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Phonics is one of the five keys to reading. It should be taught every day in early years classrooms with phonemic awareness (until this is established), fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
Phonics is best taught explicitly and systematically. It is essential that the terms explicit and systematic are fully understood and practiced daily in classrooms. These terms are explained on the essential principles page.
In order to read words efficiently a reader must firstly identify a word by decoding it. If a word is unfamiliar or new, the reader must use knowledge of letter-sound relationships to give a plausible pronunciation of the word and activate the meaning from their vocabulary.
Once a reader has had several exposures to a word, its unique string of letters becomes anchored to its pronunciation in long term memory so it can be easily retrieved. This is known as orthographic mapping. Orthographic mapping uses letter-sound correspondences to establish a memory for printed words. Orthographic mapping facilitates comprehension because it allows automatic retrieval of words, therefore freeing up mental resources for understanding what is being read.
Orthographic mapping is a process that develops a reader’s sight word vocabulary, making the reading of words seem effortless, as if they read the word as a whole. When a word is orthographically mapped, reading that word occurs without effortful attention to each and every grapheme-phoneme correspondence, but it does not mean that we ignore letters and their positions. The brain processes every single letter and does not look at the whole word shape. Proficient readers take in the letters so quickly that its imperceptible until we come across a new word that we are not familiar with such as ‘pachycephalosaurus’ or ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ (a lung disease caused by inhalation of silica or quartz dust). When presented with words such as these we revert back to effortful attention to the sequence of letters again, until we ‘map’ the word for fast retrieval.
Both phonic decoding and orthographic mapping are reliant on knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, or phonics, therefore teaching letter-sound correspondences is essential and the fastest way to acquire reading comprehension.
Research suggests that there is a set of skills that should be taught explicitly and systematically to ensure students learn phonics more effectively:
Adapted from “Checklist for Effective Instruction,” found in Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts. (2002). Second grade teacher reading academy. Austin, TX: Author.
Teaching systematic phonics recognises the need for the beginning reader to progressively build and practice phonic knowledge. Systematic phonics also takes into account the developmental sequence that facilitates the acquisition of letter sound knowledge (more about this can be found on our teaching grapheme-phoneme correspondences page), and recognises the need to combine this with oral blending so that students acquire the skill of phonic decoding.
Systematic and explicit teaching of these skills ensures permanent word storage via orthographic mapping. Orthographic mapping is an essential mental process required to store words for immediate and automatic retrieval using letter sound knowledge and connecting this to our spoken vocabulary. Understanding the systematic and developmental sequence of phonics, and its role in decoding and orthographic mapping, is essential knowledge for all teachers of reading.
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