In academia, reading is like breathing is for life; an absolutely necessary component not only to succeed but to survive. Teaching a child to read means giving them the opportunity to realize their potential and make their dreams come true. As teachers we should not only strive to teach children to read but more importantly, we should ignite a passion within them so that every child wants to read; craving books as if they were food (or video games). Unfortunately in any given group of students a good percentage of them will have difficulty with reading. The best way to prevent a child from falling behind is through early identification and intervention, along with a comprehensive, science-based literacy program (Sousa, 2005). There are five essential components of such a program: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The goal of this article is to explain the phonics component and strategies that can be used to incorporate this element into a comprehensive literacy program. Phonetics is the relationship between the sounds of spoken language and the letters used in written language to represent them. sounds (NICHD, 2001). “As children become more aware of the sounds of words, they also learn the letters that represent these sounds.” (Ming & Dukes 2010, p.23) Teaching phonics is a way of teaching reading that focuses on letter-sound relationships (Pinnell, 2008). During phonics lessons, children are taught the correspondence between letters and sounds and how to use them to write and read words. The main goal of teaching phonics is to help beginning readers understand how letters (graphemes) are related to sounds (phonemes) and that there are systematic, predictable relationships that they can learn... middle of paper ... .: Helping your child learn to read. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. National reading panel. (n.d.). Teaching children to read. On National Reading Panel.org Retrieved March 24, 2012, from http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/upload/smallbook_pdf.pdf Pinnell, G. (2008) How collaborative literacy emphasizes the five essential elements of teaching reading?. Retrieved from http://literacycollaborative.org/docs/fiveEssentialElements.pdfRasinski, T., Rupley, W. H., & Nichols, W. (2008). Two essential ingredients: phonetics and fluency Getting to know each other. Reading Teacher, 62(3), 257-260.Sousa, D. (2005). How the brain learns to read. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.Stahl, S., Duffy-Hester, A., & Stahl, K. (1998). Everything you wanted to know about phonics (but were afraid to ask). Quarterly Research Reading, 33(3), 338-355.