The Role Of Phonics Lessons In Improving Reading Comprehension

December 8, 202332

For parents, nothing is more important than watching your child succeed academically and personally.

As children progress through their academic journey, developing strong reading skills becomes a crucial milestone for success.

Therefore, the Department of Education highlights the importance of early phonics education. It can positively impact children’s cultural, social, and emotional development.

Research has proven that phonics education in preschools is one of the most effective methods to teach children how to read. It provides them with a firm foundation for success in their future endeavors.

Hence, this article will delve deeper into the numerous benefits of incorporating phonics education into children’s learning.

Table of Contents

Understanding Phonics

Learning phonics is a crucial process that involves connecting the sounds of spoken English to individual letters or groups of letters.

This process enables children to understand English and develop strong reading and language skills.

The phonics lessons teach children how to recognize and distinguish different sounds. For instance, it distinguishes the sound “k” and how to represent them with different letters or letter combinations like “c,” “k,” “ck,” or “ch.”

Children can decode unfamiliar words by sounding them out by blending letter sounds. This is a fundamental technique in building a strong foundation of reading and language skills.

Moreover, preschoolers can identify and pronounce words more easily and accurately as they become more proficient in phonics.

This not only helps their reading comprehension but also their overall communication abilities.

How Phonics Lessons Help Young Students

Given below are the different ways in which young students can benefit from phonics lessons—

1. Improves Reading Abilities

Reading is a complex mental task that can enhance a young reader’s intelligence. It creates new neural pathways in the brain.

Phonics is a foundational skill that helps children understand the letters on the page. Additionally, it aids in the enhancement of children’s overall cognitive abilities.

These abilities include critical thinking through the use of probability and the ability to draw conclusions based on similarities.

The adage “practice makes perfect” applies to phonics as well. Children need to develop reading fluency.

Therefore, children can quickly recognize familiar words effortlessly with time and practice. Moreover, they can also sound out new words they encounter, leading to increased reading comprehension and enjoyment.

2. Helps Children Symbol From Sounds Better

When a primary school student learns reading through phonics, they develop excellent phonemic awareness.

Therefore, they can hear, identify, and manipulate each letter symbol with its appropriate sound.

This level of understanding is essential for learning to read and write words accurately and effectively.

Therefore, mastering phonics enables children with a strong foundation in language and literacy. This serves them well throughout their academic and professional lives.

3. Helps Children Break The Code Of Written Language

The phonics method emphasizes analytical skills for decoding written language. It helps children recognize rhyme families like ‘-ig’ in words such as ‘big’, ‘pig’, and ‘dig’.

Therefore, teachers in primary schools encourage children to identify common spelling patterns in target words. This method helps them to read familiar words and predict the pronunciation of new ones.

However, critics argue that this approach needs more meaning and can lead to children using words out of context.

Teachers combine vocabulary and phonics with keywords incorporated into fun visuals and games to address this issue. This attempt can help children identify and manipulate sounds.

Phonics Lessons For Preschoolers

Phonics instruction works best when it’s combined with vocabulary instruction. This combination helps children understand what they’ve “sounded out” from a text.

Preschools and primary schools use multi-sensory activities to introduce new words and highlight the connection between letters and sounds.

Therefore, when young students can say the whole words, teachers can focus on phonological awareness. They can break words down into sound units, like syllables, onsets, rhymes, and phonemes.

Phonological awareness tasks should vary based on the age of the students:

Three-year-olds, counting syllables is a good starting point.
Four-year-olds, focusing on rhymes and onsets is recommended.
Five-year-olds, teachers can add visual cues to help children break words down into their onset and rhyme.

Moreover, this foundation of phonological awareness makes it easier for young students in preschools to connect sounds with letters.

Teachers can use multi-sensory activities and stories to help children comprehend what they’ve “sounded out” from the text.