Synthetic Phonics
Synthetic Phonics uses the concept of 'synthesising', which means 'putting together' or 'blending'. Simply put, the sounds prompted by the letters are synthesised (put together or blended) to pronounce the word.
The Scottish Executive Education Department 2005 report, which compared these approaches to phonics instruction noted that synthetic phonics has some of the following characteristics:
- The sounds that the letters make (e.g. "sss" not "es", and "mmm" not "em") are taught before children begin to read books.
- Often, the sounds of the most commonly used letters (i.e. /s/, /a/, /t/, /i/, /p/, and /n/) are taught first. Then, children are taught how these sounds can be "blended" together to form many three letter words (e.g. sat, tin, pin, etc.).
- Consonant blends (e.g. bl, cl, dr, st, etc.) are not taught separately because they can be "sounded out".
- However, digraphs (i.e. two letters that make one sound such as /th/ and /sh/), are taught as the separate sounds that they are.
Read more about this topic: Synthetic Phonics, Systematic Phonics
Famous quotes containing the word synthetic:
“In every philosophical school, three thinkers succeed one another in the following way: the first produces out of himself the sap and seed, the second draws it out into threads and spins a synthetic web, and the third waits in this web for the sacrificial victims that are caught in it—and tries to live off philosophy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)