Glossary of Phonic and
Spelling Terminology used with Children in School
phoneme: the smallest unit of sound in a word
e.g the word then has 3 phonemes th / e /n
grapheme: the written representation of a sound
digraph
- two letters that represent one
sound m u tt
er
trigraph – three letters
that represent one sound s igh
segment: to sound out or break a word into its phonemes, to
aid spelling
eg. sounding out shop
as sh o p
blend: to build words by ‘reading through’ the sounds, to
aid reading
e.g. sh o p says shop
vowel: a,
e, i, o, u the letters in the alphabet that are made with an
open–mouth sound, where air flows uninterrupted out of the mouth
consonant: speech sounds made using the tongue, teeth, or lips
to interrupt the flow of air through the mouth
e.g. t
and p in the word tip. All letters in the alphabet other than a,
e, i, o, u are consonants.
The
letter ‘y’ can act as a consonant (yes) and as
a vowel (happy)
morpheme: the smallest unit of meaning. A word may consist of
one or more morphemes,
e.g. happy unhappy
unhappiness
suffix: a morpheme that can be added to the end of a word to
change
e.g.
o
the tense walk walked
o
the grammar accident accidents
o
word class accident (noun) to accidental (adjective)
high frequency words:
common words that are often not phonically regular
e.g. they, could, was, said
Children
need to use multi-sensory strategies to commit these words to memory, to allow
them to read the words fluently and spell them accurately.