What is Phonics?

Words are made up from small units of sound called phonemes. Phonics enables children to be able to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. This helps children to learn to read words and to spell words.

English only has around 44 phonemes but there are around 120 graphemes or ways of writing down those 44 phonemes. As we only have 26 letters in the alphabet, some graphemes are made up from more than one letter.

Think about written language is basically a kind of a code. Teaching phonics is just teaching children to crack that code. Children learn the simple bits first and then easily progress to get the hang of the trickier bits.  

Phonics is usually started from reception age in schools but can be begun earlier if desired,  I always teach the first phase of phonics in games and shorten sessions to a maximum of half an hour - little children should be allowed to be just that!  It is so important that learning at this young age is seen as play and fun.