Synthetic Phonics Glossary
We understand that when you first come across Synthetic Phonics you can feel overwhelmed by the technical terminology: it can make it seem exotic and a specialism - which is a worry when you are the grown up who is meant to be doing the teaching!
Here are the terms you will need to get to grips with to teach a Synthetic Phonics programme. Do share them with the children...they will soon pick them up.
Blending
The process bringing the phonemes together to make a word or a syllable. Blending is how /c/ /a/ /t / becomes cat.
Camera word
The DfES calls these 'tricky or 'high frequency sight words'. They cannot be decoded easily and so have to be learnt by sight. Get Reading Right calls these words Camera words because the child takes a photo with their 'minds eye'. Each level of the Get Reading Right books has a Camera book to teach these words and there is a guided tour on how to best use the Camera books.
Consonant blend
There is no need to reach constant blends. A constant blend is when two or more constant sounds come together and are decodable so that they no longer need to be taught separately as something special. For example /bl/. If the child already knows the phoneme /b/ and the phoneme /l/ and how to blend them together why does she need to learn /bl/? It is using valuable memory!
Decoding
Decoding is the process of unlocking the written word. For example, a child sees the word cat and needs to know that ‘C’ is sounded as /c/, ‘A’ is sounded /a/ and ‘T’ is sounded /t/. These phonemes are then blended (glued) together to say the word cat. This is reading.
Digraph
Two or more letters come together to make one phoneme. /oa/ makes the one sound in boat.
Encoding
Synthetic Phonics teaches children that the English Alphabetic code is reversible; if you can read a word you can spell it. Encoding is listening for the sounds and deciding which letters represent those phonemes. Also known as spelling!
Fidelity
This is the main criteria for any Synthetic Phonics sequence. All it means is that none of the 44 sounds should be left out and they are taught in a systematic fashion with each new step building on the previous one. Once a sequence is chosen it is unwise to start adding bits from here and there.
High Frequency Sight Words
Words which cannot be decoded easily and so have to be learnt by sight. Get Reading Right calls them Camera words - which child wants to know them as 'High Frequency Sight Words'?!
Letters and Sounds
The 2007 UK DfES six phase teaching programme which contains an order in which the 44 phonemes can be taught. It begins with the group of 8 phonemes s a t p i n m d.
Making and Breaking
A Get Reading Right technique to help a child practice spelling by reading out the word and asking the child to spell it using magnetic letters and a whiteboard or letter tiles.
Phoneme
The smallest unit of sound and a piece of terminology that children like to use and should be taught. At first a phoneme will be represented by a single letter but later on will include the digraphs.
Playing with Sounds
The 2004 UK DfES programme which contains an order in which the 44 phonemes can be taught. This was the first Synthetic Phonics document that replaced the ‘Progression in Phonics’ document and is still in use in many schools. It begins with the phonemes ‘s m t g c p a o’.
Schwa
The vowels sounds that are pronounced in a reduced form in normal speech, e.g. listen to the u in circus or the /i/ in pencil.
Sight Words
Another name for Get Reading Right's Camera Words or High Frequency Sight Words.
Synthetic Phonics
Is the approach to the teaching of reading and spelling which teaches all the 44 phonemes of the English language in a systematic and structured fashion.
Trigraph
/igh/ is a trigraph, three letters represent one phoneme. Note however that /str/ is not a trigraph. It has three phonemes: /s/, /t/ and /r/ and is a constant blend. It should not be confused with a true trigraph and not taught as one phoneme.
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