound, accept that sound. The hardest letters for children to learn are vowels, letters that have two sounds (C, G) and letters that don't sound like their names (Y, W, X).

4. 

   Play word games with magnetic letters and cookie sheets. Try, if possible, to make all the vowels one color to make them clearly identifiable. Stick the letters to the cookie sheet and begin by creating a simple word like "cat." Ask your child how she can make the word "cat" into the word "hat." Continue this process with word families until your child is ready to move on to more complicated permutations like changing "cat" into "cap."

5. 

   Read decodable books. Many Dr. Seuss books easily lend themselves to decoding, but there are also books specifically designed for this process. Educational publishers like Scholastic, Creative Teaching Press and Rigby sell sets of decodable readers on their websites and in bookstores (see Resources below).

6. Explain to your child that the English language isn't always predictable and that sometimes a couple of letters together make one sound. This is a way to introduce the concept of blends, digraphs and chunks. Blends (for example, "br" or "sp") are more easily deciphered because they often sound like the two letters put together. Digraphs and chunks, however, ("sh" "ch" or "th" for example) are a little more complicated. These will have to be taught visually--show them to your child and demonstrate the sound these letters make together.

Tips & Warnings

• A good trick to teach the sound of "W" is to teach your child to think of the letter as a "wouble-you" instead of a "double-you."

[Cheeto]

on 12/14/2008 There are some words I can show my 5 year old child multiple times in one sitting without her being able to say the word after multiple presentations. Instead she will say the sounds each letter makes such as Hhhhh aaaaa ddddd. For some words such as has and had, this has occurred for weeks. Is there something else I should be doing? We play games with the words, write them out, and talk about the sound of the last letter without much change.