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Teaching phonics at BestStart Dilworth Ave
At Dilworth Ave, as part of our 'Be School Ready' program, kaiako explores introductory elements to early literacy through phonics exposure, handwriting practice, and speaking and listening skills with our weekly 'Show and Tell' at times. Literacy development is closely tied to oral language. Kaiako offers effective literacy programs and pays particular attention to the richness and quality of the talk. Phonemic awareness is hearing, identifying, and manipulating individual sounds-phonemes–in spoken words.
Once children know letters and their sounds, they can start building words. For instance, knowing the sounds for ‘c’, ‘a’, and ‘t’ can help them build the word 'cat’. Rather than allowing students to struggle to recognize complete words, as in the whole word method, or to look for contextual clues to figure out what is being said in a text, phonics teaches students to look at the letters of a word and segment it into its component sounds, before blending these sounds back together to read the entire word.
This means if they encounter a new word, they can try to pronounce it by sounding out each letter or group of letters for example, when faced with the word cat, a student might run their finger under the first letter and make the initial /k/ sound, then /a/, and, finally, /t/. Once they have successfully segmented these individual sounds, they then blend them to say the word /kat/. they learn that the letter ‘b’ makes a /b/ sound. Teachers also play fun games such as ‘I Spy’ with children. For example, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with /b/”. the child then looks for an object that starts with the sound /b/.
Developing an interest in reading is crucial for developing early literacy skills. At Dilworth Ave teachers often spend more time reading stories to children than teaching phonics. This exposes children to a wide range of vocabulary and sentence structure and helps children develop a love for books and reading.