Phonics instruction teaches children the relationships between the letters of written language and the individual sounds of spoken language. It teaches children to use these relationships to read and write words. Teachers of reading and publishers of programs of beginning reading instruction sometimes use different labels to describe these relationships, including the following:

The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn and use the alphabetic principle--the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. Knowing these relationships will help children recognize familiar words accurately and automatically, and "decode" new words. In short, knowledge of the alphabetic principle contributes greatly to children's ability to read words both in isolation and in connected text.

Phonics instruction takes place daily in our word work block.  On Mondays we talk about our specific phonics goal and come up with words that follow that pattern. Throughout the week we are exposed to text that relates to our goal.  And a majority of our spelling words follow our phonics pattern (with the rest being our 5 word wall words).

By the end of second grade, a child ...

• Pays attention to how words are spelled
• Correctly spells words he has studied
• Spells a word the way it sounds if she doesn't know how to spell it
• Can read a large number of regularly spelled one- and two-syllable words
• Figures out how to read a large number of words with more than two syllables
• Uses knowledge of phonics to sound out unfamiliar words