Phonics and Decoding

Phonics is matching speech to print, sound to symbol, spoken to written. Phonological awareness lays the foundation for students to learn phonics. A student must first know the phonemes (sounds of the English language) in order to associate the sound to letters and words. In essence a student will not be able to “sound out” the letters if they don’t know what the sounds are.
 
Phonics should be taught as a word identification skill — one of several — to help students decode words they don't recognize in print. Phonics knowledge is also critical in building spelling skills that are helpful to read.

Learning Objectives

After completing this section you will be able to:

• Explain what a student must know in order to use phonics to decode words