Phonics is a way to teach people to read words by breaking them down (decoding) into individual
sounds (phonemes). These sounds can be blended together to create the word.
Two words that are used in phonics are phonemes and graphemes.
These are the individual sounds that, when blended together, make up a word. They do not
necessarily refer to the letters that make up the word.
For example the word make contains four letters but is made up of three phonemes m... ae... k...
There are 44 phonemes which are split into two groups vowels and consonants. There are 20 vowel
phonemes and 24 consonant phonemes.
To hear all 44 of these phonemes download our Phonics app, for free, from Google Play.
Graphemes are the different variations in which a phoneme sound is written down. I.e. the sound is the
same but it can be written in several ways.
For example ae is also found in words as ai, ay, a-e, or a (where the hyphen in a-e represents a letter
in between, e.g. k in make)
Blending
Saying each phoneme sound in order to say the word. I.e. blending the sounds together in order to say the word.
Segmenting
Break a word down into separate sounds (phonemes) so that it can be written. This skill is very important in spelling.
Decoding
Breaking down words into separate sounds (phonemes) in order to read them.
Encoding
Putting sounds (phonemes) together in order to write words.
Tricky Words
These are words that can't easily be decoded.
CVC Words
Cconsonant Vowel Consonant words. These are words that are made up of three phonemes
in the order consonant phoneme, vowel phoneme, and consontant phoneme. The do not necessarily have three
letters as they are referring to the sounds.
Here are two examples of CVC words: hat (h... a... t...) and show (sh... o... w...).
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