Advanced Phonics Strategies for Teaching Reading                                

First, a definition clarifying phonics: PHONICS IS A METHOD OF TEACHING
READING. It incorporates the alphabet, spelling and sight words.
What are the sounds of phonics? They are sounds embedded in the 26
letters and in their spelling combinations. Read the letters to hear the
sounds. (This statement is obviously erroneous. Sounds are not in letters;
all letters are silent.) Sounds make up spoken words. As long as we teach
phonics for reading, we cannot set it straight.
My phonics strategies for teaching reading are to use phonics for
writing with the phonetic code and to delay reading for a short time.
What are the sounds of phonics? They are the sounds of spoken English
words, finite in number. Called the phonetic code, there are 35 in my
version, one spelling per sound. To distinguish phonics for writing from
phonics for reading, I named the former PHONOGRAPHY, writing the
sounds of speech. *From "The Spelling Teachers Handbook" by Jo Phenix,
copyright 2001, dist. by Stenhouse Publishers. Teacher, author of 14 reading
textbooks agrees: the teacher's best way to teach phonics is through writing.
"The Write Way to Read" content:
Phase (chapter) One: My phonics strategies for teaching reading to
preschoolers or teaching phonics to preschoolers is to avoid both and
to confine teaching to how to hand print and handwrite (manuscript and
cursive) the letters and to recognize each by name. Of the 35 sounds
in the code 21 are either the letter names or in the letter names.
Unwittingly, they are learning 3/5 of the phonetic code.
Phase Two: After teaching phonics to preschoolers, explicitly teach them
the letters used to write the 35 sounds in the code. Teach blending
sounds into words and separating sounds from words with a magic trick.
Phase Three: Teach how to write words of any length using only the
phonetic code spellings; then read them. So ends PHONOGRAPHY.
See next page for my thematic approach in curriculum for phonics.             <NEXT>
The Write Way to Read: Phonics
"A bene-
ficial side
effect of
spelling
by sound
is that
children
become
phonics
experts
and can
apply  this
knowledge
when they
read."'
"Phonics
is far more
useful and
far more
thoroughly
learned
and
practiced
through...
writing
than
through
reading." *
Teachers, here's best way to teach phonics. Book uses phonics strategies for teaching reading advocated by researchers.