Do you ever get confused with certain educational terminology? I am a former Kindergarten classroom teacher turned homeschooler, and even I used to get certain terms confused. Recently I shared the difference between sight words and high-frequency words, and today I want to share definitions and examples for the PH words: PHonics, PHonograms, PHonemes, PHonoligical Awareness, and PHonemic Awareness. These terms are often confusing, even for classroom teachers. If you are a homeschool parent who was never a classroom teacher, they might be even more confusing!
Phonemes
A phoneme is an individual speech sound. There are 44 phonemes in the English language which combine together to make words. Phonemes are the smallest unit of speech.
Phonograms
A phonogram is a picture that represents a phoneme. There are 75 basic phonograms, which are the basic building blocks of words. Phonograms are also called graphemes. A phonogram can have 1-4 letters & may represent from 1-6 sounds.
English has 26 single letter phonograms & 49 basic multi-letter phonograms. Multi-letter phonograms are fixed combinations of letters that symbolize one or more speech sounds.
Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate units of sounds in spoken language. Identifying rhyming words, syllables, blending onset and rime, and matching phonemes {recognizing alliteration} are some examples.
Phonological & phonemic awareness can be done in the dark because they involve sounds, not written letters.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is defined as the understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds called phonemes. It is a part of phonological awareness.
Phonemic awareness refers to the specific ability to focus on and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Blending and segmenting are two examples.
Phonological & phonemic awareness can be done in the dark because they involve sounds, not written letters.
Phonics
Phonics is the connection between phonograms (letter symbols) and sounds. Phonics needs the lights on because it involves the letters {visual} and sounds! While phonemic awareness is oral and auditory, phonics instruction is both visual and auditory.
If this interests you, I recommend the book Uncovering the Logic of English.
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Be sure to check out our Learning to Read at Home webpage here. it is filled with many resources and free printables to help your young reader!
Looking for an awesome homeschool reading program? We recommend All About Reading, which we have used for over 10 years!
