The teachers in years one - three may use some terms that you are not familiar with. Here is a brief summary:

Phoneme - a single sound like 'a' or 'ph'

Blending sounds - putting sounds together to create words eg. p/l/o/t blended together says plot. 

Segmenting sounds - cat has three sounds c/a/t. 

shed has three sounds sh/e/d

Substituting sounds- replacing a sound to make a new word. eg g/e/t says get. If you substitute the e for an o you have g/o/t/, got. 

The children learn to blend, segment and substitute sounds in their reading lessons. This helps them to decode any word that they read.