Building Phonics Foundation to Develop Literacy for Kindergarten Children

Saturday, 14/12/2024, 17:12 (GMT)

The Phonics Phase 2 program helps 5-year-old children build an important foundation for learning to read and write, including letter and sound recognition, blending and segmenting. Children learn each group of phonemes from basic sounds to digraphs. With diverse teaching methods including a variety of games, songs, and materials, children approach sounds and letters naturally which helps to improve their pronunciation and literacy. Learning Phonics prepares children with a solid foundation, supporting them to be more confident and proficient when entering higher levels of education.

Let’s have a look at how 5-year-old Vinsers learn Phonics at Vinschool Kindergarten!

Identify and say the sound: Children learn each phoneme separately from easy to difficult, starting with basic phonemes like “s, a, t, p” to more complicated digraphs like “ch, sh, th, ng”. Each phoneme is introduced with visuals, actions, sounds and songs to help children easily identify, memorize and engage in learning Phonics.
Practice pronunciation: Children are guided to pronounce each phoneme as well as word clearly and accurately to develop their English pronunciation. This also helps children develop their listening and sound discrimination skills.
Practice blending and forming words: Once children are familiar with basic phonemes, children begin to learn to blend and form simple words. For example, children can blend ‘s, a, t’ to read the word ‘sat’. Blending helps children initially become familiar with the “decoding” technique, providing great support for their reading.
Use phonemes to read simple words and short sentences: Children are encouraged to read words and short sentences in Phonics story books by applying blending and irregular words to strengthen their reading fluency as well as promote their confidence.
Practice Phonics through various fun activities and games: Activities such as word building games, songs, and hands-on activities at learning stations facilitate children to reinforce the learnt phonemes in a fun and natural way. Flexible and regular access every day to different learning stations helps children memorize and apply the phonemes in different practice contexts actively and confidently.

Through the game “I Spy”, students practice listening to the phoneme and find the corresponding phoneme card.

Students confidently recognize, sound out, and match lowercase with uppercase letters.

Students practice listening, identifying and sounding out the phonemes they have learned in pairs.

Practicing listening and playing the correct notes with the corresponding phonemes together makes learning Phonics more interesting.

Students practice identifying and saying the initial sound of words with corresponding pictures.

Each student takes turns choosing a word card, then finding and arranging the letter blocks to form the corresponding word.

Games like puzzle matching help students actively practice reading skills anytime and anywhere.

With different materials such as play dough or magnetic letters, students can easily create words then blend to read them.

Students practice blending to read simple words in a puzzle game.

Students listen to teachers’ segmenting to choose the corresponding word card.

Students blend to read simple words and match them with corresponding images.

Students practice blending to read simple words in a board game.

Students practice identifying and reading the tricky words by sight.

To encourage collaboration, students are given opportunities to read phrases or sentences together and then match them with appropriate illustrations.

Students use different materials to practice tracing the letters.

Students practice writing letters and simple words.

Segmenting to write CVC words is practiced in every Phonics lesson.

Students practice listening to write simple words containing learnt phonemes.

Students play in pairs to create CVC words (consonant – vowel – consonant) and then check the results together.

Through personalized tasks, students independently write captions as words, phrases or sentences for a picture.

Using notebooks and pencils, students practice dictation with short phrases or sentences.

In addition, students practice their Phonics skills at home through the “My Phonics Log” project to effectively consolidate and apply the knowledge they have learned in class. This helps students expand, connect and maximize opportunities to practice Phonics, building a foundation to develop their literacy at the Kindergarten level.