Teaching phonics involves focusing on the acquisition of letter-sound correspondences to support reading and spelling. As children better understand the correspondences between sounds and letters, and between sounds and letter combinations, they are then better equipped to take on the more challenging tasks of decoding and encoding words.

Research shows that to become proficient readers and writers, early readers need to learn decoding and encoding skills. Helping children understand sound-symbol connections by learning the visual-to-auditory relationship between letters and sounds is essential for learning to read (decoding) and learning the auditory-to-visual relationship is needed to write words (encoding).

In this 3.5 minute video, SAReads Literacy Facilitator Emily defines phonemes (sounds), graphemes (letters), and morphemes (meaning) using easy-to-understand examples.