Approaches To Teaching Phonics Assignment
Reginale Hathaway
Liberty University
EDUC 302: Instructional Practices for Reading Teachers
Professor Melanie Kesler
February 14, 2022
RUNNING HEAD: APPROACHES TO TEACHING PHONICS ASSIGNMENT
RUNNING HEAD: APPROACHES TO TEACHING PHONICS ASSIGNMENT
One of the most important topics ever taught to a learner is phonics. The sounds that go
with letters in a language are referred to as phonics. Reading and writing are both done with
phonics on a daily basis throughout our lives. In the text, there are a number of different ways to
teach phonics. Within the Synthetic Approach “the teacher first has children learn the speech
sounds that are associated with individual letters.” (Roe, 2019). When adopting the synthetic
technique in my classroom, I start by teaching the kids the letters and the sounds that go with
them. Although the synthetic technique did not work for one of my kids, there are a variety of
additional options. The Analytic Approach is another alternate approach I can use, this approach
“involves teaching some sight words, followed by teaching the sounds of the letters within those
words.” (Roe, 2019). I'd start by teaching and going over sight words using the analytic
approach. We would identify the sound each letter makes to form the word after the child is
comfortable with it. It may be far more effective to see and hear the entire word before
attempting to make it using letter sounds.
Another method to teach phonics to struggling students is to integrate elements of both
the Synthetic and Analytic techniques by using onsets and rimes.” In this approach, the teacher
breaks down a syllable into the part of the syllable before the vowel (onset) and the remainder of
the syllable (rime) that begins with the vowel.” (Roe, 2019). I'd still assign the same set of sight
words, but instead of having the student say the entire word first, I'd have them break the phrase
down into the various groupings of sounds they hear. Because everyone of our kids learns in
their own unique way, knowing and employing a variety of teaching methods can be extremely
advantageous to both the student and the teacher. “An advantage to teaching onsets and rimes
rather than teaching individual letter sounds is that “onsets and rimes are much more consistent
than single letters” (Roe, 2019).
