A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO

UNDERSTANDING
PHONICS
CONTENTS
PAGE

01 Introduction
02 Types of Phonics
03 Phonological Awareness

04 Phonemic Awareness
05 Phonics
06 Teaching the Letter Sounds
09 Blending
11 Segmenting

12 Sight Words
13 Conclusion
INTRODUCTION

KNOWLEDGE
IS
POWER
The aim of the
Mooncake's Teacher's
Guide to Phonics is to
provide knowledge of
the fundamental
phonics steps that will
help you feel confident
when approaching any
given phonics
curriculum. Different
schools or language
centres will ask you to
teach different phonics
curriculums. Some
may even expect you
to create your own. As
an ESL teacher it is
essential that you
understand basic
phonics skills and the
teaching steps
required to help
beginner readers on
their journey to literacy.

1
TYPES OF PHONICS

There are different ways in which phonics is applied to reading and writing
programs, but the most widely used phonics methods are analytic phonics
and synthetic phonics.

Analytic Phonics
The Analytic phonics approach takes words as a whole and then
deconstructs them into letter sounds. The letter sounds are not taught in
isolation, and focus is given to the initial sound in a word.

Consonant blends are also taught as one unit rather than as individual
consonant sounds. For example, in the word, stop, the /s/ and the /t/ would
be taught together as one sound /st/.

Students are also taught to recognize similarities in words and make

associations with other words in the same word family, such as with the
words cat, fat, and mat.

Synthetic Phonics
The Synthetics phonics approach decodes words from part to whole.
Readers connect letters to their corresponding sounds and then blend those
sounds together to form a word.

The letter sounds are taught in isolation, and focus is given to every sound
within a word. For example, if a student encountered the word dog, they
would sound out each segment of the word (/d/ /o/ /g/) and then blend
those sounds together to form the word.

WHICH IS BETTER?
There is still much debate in the teaching world as to which phonics
approach is more advantageous for beginner readers. Both approaches
have been recognized as effective methodologies with proven results. With
that said, both approaches still require a systematic and planned
curriculum suitable for the age group and teaching program of your class.

Where to begin? Although many teachers believe that learning to read

starts with the alphabet, the journey to literacy actually starts much earlier
with the development of phonological awareness.

2
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

Reading begins when students

learn to tune in to the sounds
of the spoken language and
this is why phonological
awareness is so important.

WHAT IS Phonological
AWARENESS?

Phonological awareness is the essential

foundation needed to learn to read. It is the
ability to recognize and manipulate sounds
in a spoken language. Most of us remember
learning nursery rhymes and fingerplays
when we were younger, but these were
much more than just fun and games.
Activities like these give children the
opportunity to practice their phonological
awareness through rhyming, alliteration
and syllable recognition.

Most students will develop phonological

awareness skills through exposure to a rich
English environment. Including nursery
rhymes, songs, and chants into student’s
daily life is extremely beneficial in preparing
them for later phonics. Reading exposure is
also very important. Reading stories aloud
that include rhyming, or repetitive sounds
not only exposes students to the sounds of
the English language but also to the
concept that language has a written form.

As children’s phonological awareness

develops, they move from observing to
doing. Instead of clapping out syllables
they are able to identify syllables by sound
alone and begin to create their own
rhymes. Although phonological awareness
is made up of a number of different skills,
one of the most important is phonemic
awareness.
3
PHONEMIC AWARENESS

The most common source of

reading difficulties is poor
phonemic awareness.

WHAT IS PHONEMIC
AWARENESS?
Most people believe that the first step
to reading is to learn the alphabet
and many traditional phonics
programs around the world begin by
teaching students the letters of the
alphabet. However, when it comes to
start decoding words, knowing the
alphabet becomes more of an
obstacle than an advantage as this
knowledge does not relate directly to
reading.

What students really need when first

starting a phonics program is to be
introduced to the Phonemes
(sounds) of the English language.
Phonemes are the smallest unit of
sound. They are not visual but can be
represented visually by graphemes
(letters). By learning and tuning into
these phonemes students are able to
start breaking words down into
sounds (segmenting), putting them
together to create words (blending),
and even manipulate words by
adding, subtracting or replacing
sounds within words (sound
manipulation).

By teaching students the phonemes

of the English language, teachers are
giving students an essential
foundation from which to build and
develop their phonics skills.

4
PHONICS

WHAT IS PHONICS?

Whereas phonological and

phonemic awareness are auditory,
phonics is where we introduce
students to print and that English
can be represented in written form.
When students start to learn that
specific sounds and letters go
together, then they have begun to
understand the alphabetical
principals and can really start to
read. The alphabetical principals
are the understanding that there
are systematic and predictable
relationships between the words of
the spoken language and the
letters of the written language.

The English language has 44

sounds which are represented by just 26 different letters. Because of
this, at times two letters come together to represent a sound, these are
called diphthongs and digraphs. At times letters can represent more
than one sound such as the ch in the word chair, Christmas, and
machine. As you can see, this is a lot to learn and can be very
confusing to young learners. It is important that students are given a
clear and structured phonics curriculum that scaffolds upon prior
knowledge.

Within synthetic phonics programs students develop five key skills to

develop student’s aptitude for reading and writing: learning the letter
sounds, letter formation, blending, segmenting, and sight words.

5
TEACHING THE LETTER SOUNDS

THE LETTER SOUNDS

There are 44 sounds in the English language, and students need to
learn all of them in order to be able to read. It is essential that we are
teaching these sounds correctly; if students learn the sounds
incorrectly, it can affect their ability to blend later on.

CONSONANT SOUNDS
There are three types of consonant sounds. These are continuous
sounds, stop sounds and tricky sounds.

Continuous sounds are held for longer and have a stretched-out

sound to them. Stop sounds however, are much shorter and abrupt. It
is these stop sounds that can be tricky for students and you will often
find that students will add either an /A/ or a /U/ sound to the end.
This really has a decremental effect on student’s blending ability
later in the program. If you have students that are struggling with the
stop sounds, you can encourage them to add an /i/ sound on the
end instead. This helps to shorten and soften the sound while forcing
the student’s mouth to be more closed. This promotes more oral
stimulation which helps students to remember the sound better.
Tricky sounds are just that, tricky. They can be a combination of both
continuous and stop sounds or can be pronounced differently in
different parts of the world.

Consonant Sounds
Stop sounds: b, d, g, c/k, p, t, j
Continuous sounds: f, l, m, n, r, s, v, z
Tricky sounds: h, w, y, x, q

6
VOWEL SOUNDS
There are five vowels in the English language; a, i, o, u, and e. These
vowels can produce either a long or a short sound depending on the
word they are used in. When students are first learning the letter sounds
they start by learning the short vowel sound as these are more
commonly used in CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words that are
far easier to blend. Long vowel sounds are introduced to students later
as they progress through their phonics program.

Vowel sounds
Short vowels: a (apple, and), e (pen, hen), i (it, in), o (top, hot), u (under, cup)
Long vowels: a (ate, take), e (equal), i (icicle), o (open), u (music)

DIGRAPHs
A digraph is formed when two consonants come together to form an
entirely new sound. Digraphs can be found anywhere within a word but
most commonly they are found at the beginning or the end of a word.

Digraphs
ch (chin), sh (ship), th (this), th (thing), wh (when), ng (ring), nk (rink)

Vowel Digrpahs
ar (far), ur (fur), er (her)

DIPHTHONGS
A diphthong is formed when two vowels come together to
form an entirely new sound. Diphthongs are commonly
found in the middle of words.

Diphthong
ai (bait), oa (boat), ie (pie), ee (feet), oo (book), oo
(boot), ou (ouch),

7
Remember that the goal when teaching the letter sounds is to
be able to use them to blend and create words later on. As such,
it is important that teachers are conscious of teaching the
correct sounds and correcting students when they hear
mistakes.

Just as when we teach new vocabulary, teachers must use

repetition and TPR to help students remember the sounds of the
letters faster. Teachers ought to create actions for each of the
different sounds and use them consistently when teaching the
letter sounds. This helps students who naturally learn more
kinesthetically to remember them. It is also important that
teachers are constantly looking for teaching opportunities in
which the letter sounds can be reviewed. Examples of this might
be as students are lined up to go outside or sat waiting for lunch
to arrive. The more the sounds are reviewed the faster the
students will be able to grasp them.

When reviewing the sounds with students, teachers can use the
‘my turn, our turn, your turn’ technique. Start by saying the sound
out loud to students yourself. Next have the students say the
sound along with you. Finally, have the students say the sound
by themselves.

8
BLENDING

WHAT IS BLENDING?

Blending is the ability to take the

sounds of letters and blend them
together in sequence to create words.
This may sound like a simple process
but for new learners it can be quite
“ If a child
memorises 10
words, the child
can only read 10
challenging, and some may not grasp
the concept straight away. Blending is words.
a skill that students will need to
practice and develop over time, so do But if a child
not be troubled if students are not able learns ten
to blend right away. sounds, the child
Students ordinarily start by learning to
will be able to
blend CVC words, such as dog, cat, or read 350 sound
sit. These are the easiest words to words, 4320 four
blend because they are short and
simple. Later, once student have
started to grasp CVC word blending,
they are introduced to four letter
sound words, and
21650 five sound
words
“
words and then later diphthong and
digraph blending.

Initially students can find it hard to

- Dr Martin Kozloff, 2002
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/wlquotes.htm
understand the concept of blending. It
can be helpful to give students a visual
representation of blending so that they
can process a visual understanding
into an auditory skill. We can do this
using letter flashcards. Simply take
each letter of a CVC word and place
them separate from each other on a
board. Go through each sound with
students slowly. Next move those
flashcards closer together and once
again say the sounds of those letters
out loud but a little faster than before.
Once again, move those letters closer
together and say the sounds out loud,
this time a little faster. Repeat this
process until the letters come together

9
to form a word. Say those sounds out loud fast enough so that
student might hear the word.

For more kinesthetic learners (those learn by doing rather than

watching or listening) it can be useful to give a physical action to
the blending process. A simple example of this is to chop down your
arm for each letter sound and then rub your hand down your arm
to blend. For example, if blending the word cat you would chop your
shoulder and say the sound /c/, chop your elbow and say the
sound /a/ and then chop your wrist and say the sound /t/. Finally,
you would rub your hand all the way from your shoulder down to
your wrist while saying the word cat.

These are just a few examples of how you can help your students
learn to blend. The most important point to remember is that
every student will learn at their own pace and in their own way so
be flexible with your teaching methods and try to find ways that
work best for your class.

10
SEGMENTING

Where blending involves sound recognition. The

taking the letter sounds and teacher starts the game by
putting them together to form saying the rhyme “I spy with
words, segmenting involves my little eye, something
taking a word as a whole and beginning with… (A)” and looks
breaking it down into around the room for an item
individual sounds. This process the students will know the
enables students to write and name of. Students need to
spell words. then look around the room for
items with that initial sound.
Similar to blending,
segmenting is a listening skill
that takes time and practice
to develop. Students need to
be able to recognize the
beginning, medial, and ending
sounds in words. This can be
overwhelming for students if
taught all at once, and
teachers need to break down
these skills and teach them
step by step. The beginning
sound is the easiest sound for
students to recognize, followed
by the ending sound. The
medial sound is the hardest
sound to recognize and should
be taught last.

There are many different

games that teachers can play
during class that focuses on
segmenting skills. Categorizing
is a simple example. Take a
number of different items that
students will confidently know
the names of in English and
ask students to categorize
them into groups of different
letters based upon the
beginning sound of the word. I
spy is another simplistic game
that helps practice initial

11
SIGHT WORDS

Sight words are words that do not fit standard phonetic

patterns and that need to be memorized. Students need to be
able to recognize sight words as a whole (within 3 seconds) so
that they can read them without having to use decoding skills.

Just like when teaching any new word, students need time to
practice recognizing and using sight words in sentences, both
verbally and visually. We can help students read sight words in
full sentences by combining sight words with pictures and
simple blending words that we know students will be able to
read. A word wall is also a useful teaching tool. Simply place all
the learned sight words on a wall in the classroom so that
students can refer back to them if they find a word they are
stuck on when reading. Teaching students to write sight words
correctly also aids students’ learning.

sight
words

12
CONCLUSION

Learning to read and write is a

marathon, not a sprint. Every
student will learn at his/her
own pace and our
responsibility as teachers is to
provide them with the
exposure, opportunity and tools
needed to acquire the
necessary skills to become
comprehensive readers and
writers. By understanding
these fundamental phonics
principles, you should feel
confident to tackle any
structured phonics curriculum
you are asked to teach. As a
teacher you will be able to
recognize where your students
need support and how to
provide it.

This guide is however, a

guide, and further research
and reading is advised so that
you can continue to grow as a
teacher and improve upon
your ESL teaching. Learning, is
an ongoing process for all!

13
REFERENCES

Donat, D. (2003). Reading their way. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press.

Kozloff, M. (2020). wlquotes. Retrieved 21 January 2020, from

http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/wlquotes.html

Understanding Phonics | Scholastic. (2020). Retrieved 21 January 2020,

from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-
content/understanding-phonics/

Wernham, S. (2010). Jolly phonics. Jolly Learning Ltd.

What is phonics? | National Literacy Trust. (2020). Retrieved 21 January

2020, from https://literacytrust.org.uk/information/what-is-
literacy/what-phonics/