If you have a visual learner that’s learning to read, you’re probably spending some extra time helping at home. I’ve posted a few articles on why visual kids can be challenged by reading and the world of words and what you can do to help, including some Sight Word activities and resources. Well today we have another great resource for you: 11 Fun Phonics Facts.

Remember phonics? I always thought of them as the necessary evil of learning to read. You can’t think about learning to read without hearing about phonics. But what exactly are they and once you’ve learned the ‘rules’ of letters and sounds, do you ever really remember them? I didn’t. I get why we need them but I never really embraced them or remembered them, maybe because I’m a visual learner and phonics are not the way we learn.

So what exactly are phonics? They are “a method of teaching beginning readers to read and pronounce words by learning sounds of letters or groups of letters”. Phonics have been developed around some key phrases that help us remember the rules of sounds and letters like; “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” Phonics are meant to give kids a heads up on how certain letters sound when together, so as they encounter new words, they will know how to sound them out. It’s really a very helpful system. But as good as the system is phonics is less effective with visual learners because they learn and remember whole words better than pieces of words. The right side of the brain is an ‘all at once’ kind of processor, so when reading, it sees and remembers the whole word. This is why practicing sight words with young visual kids is so helpful.

But there are times readers are going to encounter plenty of words not on a sight word list and kids will need the tools and skills to decode those words. This is why everyone needs some phonics mastery. Most school reading programs are centered on phonics – but this is a list for you to use with your young reader at home. We scoured the internet to find the most important rules and simplified them so there is very little confusion about how they apply when learning to read. So download the list today and get started sounding out those words with the kids.