Phonics Instruction And Reading

Phonics instruction and reading go hand and hand. Phonetic blending is the process of attaching sounds to letters and letter groups and blending those sounds to decode words. Blending At The Beginning teaches the early reader the vowel sounds and how to successfully blend those sounds with consonant sounds to decode words. The blending process begins at the beginning of the word. Early readers learn to look at the entire word for phonetic clues before they begin the blending process.

Using phonics as a tool, children are able to decode unknown words as they learn to read. In our program children should first be exposed to beginning and final consonant sounds. This phonics instruction in our program builds upon the knowledge of consonant sounds and slowly builds in short vowel soundsusing the rhythm and repetition technique. Blends (bl) and digraphs (sh) are then introduced along with long vowels and vowel combinations.