Phonics at Brandesburton Primary School Clear and precise articulation of sounds is an essential part of phonics, and its value cannot be emphasised enough. In school we use the word ‘phoneme’ instead of ‘sound’. Children learn to understand and use correct terminology, in much the same way as they do in maths, science etc.

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word, and as a guide to the articulation of individual phonemes it’s useful to think of how they are spoken within consonant-vowel-consonant words, where each of the three separate phonemes can be clearly heard. For example, in the word ‘cat’ we can clearly hear /c/ /a/ /t/.

What we are not hearing is /cuh/ /a/ /tuh/. If they were the separate sounds, when we blend them together we’d be saying ‘cuhatuh’ which isn’t the same as ‘cat’ at all.

We need to concentrate on making our articulation as clear and accurate as we possibly can. For many phonemes that’s quite easy. The short vowel phonemes /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ are very straightforward. The /u/ phoneme can vary slightly according to regional accent, but even so, it’s generally recognisable by others. For example, ‘coop’ or ‘cup’.

For many other consonants it helps to say them in a continuous way, for example, ‘mmmmmm’, ‘sssssssss’, ‘lllllllllllll’.

There are a few phonemes which we say without putting a /u/ at the end. For example, /b/ /g/. We ask the children to think how the phoneme is said within a consonant-vowel-consonant word.

The following pages work through the alphabet. For each illustration the word, the initial phoneme, and sometimes some additional comments will be made.

Alphabet of Phonemes

A aA a

B bB b

C cC c

D dD d

E eE e

F fF f

G gG g

H hH h

I iI i

J jJ j

K kK k

L lL l

M mM m

N nN n

O oO o

P pP p

Q q

R rR r

S sS s

T tT t

U uU u

V vV v

W wW w

X x

Y y

Z z

Sh

Th

Ch