Phonics #9

·          The 44 phonemes are represented by 251 graphemes.

·         There is no general rule for every letter pattern; each letter has its own.

This section reviewed the earlier parts on phonemes.  The sounds of letters can change depending on the word and the letters around them.  This will be a hard thing to teach to children, because we as people want something to always be constant.  The rules of phonemes are something that need to be studied, so correct spelling can occur.

Phonics #6

·         Y’s are vowels when they are pronounced as i’s or e’s; and W’s are vowels when they are combined with another vowel.

·         The most common vowel-consonant pattern is that of CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant), in which the Vowel represents its short sound.

·         When one-syllable word has two vowels, one of which is the final e, the e is silent and the first vowel usually represents its long sound.

      This reading portion spoke of the vowels and their sounds.  The vowels include a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y and w.  Vowels, depending on the form of the letters, can have long or short sounds.  Vowels can also be silent.

Phonics #5

·         The combinations ch, sh, and zh do not have their own sound. They are a combination of sounds.

·         The combinations th, tk, and wh change sounds, depending on the word.

·         The combination can represent a single phoneme or two separate phonemes.

·         A consonant cluster is composed of two or more consonants that blend together when sounded to form a consonant blend.

This section of Phonics spoke of combinations of consonants with entirely different sounds.  These combinations are where children have the most difficulty in learning how to read; this is why students will write in invented spelling.  This kind of spelling is good for children to learn that they can write, even if they need a small amount of help making it correct.  I will need to remember this as a teacher, that children are not born knowing how to sound things out and spell them correctly.

Phonics #4

·         C, g, w, and y are all very irregular, but have consistency within their inconsistencies.

·         S, t, and x are unreliable.  These letters will not always sound the same. Their sounds change with the word.

·         We use two-letter combinations called consonant digraphs to stand for the seven phonemes not represented by single-letter graphemes.

This section spoke of more irregular consonants and consonant digraphs. Irregular consonants and consonant digraphs will affect my teaching because these combinations and letters without specific sound rules will be hard to teach to students.  How do you explain that a letter might have a "c" sound now, but an "s" sound in a different word?  This will take much time on my part, to make the most knowledgeable curriculum to teach the students.

Phonics #3

Things I want to remember:

·         Consonant phonemes can be divided into two major groups: eighteen consonant phonemes identified by key symbols composed of single letters and seven consonant phonemes identified by key symbols composed of two-letter combinations called digraphs.

·         As single letters, c, q, and x do not represent distinctive phonemes.

·         The letters m, v, and r represent distinctive sounds of their own, while q always represents the same sound as k.

·         The consonants b, h, k, l and p as single letters are very reliable, but all these consonants still have their own “silent letter” patterns.

·         The consonants d, f, j, n, and z tend to be very reliable consonants, with minor sound differences.

            This third portion of the Phonics book talked about consonants.  These letters hold different sound and writing patterns then vowels do.  I loved reading about all the differences in the consonants. I knew these difference exsisted, but never stopped to actually think about it.

Phonics #2

Things I want to remember:

·         The Roman alphabet had only 26 letters to represent apprx. 44 English sounds.  English made up for this by combining letters to make the missing sounds.

·         Phonemic Awareness; The understanding that words consist of sounds and the ability to act on this understanding

·         The grapheme is the written representation of the phoneme. As the phoneme is the unit in the sound system, the grapheme is the unit in the written code.

·         The three types of cues used to identify unfamiliar words are graphophonic cues, which consist of letter to sound relationships, syntactic cues, which consist of grammatical relationships, and semantic cues, which consist of meaningful relationships.

After reading the first chapter of the “Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading”, I felt like my knowledge of phonics had greatly increased.  I did find the book a little hard to follow; due to the way it is written.  The chapter spoke of how there are 26 letters in the English language, but 44 phonemes.  With so many sounds and so few letters, Americans need to get creative.  Some of these creative graphemes are /th/ and /ch/.  This chapter also looked like there is a science to reading, instead of just “knowing” the words.  I have always been more of a “sound it out” reader; hopefully, this book will help me with my phonics.