How does phonics develop early reading and how should phonics be taught?

The most important skill any child can leave primary school with is the ability to read independently and effectively for meaning.’ (DFE National Literacy Strategy)
Reading has become an integral part of our lives; within the world we live in today we rely heavily on information and environmental text. It is important that from an early age Children are immersed in books everyday. With parents reading short stories to there children daily it will be inevitable that those children will stand a better chance at becoming stronger fluent readers. However distractions at home can have a detrimental affect on children’s development in reading as parents may not have
This will give the children a good understanding of being able to read and write these. It also allows them to then combine what they have learnt from the sounds into whole words. This however doesn’t always work with all words that are known as ‘phonically irregular’ also known as ‘tricky words’ as they do not comply to the phonics rules that are being taught. An example of this will be l-i-g-h-t, which clearly won’t make much sense when viewed from a phonics point of view. These words will be learnt by rote, which is a memorizing process using repetition where the teacher feels appropriate based on how successful the child is at reading. By understanding these procedures of reading it is possible to decode entirely unfamiliar words.

From my experience within my Foundation year two class I learnt that it was important to keep the phonics lessons short, with around thirty minutes a day dedicated to this. Some people may believe that because it was only a short period of time to cover phonics the lesson will be very restricted with the children having to take in all the information they are being given by the teacher with no participation.

While being on placement I witnessed first hand exactly what happens in the typical Phonics lesson; it would start with ‘Fast phonics first’ where the children would watch a musical animation