Systematic Synthetic Phonics is an evidence-based, structured approach to teaching children to read. This method of reading helps children to learn the relationships between the sounds (phonemes) of spoken language and the letter symbols (graphemes) of the written language.
What is the purpose of synthetic phonics?
Synthetic phonics is a method for teaching children how to read and write in English. Through this form of phonics teaching, they'll learn how all words in English are reducible to units of sounds called 'phonemes', which we write down using letters or small groups of letters called 'graphemes'.
What is the synthetic approach to teaching reading?
Synthetic phonics instruction focuses on teaching each individual letter sound and having kids try to sound each letter or letter combination (like th, sh) one at a time and then try to blend those back into word pronunciations.
How does phonics support reading?
It is important for children to learn letter-sound relationships because English uses letters in the alphabet to represent sounds. Phonics teaches this information to help children learn how to read. Children learn the sounds that each letter makes, and how a change in the order of letters changes a word's meaning.
What best describes systematic synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading?
Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) is built on the alphabetic principle. It is a structured, cumulative, multi sensory and evidence-based method of teaching reading whereby students are taught the link between letters and the speech sounds they represent.
Why is synthetic phonics better?
New sounds are not introduced in alphabetical order, and they are introduced quickly. Synthetic phonics means that children are able to read a range of easily decodable words sooner. This means that if a child is introduced to the sounds /m/ /s/ /a/ /t/ they can quickly read the words at, mat, sat, am, Sam etc.
Is synthetic phonics the most effective?
Although research suggests that a systematic approach to phonics produces gains in word reading and spelling, there is no clear evidence that synthetic phonics is the most effective approach for supporting reading development.
Why is phonics instruction important to reading success?
Phonics instruction teaches children how to decode letters into their respective sounds, a skill that is essential for them to read unfamiliar words by themselves. Keep in mind that most words are in fact unfamiliar to early readers in print, even if they have spoken knowledge of the word.
How does phonics link to the effective teaching of reading in school?
It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language. Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they're combined will help children decode words as they read.
What are the most important aspects of a synthetic phonics approach to literacy?
A Synthetic Phonics approach should also benefit spelling and writing. As well as putting together the sounds to read words, the children should be taught to listen for the sounds in words so that they can spell them.
What does synthetic phonics teach children?
At a Glance, Synthetic Phonics Teaches Children: That spoken words are composed of sounds. The 44 sounds of the English language. To blend sounds in a word to read. To listen for sounds in words to spell.
Why is synthetic phonics called synthetic?
The ‘synthetic’ name comes from the synthesising or blending of sounds to make a word and enable children to read. The teaching reading and spelling with synthetic phonics will have the following characteristics:
How many sounds are there in the English language?
1) A simple to complex logic. The English language has 26 letters but 44 unique sounds, each with lots of different ways to spell them. A synthetic phonics approach will teach these 44 sounds from the simple to the more complicated logic. First off, children are taught that each alphabet letter has its own unique sound.
How many alphabet sounds should a child learn?
As soon as children have learned between 6-8 alphabet sounds, they must start blending to read words. Many programs will wait until children know all 26 alphabet sounds. This is completely unnecessary – it should be done much earlier.
What is the process of spelling?
3) Spelling is taught alongside with reading. The process of spelling is the reverse to reading. It requires children to identify the sounds in a word and then to match a letter (or letters) with that sound to essentially ‘make’ the word. This takes a five step process:
Is it unfair to expect a child to read all the sounds?
It is therefore unfair to expect a child to read these words if they don’t have the knowledge of all the sounds . In synthetic phonics, children only read words which use the sounds they have learned – they will be entirely decodable. Look at all the words they could read with only these 8 sounds:
Do children use sounds in phonics books?
The texts children practise and apply their knowledge with, should only use the sounds the children have been taught. Many phonics books and apps make the mistake of giving words which , yes, are simple and use the target sound, but throw in sounds which the children simply have not learned yet. For example:
Why is phonics important in primary school?
It will also explore why phonics is a priority in primary schools. Phonics is a learning method where the children are taught to read by teaching them about the relationships between sounds and letters. Children need knowledge of the alphabetic code and skills of blending and segmentation to be able to read.
What is phonological awareness?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to focus on and manipulate individual phonemes in spoken words.
What does it mean when a child struggles with reading?
Pupils who struggle with reading usually have lower levels of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness compared with their peers excluding SEND and EAL. (ReadingRockets.org, 2018) In phonics children are taught to blend the phonemes they have learnt in order to speak words.
How many phonemes are there in the English language?
There are 44 phonemes in the English language which can be blended to form syllables and words. Phonemic awareness is important for children to gain because it is the foundation for spelling and word recognition skills. Phonemic awareness can predict how well children will learn to read during the first two years of primary school.
Why is it important to have phonemes in children's words?
The children should then notice phonemes in words which will help them develop their reading and writing ability. Phonological awareness is an expansive skill that includes recognizing and manipulating parts of the English language for example words, syllables, and onsets and rimes.
What is blended phonemes?
Blending is when phonemes are blended together through repetition and gradually speeding up talking the phonemes until the word is spoken correctly . For example the child pronouncing /c/ /a/ /t/ will eventually develop into being able to pronounce ‘cat’ smoothly and correctly.
How many phases are there in the letters and sounds program?
The letters and sounds program follows a six phase structure.
Why is it important to teach reading with synthetic phonics?
Teaching Reading with Systematic Synthetic Phonics. Learning to read is an important part of every child’s development. It helps children build important , lifelong skills in areas such as language, concentration, critical thinking and memory. Plus, it can be a lot of fun for many children as it expands their imagination ...
What is the process of combining sounds to be able to read?
This process of recognising and combining sounds to be able to read is known as decoding . In reverse, a blended word can be broken up into individual sounds to spell, which is known as encoding. There are some words that don’t follow phonetic rules, meaning their sound doesn’t match their letters.
How many speech sounds are there in the English language?
There are 44 speech sounds in the English language ...
What is the smallest unit of speech sound in a word?
Phoneme – the smallest unit of speech sound in a word. Grapheme – the written letter or group of letters that represents a speech sound. Phoneme/Grapheme Correspondence – the relationship between speech sounds and written letter symbols.
What is the process of reading a word?
Decoding (Reading) – the process of reading a word by recognising which sound (phoneme) corresponds with each letter (grapheme) and then blending these individual sounds/letters to make words. Encoding (Spelling) – The process of spelling a word by deciding which letters represent the speech sounds that make up a word.
How many letters can a child learn to read?
With these six letters, children can learn to read words such as sat, pat, nap, tip, nip, sit, pit etc. Once children have mastered these small words, you can then introduce them to new sounds and letters to read longer and more complex words. When learning to read using a Synthetic Phonics approach, children are first taught individual sounds ...
Why are decodable readers important?
While decodable readers are a great tool for children to practice reading accurately and independently, it’s important to support this explicit learning with other picture books or more complex stories to encourage imagination and build narrative and vocabulary skills.
What is the purpose of synthetic phonics?
The ‘synthetic’ part of this particular phonics instruction derives from the process of synthesizing or blending sounds to create words. New sounds are not introduced in alphabetical order, and they are introduced quickly. Synthetic phonics means that children are able to read a range of easily decodable words sooner.
How does synthetic phonics help children?
Synthetic phonics also teaches children how to identify all the phonemes in a word and match them to a letter in order to be able to spell correctly . Children are taught how to break up words, or decode them, into individual sounds, and then blend all the way through the word.
What are the two types of phonics?
There are two main types of phonics: synthetic phonics and analytic phonics. The difference between them is substantial enough to affect the gains in literacy that young readers make. Synthetic phonics is a more accelerated form of phonics.
What is reading egg?
Reading Eggs teaches children how to hear individual phonemes and blend them all the way through to create a word. Free trial. Early lessons and activities help children to identify how many phonemes they can hear within a word.
When are letter sounds taught?
Letter sounds are taught after reading has begun.
Can children use synthetic phonics?
Of course, the use of synthetic phonics does not exclude the use of analytic phonics.
What are the factors that affect phonics?
One is the phonological complexity of the language. Most of the world's languages have words made up of syllables with a simple or consonant–vowel (CV) structure. English words made up of simple CV syllables include ‘yoyo’ and ‘baby’. Languages with a simple CV syllable structure include Italian, Spanish and Finnish. Words in these languages tend to be longer than words in English, but easier to segment into phonemes. This is because the onset-rime level of analysis of the spoken syllable and the phoneme level of analysis of the spoken syllable are identical. This is shown in Figure 1. Children seem to acquire phonic recoding skills much faster when the phonology of their language has a simple syllabic structure. In English, only 5% of monosyllables are CV (De Cara & Goswami, 2002 ). The primary syllable type in English is CVC (43% of monosyllables), followed by CVCC (21%) and CCVC (15%). Note, however, that languages like German do not have a simple syllabic structure either. In fact, words in German are frequently exactly the same as words in English. Words like sand (Sand), ball (Ball), wine (Wein) and mouse (Maus) are phonologically identical. For words like these, onset-rime segmentation is not equivalent to phonemic segmentation.
What is the NRP report?
One of the most significant contributions to questions about research evidence and the teaching of reading was the American National Reading Panel (NRP) report on teaching children to read in English (NICHD, 2000 ). This was an extensive meta-analysis of research evidence which addressed a number of questions about early literacy, including: ‘Does systematic phonics instruction help children learn to read more effectively than non-systematic phonics instruction or instruction teaching no phonics?’ (ch. 2, p. 92), and ‘Are some types of phonics instruction more effective than others? Are some specific phonics programs more effective than others?’ (ch. 2, p. 93). As far as differences between analytic and synthetic phonics programmes were concerned, the NRP concluded that ‘specific systematic phonics programs are all significantly more effective than non-phonics programs; however, they do not appear to differ significantly from each other in their effectiveness although more evidence is needed to verify the reliability of effect sizes for each program’ (NICHD, 2000, ch. 2, p. 93). In the NRP, the effect sizes for the phonics approaches classified as ‘synthetic’ versus ‘analytic’ were statistically equivalent.
Why is it important to understand the demands of a language like English?
Understanding the particular demands made by a language like English is crucial for the successful early teaching of reading in English. This is because written English is different from many other alphabetic languages.
Is synthetic phonics the only phonics system?
No. Analytic phonics is another system which first teaches children to recognise whole words (often called sight words) such as ‘cat’, ‘the’, ‘you’, and then to look for sounds in unfamiliar words, such as ‘at’ in ‘slat’.
How do you teach synthetic phonics?
Synthetic phonics starts by teaching children groups of letters. They learn that each of these letters has a name and represents a sound. Children start with single GPCs (grapheme phoneme correspondences), e.g. ‘s’ makes /s/, and then move onto digraphs and trigraphs as they progress.
What are decodable books?
One way to support the teaching of a synthetic phonics programme is through the use of decodable books. These are books that only contain the phonemes which have been taught and means that children should be able to decode all of the words using their phonics knowledge.
How do you teach phonics to children with additional needs?
The DfE recommends that synthetic phonics is the best way of teaching children to develop their literacy skills.
How do you teach common exception words and tricky words using synthetic phonics?
Children are not taught to read tricky or common exception words using synthetic phonics as these words are not decodable (certainly they’re not during the phase they are taught, though they may become decodable later on when children are taught more complex phonemes).
What is systematic phonics?
The NRP concluded that early, explicit, systematic phonics teaching gives kids a learning advantage. Systematic, not synthetic. (Systematic means that the phonics instruction followed a scope-and-sequence, the teacher didn’t just teach phonics as she thought kids might need it.)
Is synthetic phonics better than blending?
Synthetic phonics works better when it includes explicit teaching in blending, including engaging kids in the kinds of exercises one finds in Words Their Way, morphological teaching, or other more analytic approaches. The take away: Make sure young children receive daily, explicit, systematic decoding instruction.
What is synthetic phonics?
Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching a child to read that virtually ensures that your child can learn to read quickly and proficiently. Your child will be taught the corresponding similarities between phonemes (sounds) and letters.
What is phonics reading?
Phonics is a fundamental literary element that provides a solid foundation for any child to learn how to read. Without learning this crucial principle, a child would never successfully be able to master speaking and reading words fluently.
How many phonic sounds are there in the English language?
It has been proven that using phonics for kids is the best way for a child to learn to read. There are 44 phonic sounds in the English language and you need to introduce all of these sounds to your child. It is all about sounding out words and you can introduce the sounds one at a time.
Why is it important for a child to learn phonics?
Your child will find that reading comes easy to them if they have been learning phonics. It will improve their reading accuracy as well as the speed at which they can read. As the phonics skills of your child develop so will their reading comprehension.
How do children learn to read?
It is through phonics that a child just beginning to read learns to first identify the letters, then associate each letter or groups of letters with its correct sounds, and soon after, through the process of blending they learn how to merge the sounds together to form a complete word.
How to teach phonemic awareness?
Now, the best way to start teaching your child phonics and phonemic awareness is through ear training. Develop the knowledge in them that every word is composed of individual units of sounds, or phonemes. Short sessions of a few minutes are all that you need to help develop this awareness in them. The key is consistency.
Why is phonics important for kids?
It has been proven that using phonics for kids is the best way for a child to learn to read.
