Differemces of teaching phonemes in isolation and in context

How Analytic Phonics Is Taught:

A teacher will present the familiar words, e.g: mat, fat, cat, hat, rat. The students then try to identify the phoneme ‘at’ within those words.
The teacher will then give children many, many examples of words that share a common phoneme / grapheme that is being taught. Through examples, the children will come to identify or ‘discover’ patterns in written language that helps them become more effective readers. The wide variety of examples can help children understand and get that ‘lightbulb moment’.

Pros

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  Teaches Sounds in Context: Sounds are learned as parts of words, rather than in isolation and decontextualized.
  
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  Starts with the Familiar: Teachers can start with words children are familiar with and use them as a springboard for further teaching.
  
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  Helps with Decoding New Words: While the synthetic method is all about encoding, the analytic method emphasizes decoding, which is great for reading new and unfamiliar words.
  

Cons

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  Uses Guess Work: Children often get away with guessing phonemes (and at times are encouraged to). They will know either the onset or rime, and guess the rest of the word rather than focusing fully on all phonemes in the word.
  
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  Some Students Slip Behind: Because instruction is not as structured and direct as in the synthetic approach, some struggling students could slip behind and not understand.
  
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  Not as Good for Constructing Words: The focus of this approach is on deconstructing rather than constructing words.
  

3. Analogy Phonics

Quick Summary: An approach to phonics that relies on using groups of analogous (similar) words to build a child’s reading vocabulary.

Analogy phonics is in reality just a form of analytic phonics. They both focus on whole words and then deconstruct them into their phoneme / grapheme parts.
What sets analogy phonics apart is that it attempts to build a child’s vocabulary of known words by introducing words that are analogous (similar). For example, a child knows the word ‘sing’ so you can by extension teach them the word ‘ring’.
Teachers will often create word families and focus on words within that word family – trying to build up that word family with as many words as possible.