Phonics Jargon Buster

When talking about phonics, teachers use quite technical terms with the children and, perhaps surprisingly, children pick these up well. I have known reception children impress visitors that ask, "What are you doing?" by giving responses such as, "I am finding all the words that have the 'ee' digraph."

Likewise sometimes parents pop in and ask things like, "My child keeps talking about sound buttons, can you show me what they are?" The vocabulary can become quite baffling if phonics is all new to you. I hope that the 'jargon buster' below helps to explain a few of the key terms your child or their school may use:

Phoneme - The smallest unit of speech sound. For example the word cat has three phonemes, these are c-a-t. The word boat also has three phonemes, these are b-oa-t (the oa makes one sound even though it is made up of two letters).

Grapheme – A letter or group of letters that are written down to represent one sound (one phoneme).

Segment – To break a word down into its sounds in order to write a word. For example, to write the word dog you can break it down (segment it) to hear the sounds d-o-g.

Blend – To merge the single sounds (phonemes) together in order to read a word. For example you say the three sounds c-a-t and blend them together to say the word cat.

Digraph – Two letters that represent one sound (one phoneme) such as the 'oa' in the word toad (t-oa-d)

Trigraph – Three letters that represent one sound (one phoneme) such as the 'igh' in the word night (n-igh-t)

CVC Word – A word that is made up of a 'consonant, vowel, consonant' combination such as the word h-a-t. This is based on the phonemes not the letters so the word b-oa-t also counts as a cvc word as the ‘oa’ is a vowel sound

Sound Button and Bars – To help children to read words, teachers often draw spots or buttons beneath each written sound (grapheme). These are referred to as sound buttons. There would be three buttons under the word hat. Sound bars are often lines or sometimes stretched oval shapes. The bars are used beneath digraphs and trigraphs to show that these letters grouped together make just one sound.