Phonics International

Does CVC refer to letters or sounds?

The need to distinguish between consonant letters and vowel letters through teaching about ‘the alphabet’ compared to consonant sounds and vowel sounds through teaching about the ‘alphabetic code’

Teachers need to teach about both ‘the alphabet’ and about ‘the alphabetic code’ and distinguish between them. In order to do this, teachers themselves need to be clear about their differences and their uses, and their overlap.

In teaching about the alphabet and the alphabetic code, this involves the terminology of consonants and vowels, letters and sounds, and the use of abbreviations based on capital letters C and V.