What is Phonics?

When your child is learning to read there are two crucial things to learn:

• The sounds represented by written letters
• How to blend the sounds together to make words.

Synthetic Phonics is a way of teaching reading.

Children are taught to read letters or groups of letters by saying the sound(s) they represent – so, they are taught that the letter l sounds like llllll when we say it. Children can then start to read words by blending (synthesising) the sounds together to make a word.

At school, you will probably hear teachers talking about blending, but you might also hear them refer to sounding out or Fred Talk too, depending on which phonic scheme your child’s school is using. All these terms focus on the same point – synthesising sounds.

(Oxford Owl)