Phonics words, explained
Phonics has its own words, and most of them name a simple idea. A CVC word is a short word like cat. Blending is joining sounds into a word, and segmenting is splitting a word into sounds. A digraph is two letters with one sound, like sh. Each term below has a one or two sentence definition and an example.
The words, A to Z
- Blending
- Saying the sounds of a word one after another and pushing them together into the word, so s, a, t becomes sat. It is the step between knowing letter sounds and reading words.
- Bossy r (r-controlled vowel)
- An r after a vowel that changes the vowel's sound, like the ar in car and the or in fork.
- Consonant blend
- Two or three consonants side by side where each one keeps its own sound, like fr in frog and st in stop. Unlike a digraph, you can still hear every letter.
- CVC word
- A short word built consonant, vowel, consonant, like cat, sun or map, where the vowel makes its short sound. These are the first real words most children learn to read.
- Decodable text
- A sentence or book built only from sounds and words the child has already been taught, so every word can be sounded out instead of guessed.
- Digraph
- Two letters that make one sound together, like sh in ship, ch in chip and th in thin. ReadBorn calls them sound teams.
- Grapheme
- The letter or letters that write one sound. In ship there are three sounds and three graphemes: sh, i and p.
- Heart word
- A common word with a part that does not follow the sounds a child knows yet, like the ai in said. The child sounds out the regular part and learns the tricky part by heart.
- Long vowel
- A vowel that says its own name, like the a in cake and the o in boat.
- Magic e (silent e)
- An e at the end of a word that makes no sound of its own but changes the vowel before it to its long sound, so tap becomes tape.
- Phoneme
- One sound in a spoken word. Cat has three phonemes, c, a and t, and so does ship, because sh is one sound.
- Phonemic awareness
- Hearing and playing with the separate sounds in spoken words, before any letters are involved, such as noticing that sun and sock start with the same sound.
- Phonics
- Teaching reading through the sounds that letters stand for. A child learns which sound each letter or letter team makes, then joins the sounds to read the word.
- Segmenting
- Breaking a spoken word into its separate sounds, so sat becomes s, a, t. It is blending in reverse, and it is the skill behind spelling.
- Short vowel
- The sound a vowel makes in cat, bed, sit, hot and cup. Most first words use short vowels.
- Sight word
- A common word a child learns to read at a glance, as a whole word. Many sight words can also be sounded out; the goal is reading them quickly.
- Syllable
- A beat in a word, built around one vowel sound. Rabbit has two syllables, rab and bit.
- Systematic synthetic phonics
- Teaching letter sounds in a planned order and blending them into words from the very start, with each step built on the last. It is the method ReadBorn follows.
- Three-cueing
- Working a word out from the picture, the sentence or the first letter instead of its sounds. It builds a guessing habit that breaks down on harder books, and ReadBorn never asks a child to do it.
- Vowel team
- Two letters that make one vowel sound together, like ee in feet and oa in boat.
Where these words fit
Most of these terms name a rung on the ladder a child climbs: letter sounds, then blending into CVC words, then digraphs, vowel teams, consonant blends and magic e. The parent guides take each rung in turn, in that order.
THE PART A GLOSSARY CANNOT DO
Knowing the words is not the same as hearing the sounds.
Every term on this page names something a child does out loud: saying a sound, joining sounds, reading a word. Someone has to hear it to know whether it went right.
ReadBorn does the listening. Your child says the sounds and the words out loud, the app hears them with Apple's speech recognition, and it helps only when they are stuck. In the books, a missed word gets its letter sounds played one at a time, and the turn goes straight back to your child.
Keep going
ReadBorn is an iPhone and iPad app that teaches children to read by phonics for ages 3 to 8 and up. The child sounds words out loud, the app listens with Apple's speech recognition and helps only when they get stuck, and it hatches a baby animal for every class the child finishes.