Phonics (Encoding and Decoding)

Think about all of the times you read and write during a typical day.

Perhaps you read your work emails each morning before typing responses, or read through a cookbook before listing the ingredients you need to prepare for dinner.

Do you see the connections there? Reading and writing are related processes, and young children develop skills in both through systematic phonics instruction.

In this video, we will define phonics and describe how phonics assists children with both reading and writing development.

Phonics

Phonics is an instructional practice used to teach people to read and write based on the relationship between letters and their spoken sounds.

Understanding that written letters make predictable spoken sounds is known as the alphabetic principle. For example, b says /b/, f says /f/, and so on.

Beginning readers initially learn the most common sound made by each letter, such as the hard /c/ sound made by c in the word cat.

Later, they learn the other, less common sounds made by some letters, such as the soft c sound, /s/, heard at the end of the word nice.

Decoding Simple Words

Beginning readers learn to identify printed letters and say their sounds. They then begin blending the sounds made by letters in words, which is referred to as “sounding out” the words. This process is also known as decoding.

Decoding involves translating graphemes, or written letters or groups of letters representing single sounds, into phonemes, single spoken sounds.

Children typically begin decoding words with one short vowel plus a consonant, such as the word at.

Words following the consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC, pattern are typically next, such as the word hop.

Let’s examine the process first-grader Sam uses to decode the CVC word map.

Sam knows that m makes the /m/ sound. He knows that the letter a in this spelling pattern makes the /ă/ sound. He knows that p makes the /p/ sound.

He blends these sounds aloud, saying map. As he says each letter sound, he translates a written grapheme, a letter, into a spoken phoneme, the letter’s corresponding sound.

Children later learn the sounds made by consonant blends, which are groups of two or three consonants that blend together to make a sound while each individual letter sound is still heard. Examples include bl, which says /bl/ and fr, which says /fr/.

For example, a beginning reader can decode the word spin by translating the written consonant blend sp into the /sp/ sound and blending it with the /ĭ/ and /n/ sounds made by the remaining letters.

Three-letter consonant blends such as spl, which makes the /spl/ sound, are typically introduced after two-letter consonant blends.

Children also learn the sounds made by consonant digraphs, which are groups of consonants that form a new consonant sound when combined. Examples include th, sh, and ch.

For example, a beginning reader may decode the word shed by recognizing that the letters sh together make the /sh/ sound. The /sh/ is then blended with the /ĕ/ and /d/ sounds made by the remaining letters to form the whole word, shed.

Young readers should be taught new spelling patterns in a systematic way that increases in complexity over time.

For example, children are often introduced to consonant digraphs at the beginnings of words, such as ship, before consonant digraphs at the ends of words, such as mash.

Instructional Practices

There are several instructional practices teachers can use to help beginning readers decode words with these spelling patterns.

When students encounter new words, teachers can ask what sound each letter, blend, or digraph makes. Students can then be encouraged to sweep their fingers from left to right under the words as they blend the sounds together.

Students can also complete word sorts where they group words with similar sounds or spelling patterns. For example, they can sort words according to which consonant blends they start with.

More Complex Spelling Patterns

Not all words can be decoded by simply blending, or sounding out all the letters. For example, the letter e in the word cake is silent.

These spelling patterns should be explicitly taught and practiced so readers will recognize these patterns when they are encountered in new texts and know how to decode them.

Some common spelling patterns that cannot be sounded out by simply blending all the letter sounds include:

• Consonant – Vowel – Vowel – Consonant (CVVC) words, such as boat and meat
• Consonant – Vowel – Consonant – e (CVCe) words, such as bake and note

Sight Words

Some commonly used words do not have predictable spelling patterns and are often taught and memorized as sight words. Examples of these words include the and could.

Therefore, decoding words by blending the letter sounds, or “sounding it out,” is only one of many strategies beginning readers should be taught.

Encoding

Encoding is the opposite process of decoding. When beginning readers want to write words, they say them aloud and listen to the sounds they hear. They consider what letters or groups of letters make those sounds and write them down on paper. Thus, encoding is the process of translating phonemes, or individual speech sounds, into graphemes, the written letters or groups of letters that represent those sounds.

Let’s look at an example.

Hannah’s first-grade teacher asks students to write down something they do for fun, and Hannah wants to write the word swim.

She says the word aloud, stretching out the sounds:

She knows that sw makes the /sw/ sound, i makes the /ĭ/ sound, and m makes the /m/ sound. She writes these letters down, translating the spoken phonemes into written graphemes. She has encoded the word.

This is a reason why young writers often use what is known as invented spelling. They are making early attempts to write down the sounds they hear in words. As a result, children may spell words using phonics knowledge rather than spelling the words conventionally. For example, the word shoe may be spelled s-h-e-w after a child has learned that ew makes the /oo/ sound.

Let’s take a look at an example.

Noah, a first grader, is writing a sentence: The cat is tan.

Noah has memorized how to spell the, a common sight word. He writes it down correctly.

When he gets to cat, he says the word aloud, stretching out the sounds.

He knows c makes the /c/ sound, a makes the /ӑ/ sound, and t makes the /t/ sound. He correctly writes cat next.

Noah comes to the word is. He says it aloud, and writes down “iz”. He knows i makes the /ĭ/ sound, and z makes the /z/ sound he hears at the end of the word. He has not yet memorized the conventional spelling of is.

Finally, he says tan aloud, stretching out the sounds:

He knows t makes the /t/ sound, a makes the /ǎ/ sound, and n makes the /n/ sound. He correctly encodes the word tan.

Invented spelling is gradually replaced by conventional spelling over time, and it is a typical part of writing development.

Instructional Practices

There are many instructional practices teachers can use to help beginning writers encode words.

They can encourage students to say the words aloud, stretching out the sounds. And next, they can ask:

“What sounds do you hear?”

“What letters or groups of letters make those sounds?”

During modeled writing experiences, teachers can also demonstrate how they stretch out the sounds in words and match those sounds to their corresponding letters.

Review

Let’s review what we learned in this video.

• Phonics is an instructional practice used to teach people to read and write based on the relationship between letters and their spoken sounds.
• Phonics includes the alphabetic principle, or the understanding that written letters make predictable spoken sounds.
• Phonics also helps children with both decoding and encoding. In other words, it helps with both reading and writing.
• Decoding is the process of translating graphemes, or written letters or groups of letters representing single sounds, into phonemes, individual spoken sounds.
• Encoding is the process of translating phonemes, or individual spoken sounds, into graphemes, the written letters or groups of letters that represent those sounds.
• Phonics instruction should be systematic, with skills building upon one another over time.

Questions

Okay, let’s go over a review question before we go:

Why is it important to teach students a variety of reading strategies, not just sounding out words using phonics knowledge?

Thanks for watching, and happy studying!