Teaching Phonics At My Homeschool
Phonics is a core subject in the My Homeschool English curriculum for building literacy.
My Homeschool phonics and spelling is taught in a number of ways including spelling lists, dictation, copywork and reading strategies.
In the English language, there are about 44 sounds and 200 spelling patterns that have been identified for teaching direct instruction phonics. Phonics is a way to teach reading and spelling by helping decode unfamiliar words using their sounds (phonemes) and their spelling (graphemes). Phonics helps your child build their literacy and it’s a process that leads to sight-reading.
Phonics Program For Parents
At My Homeschool we provide parent support materials to help you teach phonics even if you didn’t learn it yourself. We include this as a part of our How to Homeschool 101 courses. This includes topics on:
1. Phonics and Spelling
2. How Children Learn to Spell
3. Types of Spelling Knowledge
4. Your Role as Parent
5. Teaching Your Child To Remember Spelling Words
6. Assessing Spelling
Foundation Phonics Program
In Kindergarten, we do not include a specific phonics-based reading resource. However, we do provide recommendations for some great phonics-based reading programs that are suitable for homeschoolers. You can read reviews of the particular programs we recommend to help you select the best option for your child. Some are free and others are less than $50.
To support your phonics we also suggest books for teaching beginning readers and offer phonics assessment sheets and resources to help with phonics-based spelling.
Spelling Lists Arranged by Phoneme and Sound
At My Homeschool we use a number of tools to teach English, but we have included a specific phonics based resource for our new readers.
Building Literacy Resource Kindergarten to Year 4
My Homeschool offers a phonics-based literacy resource in our Foundation Year, Year One, and Year Two courses. These teach spelling, arranged by their sound (phoneme) and their spelling (grapheme). This helps with visual memory, and it also helps decode words. For example, ‘zoo’, ‘true’ and ‘new’ are not on the same list even though they all represent the phoneme /oo/. Just like ‘look’ and ‘moon’ are not on the same list because they have the same grapheme of ‘oo’ but different phoneme (sounds). These offer students a strong phonics-based approach to literacy and spelling.
Primary Language Lessons – K to Year 6
Primary Language Lessons is our main English resource. Literature lessons cover picture study, poetry, a variety of writing texts and styles. Spelling, grammar and punctuation are taught using sentences and proof-reading. Short dictation lessons are used for spelling practice.
Building Literacy From Year 4
After Year 4 we begin focusing on building literacy through, Primary Language Lessons, copywork, dictation and written narrations.
Parents can also access more information on teaching phonics, including dyslexia, using our How To Homeschool 101 course provided free with when you purchase one of our grades.
