Embedded phonics uses "teachable moments" rather than lesson plans to teach phonics to students. It is used in conjunction with the method of whole language teaching, which emphasizes finding the meaning in what is read and by expressing that reading in writing. Embedded phonics is commonly used by instructors when they notice a particular student is having difficulty learning a certain word or sound in their books. An example of embedded phonics lesson is to stop the reading to teach the student the sound or word they are having problems with.
When children are being taught to read and spell at the same time, this is a synthetic phonics lesson. Students are taught to convert letters into sounds, then blend the sounds to form words. For example, d-o-g is dog, or ho-use is house. Students learn to separate words into sounds, and learn that sounds may repeat in different words over and over. Students are only exposed to words with combinations they already know, and this will make sure that they are successful.
The analytical phonics method asks students to analyze a particular sound within a word or multiple words. A teacher places a list of words such as "teach," "reach," "meal" and "feed." The teacher than tell the students to pay attention to the "ee" sound in all the words. Students will start with an entire word, then analyze parts of it, listening to the specific sounds. This type of analytical phonics will teach different consonant blends, like "br," "st" and "bl" and how they work together to form words.
Chunking words together, or making "word families," is a form of analogy phonics. Teachers present a list of words to students with words that all start or end with the same sound. The teacher shows students how to change each word by adding a different sound. For example, cat, rat or mat may be changed to pat, sat or bat.
Students may be given worksheets, flashcards and games to learn phonics. These types of activities can be used with all of the methods above. These types of activities will reiterate what the students are learning from their teachers, and may be given during class time or for homework assignments. Parents can also use these types of activities to supplement the curriculum taught at school.