Lessons · Teaching · a phoneme is a sound, not a letter
A phoneme is a sound, not a letter
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a spoken word, and the number of sounds in a word is very often not the number of letters in it.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
The child who will not read aloud is often a child for whom letters and sounds have never been separate things. If ship is four letters and three sounds and nobody has ever said so out loud, then everything built on top of it is guesswork. Counting sounds is a skill in itself, it takes about a week to get good at, and almost no new teacher is ever taught it.
How to think about it
Say the word and do not look at it. Stretch it out and count the sounds on your fingers. Write the letters afterwards and see where one sound wore two letters, or one letter carried two sounds.
Worked example
ship: sh, i, p. 3 sounds, 4 letterssh is one sound wearing two letters, which is the commonest mismatch in English.
box: b, o, k, s. 4 sounds, 3 lettersx is one letter carrying two sounds. The mismatch runs both ways.
knee: n, ee. 2 sounds, 4 lettersThe k is silent and ee is a single sound.
black: b, l, a, ck. 4 sounds, 5 lettersbl is two sounds and not one; ck is one sound wearing two letters.
Your turn
Count the sounds in shrink.
shrink: sh, r, i, ng, k = sounds
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Counting letters and calling them sounds. A child asked for the sounds in chop who answers four has counted letters, and the fix is to say the word again with your eyes shut.