Reading Language | A Parent's Guide
It is helpful to have a "translation" for the terms your child’s teacher might use. Think of these as the building blocks of the "Reading Code."
Here is a quick parent-friendly guide to the most common Phonics terms you'll encounter:
The Parent’s Phonics Cheat Sheet
| Term | Parent-Friendly Definition | Example |
| Phoneme | The smallest unit of sound in a word. | In the word cat, there are 3 sounds: /k/ /a/ /t/. |
| Grapheme | The letter (or letters) that represent a sound. | The sound /f/ can be written as 'f' (fish) or 'ph' (phone). |
| Digraph | Two letters that come together to make one sound. | sh, ch, th, ck. |
| Blending | Pushing individual sounds together to say the whole word. | Putting /b/ /a/ /t/ together to say bat. |
| Segmenting | Breaking a whole word down into its individual sounds. | Hearing hop and identifying /h/ /o/ /p/. |
| Heart Words | Words that have a "tricky" part that doesn't follow the rules yet. | Words like said or the that kids must learn "by heart." |