Approaches to phonics + eight phonics activities for kids

The debate on how phonics should be taught has been a subject of major interest and controversy in the media and research literature, and especially now as Australia is currently piloting a Year 1 phonics screening check, similar to what was done in England in 2011.

What is phonics?

Words are made up from small units of sound called phonemes. Phonics teaches children to be able to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. This helps children to learn to read words and to spell words. Phonics is commonly defined as the relationship between phonemes and graphemes. Phonics is recommended as the first strategy that children should be taught in helping them learn to read.

In some languages, learning phonics is easy because each phoneme has just one grapheme to represent it. The English language is a bit more complicated than this. This is largely because England has been invaded so many times throughout its history. Each set of invaders brought new words and new sounds with them. As a result, English only has around 44 phonemes but there are around 120 graphemes or ways of writing down those 44 phonemes. 

Why is phonics important?

Research shows that phonics is a key predictor of reading success later in life. Though not the only one. 

In the past, people argued that because the English language is so tricky, there was no point teaching children phonics. Now, most people agree that these tricky bits mean that it is even more important that we teach phonics and children learn it clearly and systematically. A written language is basically a kind of a code. Teaching phonics is just teaching children to crack that code. Children learn the simple bits first and then easily progress to get the hang of the trickier bits.

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What are the main approaches to teaching phonics?

There are quite a few of them: synthetic, embedded, analytic and blended. Analytic (breaking into their constituent parts str – eet) and synthetic (teaching individual sounds blended together s-t-r-ee-t) phonics.

There are many teachers in schools and prior-to-school years who implement a ‘blended’ approach. A blended approach values both skills-based and child-centered instruction as crucial to early literacy development.

In the UK, reading is taught via synthetic phonics. Its effectiveness has been proven by multiple cases of research; however it raises critical voices as well. One of the first assessments requires the child to read 20 words and 20 nonsense monosyllabic words, like “poth” and “thrand. This test, however, fails to include the words like “one”, “was”, “two”, “love”, “what”, “who”, or “because”, though they are among 100 mostly used words of the English language. 

In reality, many children find this stressful as school results are published so there's pressure on teachers to ensure everyone keeps up and even more parents are baffled by it and frustrated by the effect such pressure is putting on their children. 

There are two main approaches in kids’ pedagogy, one is didactic (adult – initiated), the other is play-centered, or child-initiated. Multiple researches show that if preschool experience is based on the didactic approach a long-term decline in interest is observed during the next years in further studies.

Phonics Activities for Children

If you are an early childhood educator, you might want to use these activities for building children’s phonological awareness and getting them ready for further studying:

Phonics Mystery Box

Children take things out of the mystery box and a label is tagged to the item as it is placed on the table. After a few have been removed from the bag, they are led to identify the letter these items begin with. Where possible, children will be asked to name items they suspect might be in the bag (that begin with the target letter).

Flashcard games 

Children listen to a sound, explore objects/people etc starting/ending with that sound, and then make a flashcard, one side giving the spelling of the sound, the reverse giving the cue word they have chosen and their own drawing. 

Magic Wand

Children use a magic wand, giant long-handled brush to form the letter(s) for that phonic in the air. 

Fishing

Use a rod with magnet attached to fish for a sound they have heard, or representing the initial sound of a real object.

Phonics scavenger hunt

Go on a phonics hunt - tracking down objects or phonics cards in response to a sound given.

Making a Phonic Scrap Book 

Cut pictures and letters out of magazines, newspapers, catalogues etc for their own alphabet frieze or book. 

Making dough letters 

Make their own salt dough letters. Kids see your example and how you make it, then form their own letters with Play dough.

Role plays and puppets

Use hand puppets to tell stories and to introduce letters and sounds to a captivated young audience, it really works!

What is your approach in teaching phonics? Can you share your activities to teach phonics? Please feel free to leave a comment below!

by Natalie Laguta

Natalie started her teaching career as a conversational English teacher at Kiev National Linguistics University and now has over 12 years experience in the field of EAL and ESP teaching. She took part in joint projects between the British Council and the Ministry of Education in Ukraine, implementing CEFR standards into high school teaching and creating high school graduation exams for high school students in the Ukraine.

For the last four years, she has been teaching in China as a primary school teacher. Her professional interests include the psychology of learning and classroom management.

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