Phonics: What Is It And How Does It Work?

If you’ve been looking into early childhood education at all, you may very well have

heard of phonics.

This is currently the “in” way of teaching children to read. Parents of children

attending Friday’s Child Montessori might wonder what

phonics is all about and how it works.

You might also be wondering why your child is learning to read in a different way (possibly) to the way you were taught all

those years ago.

This is completely different from the “whole language” approach that was popular in

schools and early childhood centres back in the 1980s.

The “whole language” method encouraged children to learn words as

whole units rather than sounding out the individual letters and putting them

together.

Phonics isn’t new. In fact, it’s probably one of the older ways of learning how to

read.

If you’ve read “Great Expectation” by Charles Dickens, you might remember the scene

where Pip is trying to teach his foster father, Joe, to read, and Joe has managed to

sound out J-O… Joe.

The idea of phonics is probably as old as the alphabet – in fact, it’s the principle behind

the alphabet itself (with some exceptions of course, with Chinese being the most

notable).

The phonics method of learning language fits in very well with the

traditional tools of learning used in a Montessori classroom.

The moveable alphabet is just made for phonics – the letters are presented as

individual sounds and these letters are then built up into longer words.

Read more about Phonics in a Montessori classroom at

www.fridayschildmontessori.com