Phonics

Question 1

Alliteration

Answer 1

Alliteration is the repetition of the first letter sound in a phrase.

Question 2

Blend

Answer 2

to draw individual sounds together to pronounce a word, e.g. s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap

Question 3

Compound word

Answer 3

a word made by putting two or more words together (seesaw).

Question 4

Cluster

Answer 4

two (or three) letters making two (or three) sounds, e.g. the first three letters of ‘straight’ are a consonant cluster

Question 5

Consonants

Answer 5

phonemes marked by constriction or closure in the breath channel – letter other than a, e, i, o and u.

Question 6

Consonant blend

Answer 6

a sequence of two or three consonants, each of which is heard with minimal change.

Question 7

consonant digraph

Answer 7

consists of two consonants that together represent one sound (sh, ch, th, gh) – which is not associated with the constituent letters (ship, chip, phone, laugh). The “kn” in know is not a digraph, for example.’Wh’ may or may not be a digraph, depending on how it is spoken (for some speakers, weather and whether have different initial sounds)

Question 8

Contraction

Answer 8

a short way to write two words as one by writing the two words together, leaving out one or more letters and replacing the missing letters by an apostrophe (cannot = can’t)

Question 9

diphthong

Answer 9

phoneme where the mouth glides from one vowel sound directly into another in the same syllable – both vowels may be heard, but not quite making their usual sounds because of the blending. These include oi, oy, ow, and ou.

Question 10

Final blends

Answer 10

blends of two or three-letter consonants which make only one sound. These include -ng, -nk, -sh, -ch, and -tch.

Question 11

Grapheme

Answer 11

a letter or a group of letters representing one sound, e.g. sh, ch, igh, ough (as in ‘though’)

Question 12

homographs

Answer 12

words which are spelled alike but have different sounds and meanings (bow and arrow vs. bow of a ship)

Question 13

homonyms

Answer 13

words which sound the same but have different spellings and meanings (bear, bare)

Question 14

Long Vowel Sounds

Answer 14

say the name of the letter – for example the letter “a” would be pronounced as “aiy” as in “hay” or “day”

Question 15

Onset

Answer 15

the consonant sounds in a word that came before the first vowel sound in a syllable; Not all words or syllables have onsets (at, oar)

Question 16

open syllable

Answer 16

a syllable that ends in a vowel sound, typically a long vowel sound (tiger, hotel)

Question 17

Phonemes

Answer 17

basic sound unit of speech

Question 18

Phonemic Awareness

Answer 18

the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds (phonemes); this is a sub-category of phonological awareness. It includes the ability to distinguish rhyme, blend sounds, isolate sounds (such as initial & final),segment sounds, and manipulate sounds in words.

Question 19

Phonics

Answer 19

the relationships between the sounds of a language and the letters used to represent those sounds – a way of teaching reading and spelling that stresses symbol sound relationships

Question 20

Phonological awareness

Answer 20

awareness of units of speech, such as words, syllables, and phonemes

Question 21

Phonograms

Answer 21

a letter-sound combination that includes more than one grapheme or phoneme

Question 22

Prefix

Answer 22

a syllable or group of syllables attached to the beginning of a word or root to change its meaning (reprint, unpack, dislike)

Question 23

r-controlled vowels

Answer 23

An ‘r’ sound following a vowel sound almost always distorts the vowel, making such words harder to spell – cat/car. Common r-controlled vowels are: ar, er, ir, or, ur.

Question 24

rime

Answer 24

the first vowel sound and any others that follow it in a syllable (cat, treat, chair). Cat,sat and fat rhyme because they share a rime. Each syllable in a word can be analyzed in terms of onset/rime: fantastic, playground, airplane.

Question 25

Schwa

Answer 25

the vowel sound of any unaccented syllable in English

Question 26

Short vowel sounds

Answer 26

the short vowel sounds are the first to be introduced, for example the letter “a” with the short vowel sound would sound like “a” as in “cat” or “sat”

Question 27

soft c and g rule

Answer 27

when c or g is followed by e, i, or y, it is usually soft

Question 28

split digraph

Answer 28

two letters, split, making one sound, e.g. a-e as in make or i-e in site

Question 29

syllable patterns

Answer 29

English syllables can be grouped into basic patterns according to their use of consonant and vowels sounds: (CVC, CVVC, CVCe, CV, man, mean, mane, me). Keep in mind that a “C,” or consonant in these patterns may be a single consonant, digraph, blend, or cluster. Polysyllabic words can be broken down by syllable patterns (hopping = cvc-cvc, hoping = cv-cvc)

Question 30

vowel digraph

Answer 30

two vowels together that make one phoneme or sound (bread, need, book, field)

Question 31

y as a vowel rule

Answer 31

if y is the only vowel sound at the end of a one-syllable word, y has the sound of long i; if y is the only vowel at the end of a word of more than one syllable, y has a sound almost like long e

Question 32

Syllabification

Answer 32

The division of words into syllables, either in speech or in writing.

Question 33

Morpheme

Answer 33

The smallest unit of a word that provides a specific meaning to a string of letters (which is called a phoneme)

Question 34

Phoneme Categorization

Answer 34

In this strategy, the teacher compiles a small sequence of similar words and asks students to identify the word that has a different or “odd” sound compared to the rest of the words.

Question 35

Phoneme segmentation

Answer 35

the ability to break words down into individual sounds. For example, a child may break the word “sand” into its component sounds – /sss/, /aaa/, /nnn/, and /d/.

Question 36

Phoneme Deletion

Answer 36

involves having students manipulate. spoken words by deleting specific phonemes

Question 37

Phoneme identification

Answer 37

the ability to identify words that begin with the same sound