Teaching Phonics – how to sound the letters
This video clip demonstrates how to pronounce the letter sounds, with special reference to vowel sounds which differ from language to language. This can cause confusion and mispronunciation when reading in English.
Simply explained, phonics is the teaching of letter sounds. Each of the 26 letters in the alphabet has a name and a sound. Many eager parents teach their children to say or sing the alphabet using the names of the letters. This is a good thing, but we cannot teach children to read using the names of the letters. The children also need to know the sound each letter makes. They first learn the sounds of single letters, and then the sounds that letters make when they are put together. It is absolutely essential that children should recognise the letters of the alphabet and know how to say their sounds in order to learn to read.
In teaching reading, we recommend an eclectic approach. This means that we begin right away with teaching children one or two letter sounds every week – using flashcards with pictures, songs, rhymes and whatever other ideas recommended by various phonics curricula. At the same time, we introduce them to sight words, using flashcards and relevant pictures. We make flashcards of each child’s name, so that before she can read, a child can recognise her name. We put labels all around the classroom, so that the children are learning to read without any effort at all. Door. Window. Table. Books. etc. We read to the children often and talk about books, stories and pictures, encouraging children to recognise that accompanying pictures can help them greatly in understanding text.
The Sunrise Readers Teacher’s Manual is a simple, user-friendly guide to the teaching of reading. Ministries of Education in most countries have a national curriculum for teaching phonics. If a phonics curriculum is not available in your country there are many excellent resources online. We have also included phonic sounds and clue words at the back of the Sunrise Readers Teacher’s Manual. Here is an excerpt from the Teacher’s Manual on the teaching of phonics:
