Phonics

High school (ages 12+)
Thinking & Learning

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/phonics

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is phonics and why is it called a secret code?Phonics is a way to learn how sounds match letters, like a secret code that lets you read new words.
2. How does phonics help me read new words?By learning the sounds of each letter and sound combination, you can split a word into sounds, read each part, and then put them together to read the whole word.

Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound in a spoken language that can differentiate one word from another.
Grapheme: A written symbol or a sequence of written symbols that represents a phoneme.
Alphabetic Principle: The understanding that there is a systematic relationship between letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes) in a written language.
Blending: The process of synthesizing individual phonemes together to form a recognizable word.