Encoding means hearing a spoken sound and then writing it down using an appropriate symbol. Children are taught to encode sounds during their phonics education, and they’ll learn a multitude of graphemes (symbols) for each of the 44 phonics sounds.Top of Form
What is encoding in phonics?
To start with, just what is encoding in phonics?
Encoding means hearing a sound spoken out loud and writing it down using an appropriate written symbol (known as a grapheme). It can also mean listening to a spoken word, breaking that word down into its phonemes (units of sound), and writing each sound using graphemes.
Encoding is a valuable skill that helps children to make early attempts at writing and spelling words.
What is an example of encoding?
Now that we’ve answered the question of ‘what is encoding in phonics?’, let’s look at how it might work with the help of a few examples.
For instance, a child might hear the /i/ sound and write it down using the grapheme ‘i’. This shows that the child can encode this sound by recognizing and writing it down using a letter associated with it.
As we mentioned, encoding also helps kids make early spelling attempts. For example, let’s take the CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word ‘red.’ Once children have developed their phonological awareness, they’ll be able to recognize three distinct sounds in this word: /r/, /e/, and /d/. They’ll then be able to write these sounds down using the appropriate symbols ‘r,’ ‘e,’ and ‘d’.
What is the difference between encoding and decoding?
But what is encoding in phonics about decoding? They’re both essential phonics skills for pupils to develop, but we must understand them before we read further!
Encoding, as we know, is where children hear a sound and write it down using an appropriate grapheme.
Decoding, however, is something a bit different. It’s where pupils will use their knowledge of letter-sound relationships to read or sound out an unfamiliar written word.
