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Listen, learn and practice all the sounds of the 75 basic phonograms
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Introduce your classroom to the Logic of English
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Listen, learn and practice all the sounds of the 75 basic phonograms
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By Laura Vance
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In Greek, phono means sound and gram means picture or drawing. A phonogram, literally speaking, is a picture of a sound!
English has 45 sounds (phonemes), 26 letters and 75 common ways to write them! Phonograms can be spelled with one letter like t, two letters like sh, three letters like igh or four letters like eigh.
Phonograms can represent one sound such as m in mop; two sounds such as g in goat and gem; three sounds such as o in top, hope, and to, and on rare occasions, four, five or six sounds.
Sounds, not letter names, help students read and spell. Once a student knows the sounds of the phonograms, the student can blend the sounds into the word.
Learning all the sounds provides students with vital information for decoding, eliminates unnecessary exceptions and prevents confusion!
A vast majority of all that we read and write is in lowercase. Uppercase letters are used less frequently – at the beginning of the sentence, for proper nouns, in titles or for other specific reasons.
Introducing the single-letter phonograms helps students become familiar with the shape of each letter and prepares them to read the multi-letter phonograms.
Reading research shows that learning to write the phonograms while saying the sounds activates the letterbox region of the brain, resulting in students learning the phonograms faster.
When students analyze words and apply the phonograms, they develop the necessary tools to decode and encode without guessing.
When teaching phonograms, it is best to use all the learning modalities. When students hear, see, say and write the phonograms, they master the letter-sound correspondences more quickly.
Students who play a wide variety of educational games enjoy learning and master the skills faster.
Knowing the basic phonograms provides students with the vital information needed to read and spell. Students have developed mastery when they see a phonogram and can immediately and without hesitation recall the sounds.
Phonograms tell you the sounds each letter makes, but spelling rules tell you when they make each sound. In other words, spelling rules often explain why a phonogram is saying a particular sound. Let’s look at the phonogram C…
Do you know why C says /s/ in center, cinnamon and cylinder?
Basic Phonograms
Advanced Phonograms
Advanced phonograms may provide hints and clues about the meaning and origin of the word! For example, the advanced phonogram pn refers to air and is found in words such as pneumonia and pneumatic, while ée (saying the /ā/ sound is from French) is found in words such as fiancee, puree and matinee.
