Synthetic Phonics

Both the Word Wasp and the Hornet use synthetic phonics which can be loosely described as the use of the sounds of our language to form artificial words. Students who learn to read and spell such words find it much easier to deal with real words because they learn to utilize the sounds of our language and the incumbent rules. The problems arise when students learn whole word systems because words are substituted for sounds:

Dyslexic spellings: fyous = fuse: the student has learned the common word 'you'.

                                 dayt   =date: the student has learned the common word 'day'.

Both the above examples should follow the 'silent e' rule. However, if students have not been taught phonics and rules the only recourse open to them is the insertion of another word for the sound they wish to represent: 'fuse' contains the word: 'you' and in the case of 'date' the word 'day' is used.

The Word Wasp uses both synthetic phonics and low frequency words:

thrips, vat, helm, cull, cob, dill, hilt, suds, shad, dank, musk, elk, eft, squinch, are all real words. The use of such words allows the Wasp to use synthetic phonics whilst allowing students to read and spell real words.