The Importance Of Phonics In Education

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Literacy acquisition is an important part of the curriculum and students development in early years’ education. Teaching and learning in literacy is complex process, however development of early literacy concepts will give students an advantage and help their overall literacy learning. This essay will examine phonics, considerations to make when deciding what to teach, and what approaches are effective in the teaching of phonics and how students early literacy experiences affect the development of phonics concepts. The Department of Education, Science and Training (2005) states that many teachers are unclear about teaching phonics and use many different methods, which are not based on evidence and research (p. 14). Early literacy, particularly …show more content…

Student engagement with literacy concepts at home has shown to increase phonic awareness. Kitson (2014) suggests that teachers harness the early literacy development taking place before students enter formal schooling. This includes the learning of phonic sounds through the reading of a range of quality books and experiences such as visits to the library (p. 179). It is sometimes difficult depending on the socioeconomic status and family support the student has, and if quality books are available (Ewing & Maher 2014, p. 1). Once the challenges of early literacy exposure have been considered, the teacher must decide what to …show more content…

21). Examples of structured phonics education including games, flashcards with sight words and teacher led instruction. Conversely, other educators believe that phonics instruction cannot be planned for so specifically and that an ongoing, wide variety of embedded phonics concepts is the best way for students to learn (Savage, 2007, p. 114). There is also many approaches available for teaching phonics; an example includes through analytic or synthetic phonics. The analytic phonics approach concentrates on whole words, breaking them down into phoneme sounds (Ewing & Maher, 2014, p. 2., Savage, 2007, p. 113). The synthetic phonics approach starts with a small group of letter and sounds, adding letters and blends as the student progresses (Ewing & Maher, 2014, p. 2., Savage, 2007, p. 113). It seems that both methods have their success as well as challenges, whatever method the teachers chooses, the result is still an education in phonics (Savage, 2007, p. 114). Effective phonics instructions will be delivered through a program that is varied in techniques and lesson styles (Ewing & Maher, 2014, pp. 2-3., Mesmer & Griffith, 2005, p. 375). The teacher will use their knowledge of student learning and dispositions to implement the most effective phonics

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