Phonics and Sight Words: Two Building Blocks of Reading

Reading is a key skill and a necessary component ofwords are those which children should be taught to
learning other subject matters. Ensuring that your childrecognize, read and speak instantly. These are words
learns to read is one of the most important things youthat appear in the highest frequency in English text,
can do as a parent to prepare them for their future.many of which are phonetically irregular. Mastering
Of course, your own knowledge of how the processthese words is one another fundamental step in a
of reading works has a bearing on how well you canchild’s journey towards literacy.
instruct your child in the mechanics of language and 
reading. You’ll need to have a basic understandingLists of sight words were developed after exhaustive
of phonics, sight words, word analysis and phonemicresearch into the mechanics of reading first by
awareness.Edward B. Fry and later by Edward W. Dolch (both
 PhDs). Reading becomes much easier for the young
Broken down to its basic element, each word isreader once these sight words have been memorized.
composed of letters. By themselves or in combination,Such words comprise more than half of the text of a
these letters represent the sounds of spokentypical book or newspaper; and, even a higher
language. From a very young age, children makefrequency of text intended for beginner readers.
associations between the letters and the sounds to 
which they correspond. This fundamental of reading isThe best way to teach phonics is in conjunction with
called alphabetic, which is taught through thesight word recognition. There are a number of different
techniques of phonemic awareness, word analysis,phonics instruction techniques, each having their own
phonics, and sight words.advantages. Analytic phonics aims to teach children to
 identify a word and then move on to the grapheme
Phonemic awareness relates to a reader’s abilityphoneme relationship. This method is especially
to listen to spoken language and identify theeffective when the child has already memorized the
phonemes; these are the basic sounds of spokencommon sight words.
language – English has about 40. Phonemes are 
combined to make syllables and words. The lettersPhonics in spelling focuses on using the sounds of
which correspond to these phonemes are known asletters and graphemes to write words. Analogy
graphemes.  Understanding these phonemes andphonics helps children identify and form words by using
graphemes is one of the building blocks of the readingwords they already know. Contextual phonics teaches
process.children to learn the meanings of words from their
 context within a paragraph or sentence. All of these
Another element in the learning process is wordmethods work best after the child has mastered sight
analysis, which can be described as phonics with anwords.
emphasis on the phoneme-grapheme pairs. Keep in 
mind that English does contain words which do not fitReading requires an understanding of how letters and
the usual patterns; there are also multiple graphemesounds correspond and of course, the meanings of
phoneme pairs depending on context.words. Phonemic awareness, word analysis, phonics
 and sight words prepare children to decipher the
This is when sight words come into play. Phonics andmechanics of written language, and paves the way for
sight words are typically taught in conjunction. Sightthe road to reading.