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Session 4:
Oral Language, Oral Comprehension & Indigenous Storytelling in Your K/1 Classroom

Click on either link to access the PDF handouts:

Print Handout

Electronic Handout

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: index :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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Once students become familiar with the process and routines of the Conversation Station, two students can participate with an adult (could be a class volunteer) - This gives students an opportunity to actively listen to a classmate and practice conversation skills such as turn-taking - Eventually 2 students may be

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This wise and thoughtful four-year old from Prince George talks with his mama.

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Bedtime conversation. The last part made me ❤️🥹 #fyp #momlife 

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@mom_aldie
Bedtime conversation. The last part made me ❤️🥹 #fyp #momlife
♬ Chopin Nocturne No. 2 Piano Mono - moshimo sound design

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We are so overwhelmed with all the love and support! We thankful for each and everyone of you!❤️❤️❤️ It’s a process to make them recognize their emotions but just continue communicating with patience, consistency and honesty. Giving them opportunity to express ❤️ #fyp 

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@mom_aldie
We are so overwhelmed with all the love and support! We thankful for each and everyone of you!❤️❤️❤️ It’s a process to make them recognize their emotions but just continue communicating with patience, consistency and honesty. Giving them opportunity to express ❤️ #fyp
♬ Cute - Aurel Surya Lie

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Authentic First Peoples Resources – First Nations Education Steering Committee FNESC

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The past two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number of Indigenous texts. The First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC) and the First Nations Schools Association (FNSA) have developed tools, Authentic First Peoples Resources for Use in K-9 Classrooms (Updated 2021) and Authentic…

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Learning is connected to land, culture, and spirit.
We-the two-legged, four-legged, finned and feathered, plants and rocks -are all related. We must always practice reciprocity through acts of giving and receiving.
Learning honours our Ancestors,Elders, Knowledge Keepers and Descendants.
It respects and embraces ceremony, protocol, and teachings that are connected to the sacred medicines including tobacco, cedar, sage, and sweetgrass. Important teachings emerge through stories.
Learning involves developing relationships, respecting distinct cultures, and honouring the perspective of others in our communities.

The deepest learning takes place through lived experience. It requires exploring our identities, learning from our mistakes, and having gratitude for our gifts.

Learning is a journey that takes courage, patience and humility. It is about striving to become a better human being and living with balance in body, mind, heart and spirit.

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Learning is connected to land, culture, and spirit. We-the two-legged, four-legged, finned and feathered, plants and rocks -are all related. We must always practice reciprocity through acts of giving and receiving. Learning honours our Ancestors,Elders, Knowledge Keepers and Descendants. It respects and embraces ceremony, protocol, and teachings that are connected to the sacred medicines including tobacco, cedar, sage, and sweetgrass.

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Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk

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About the Episode

Welcome to Something To Talk About, a podcast and blog series about all things classroom discourse!

In each episode of the Something to Talk About mini podcast we ask just one juicy question about classroom discourse to a group of educators.

In Episode 1, Stenhouse editor and author, Kassia Wedekind asks:

What are some of your greatest hopes for your students as talkers and listeners? And what kind of practical routines will you set up at the beginning of the year to help build that community?

Take a listen to hear from third grade teacher, Jennifer Orr, first grade teacher, Santasha Dhoot, and authors of Intentional Talk, Elham Kazemi and Allison Hintz.

Meet the Educators in this Episode

Jennifer Orr has spent more than twenty years teaching and learning with elementary students from kindergarten through fifth grade. She currently teaches third graders at Fort Belvoir Upper School in Fairfax County, Virginia. She tweets @jenorr and blogs at jenorr.com.

Elham Kazemi is the co-author of Intentional Talk and the co-editor of Choral Counting and Counting Collections . She is a professor of mathematics education at the University of Washington. Elham works alongside teachers to create thriving mathematical classrooms centered on children's mathematical thinking. She is deeply committed to building university-school partnerships that tackle social and academic inequities and create strong professional learning communities for teachers to learn from and with their students. Elham tweets @ekazemi.

Allison Hintz is the co-author Intentional Talk and the co-author of the upcoming Mathematizing Children's Literature. She is an associate professor of mathematics education at the University of Washington, Bothell. She studies teaching and learning alongside educators to create experiences where children are heard, understood, and inspired as mathematical sense makers. Allison tweets @AllisonHintz124.

Santasha Dhoot (She/Her/Hers) is a Punjabi Sikh first-grade teacher in the Greater Seattle Area. She graduated from the University of Washington with a Masters in Teaching. She has a passion for educational justice and aspires to be a part of building an education system in which all students thrive. She loves learning alongside our youngest students and believes our future is bright because of them. You can follow Santasha on Twitter @tashadhoot.

Resources Mentioned in Episode 1
Catalyzing Change in Early Childhood and Elementary Mathematics Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had Which One Doesn't Belong? How Many? Intentional Talk
Read the transcript

Kassia Wedekind: Welcome to Something to Talk About, a podcast and blog series from Stenhouse Publishers. I'm Kassia Wedekind. And I'm an editor here at Stenhouse and I'm also a Stenhouse author and math coach. I'm excited to launch this new blog and podcast series about all things, classroom discourse. As both a teacher and a writer, one of the things I find most fascinating is listening to the ways that teachers and students co-construct communities through talk. How do social conversation and academic conversation build on each other? How do we make spaces for talk in which we all feel a sense of belonging? And how do we build strong content area understandings through talking and listening? There are endless questions to think about with classroom discourse, and we're going to dive into some of them in this podcast and blog series.

Kassia Wedekind: In each episode of the, Something to Talk About mini podcasts, we'll ask just one juicy question and hear the unique responses and perspectives of several educators. In today's episode, we're thinking about classroom talk at the beginning of the school year as teachers and students all over the country are returning to the classroom. We're talking about our hopes for our communities of talkers and listeners in the classroom. And we're also talking about the nitty gritty of what practical beginning of the year routines we put in place to build these strong discourse communities. Jennifer Orr, a third grade teacher from Fairfax County, Virginia joins us first in thinking about building communities of both talkers and listeners.

Jennifer Orr: Wow. It's so exciting at the start of a year, and also so overwhelming to think about those big goals. A big piece, I think gets back to that idea of who we are as talkers and listeners, getting kids to really build their listening skills. I think that's a challenge for us as people in general, but I think it's an added challenge in the classroom because we teach kids really to listen to the adult, but less to listen to each other. And so to build that idea and understanding in the community, that listening to each other is hugely valuable and can make a difference for us all in our learning, myself included. And so I think one of my biggest goals at the start of every year is thinking about wanting my kids to be really strong listeners. And then a piece of that then is to find that balance for those kids who tend to talk a lot, to make space for others.

Jennifer Orr: And for those who tend to be hesitant about speaking, to find kind of some confidence to join in and share so that we really are learning as an entire community. And when it comes to the routines to build that, I think a big part of that is making sure that I am balancing, and this is one of my challenges partner talk, small group talk, whole class talk, giving kids the opportunity to really build those talking and listening skills in different settings, because it may be easier with just a partner or it may be easier in a whole group, depending on what skill you're working on. And just giving them lots of time to talk. It's so easy in a school year to get caught up in all the boxes that need to be checked and to not slow down enough to really let kids talk things through. And so to ensure from day one that I'm building in time for that.

Kassia Wedekind: Yeah. It's easy to like, especially if you have some particular academic focus, at least for me, it's easy to pay attention to the talking and the things kids are saying to move that along and not slow down to give some practice or some attention to how we're listening to each other. For me, it's like I have to be really deliberate about slowing it down and planning for that.

Jennifer Orr: Yes, yes. Slowing it down is hard.

Kassia Wedekind: I also asked the same question to Elham Kazemi and Allison Hintz, the coauthors of Intentional Talk, how to structure and lead productive mathematical discussions and professors of math education and got their perspectives on building discourse communities in the math classroom.

Allison Hintz: I think across contexts, I would just hope that people in communities feel joy and belonging and that communities can be and become a place where mathematicians try on new ideas and can be authentic, and brave, and bold. The catalyzing change series and NCTM is really helping me think about how to cultivate joy and belonging. And I think one way to try to do that from the get-go is to draw in some routines that we have in math education. I think of Christopher Danielson's How Many? And Which One Doesn't Belong? And how these open-ended accessible routines can let us really quickly become people who can share our different ideas and engage with each other's reasoning, and justifications, and listen to understand people's arguments and get some good lively argumentation going.

Elham Kazemi: I love what Allison just said about trying to cultivate communities of joy and belonging. I think you have to create a community that is worth belonging to, that people feel like they want to belong to. And one of the things I think about a lot as I'm getting to know a new group of teachers or a new group of students, is how they're entering the learning space. What experiences have they had themselves in the past in talking communities or listening communities and what supports their learning? What are they worried about? Whenever you're teaching math, there is a whole lot of worries that come along with it. I think Tracy Zegers book very nicely, and some of her talks very nicely capture how a lot of elementary teachers feel about their own experiences with mathematics as it's still fairly negative, or dry, or boring, or whatever it is.

Elham Kazemi: They're not usually lively words. So I think whatever routines we use at the beginning is to help people share how they feel and how do they want to feel different. And what does that mean about our individual responsibilities, our collective responsibilities. And then to try to pick those routines, all of those open-ended tasks that we have in mathematics that then allow you to bring those principles or those ideas to life, kind of the hopes that people have. Then you have to have a way of trying to create that space and really check in with one another, a lot. So we debrief a lot about how are you doing, how are you feeling? What worked, what didn't work. I think as routine questions, those can be really helpful.

Kassia Wedekind: And finally, Santasha Dhoot, a first grade teacher in the Seattle area, share some of her ideas about a culture of appreciation and respect as well as her experiences as a teacher of multi-lingual students.

Santasha Dhoot: Within my class, one of the most important things is that building a culture of appreciation and respect within my class. The community that I teach in, we have a very large number of multilingual learners. And so oftentimes in my class I have very few native English speakers and many of my students are emerging MLLs so they're just beginning their journey of learning English. And I think that community of respect is huge when it comes to speaking, talking, and listening because we have so many friends who are just beginning to learn and that anxiety and hesitancy to speak is really huge. Or on the other hand, I think we also have, I have a lot of speakers and listeners who are speaking in different languages, and I can have a student who is speaking in Japanese to one friend and then the listener is an English speaker and they're just listening to each other and talking to each other and it's working out just fine.

Santasha Dhoot: So I think that dynamic is really interesting and just really awesome. But I think on day one, building a culture of appreciation and respect, and that looks like we right from the start of the school year, all the way to the end, we have lots of opportunities where my students are complimenting each other, noticing other students who they notice are working hard, or had some awesome ideas, or were showing teamwork. And for speaking, we right off the bat, we have something called peanut butter and jelly partners. And because I have a huge community of MLLs and I think in any classroom, but we do a lot of like think, pair, share like in teams of two, two or three. And I really appreciate the smaller group processing time for my class. And I think they do as well and getting opportunities to orally practice before they're going to share to the whole group is something I really value in my classroom. And I think also builds a sense of community because they're getting time to talk to someone they may not talk to always.

Kassia Wedekind: All four educators in this episode spoke about the kind of culture they hope to build with their students. One of joy, belonging, respect, and appreciation. And they all talked about finding strategies at the beginning of the year, that align with the kind of culture they want to build. I also noticed that all four of the educators spoke about appreciating the many ways that students participate in classroom conversations, especially ways that might not traditionally be the ones that are most valued in schools. Being more of a keen listener than a talker, valuing the different languages students speak in our classroom conversations. And then as teachers, asking students for feedback on how they feel the conversations are going.

Kassia Wedekind: We'll be back in a couple of weeks with another podcast episode of Something to Talk About. But in the meantime, we're wondering how you'd answer the question we talked about today. What are your hopes for your classroom community of talkers and listeners? And what are some of the practical routines you put in place at the beginning of the year to get you there? We'd love to hear from you on social media. You can look for a post on our blog and on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and let us know what you think.

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Hopes for Our Students as Talkers & Listeners & How to Get There (Something to Talk About)

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In each episode of the Something to Talk About mini podcast we ask just one juicy question about classroom discourse to a group of educators. In Episode 1, Stenhouse editor and author, Kassia Wedekind asks: What are some of your greatest hopes for your students as talkers and listeners?

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Talk Science Primer: What is academically productive talk?

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Talk Science Primer: What is academically productive talk?

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Dialogue Micro-Lesson in Ms. Friend's First-Grade Class

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Do all of our students see themselves reflected in the stories we read and tell?

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Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors

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SoR-What I Should Have Learned in College

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Literacy Centers: Developing Skills in Reading and Writing (Virtual Tour)

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Session 3 - January 2023
Building Reading & Writing Foundations:
Comprehensive K-3 Literacy Instruction

Click on either link to access the PDF handouts:

Print Handout

Electronic Handout

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From the Balanced Literacy Diet...

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Alphabet In My Mouth!: Reviewing Alphabet Letter-Sounds with a Fun Song

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Balanced Literacy Diet's YouTube videos on Letter-Sounds & Phonics

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Balanced Literacy Diet's YouTube videos on Letter-Sounds & Phonics

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Short videos demonstrating activities and lessons with students...

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Understanding the relationships between spoken sounds and written letters is essential for the development of skills in reading and writing, particularly in ...

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Balanced Literacy Diet's collection of Letter Sounds & Phonics resources

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Balanced Literacy Diet's collection of Letter Sounds & Phonics resources

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What the experts say about letter-sounds & phonics:

By understanding the link between speech sounds in spoken words and alphabet letters and letter combinations in written words, children learn to read and spell.

The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn and use the alphabetic principle - the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. Knowing these relationships will help children recognize familiar words accurately and automatically, and decode new words.
Put Reading First

By the age of six, most children already have about 6,000 words in their listening and speaking vocabularies. With phonics they learn to read and write these and more words at a faster rate than they would without phonics.
Jeanne Chall

Go to Reading Rockets and learn more about letter-sounds & phonics!

Test your Understanding of Phonics

Practical resources for teaching letter-sounds & phonics

OVERVIEW of letter-sound knowledge & phonics

Learning how to read in English is like cracking a secret code. Students must learn which letters or letter combinations stand for the 40 or so sounds of spoken English. Once they understand the code, students are able to use their knowledge to read and spell new words. Teaching the connection between letters and the sounds they represent is an important part of early literacy instruction.

TEACHING letter-sound knowledge & phonics

Phonics refers to instruction in letter-sound associations. It is helpful to teach phonics explicitly and systematically. Begin with a set of letters, such as s, a, t, p, that can be combined to create two or three letter words so that students can immediately start reading and spelling words. Have students practice reading using books that contain familiar letter-sounds and words that can be easily sounded out.

ASSESSING letter-sound knowledge & phonics

Teachers can informally assess students' knowledge of letter names and sounds. They can observe students' ability to use letter-sound knowledge to sound out words when reading and represent sounds in words when spelling. It is very helpful to look at young students' inventive spelling because it provides a window into students' understanding of the relations between letters and sounds.

Featured Videos

Drive Through Blending: Practicing Early Decoding Skills in First Grade

Making Word Families: Developing Letter-Sound Associations

Alphabet In My Mouth!: Reviewing Alphabet Letter-Sounds with a Fun Song

All Letter-Sounds & Phonics Recipes

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: Letter-Sounds Phonics :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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By understanding the link between speech sounds in spoken words and alphabet letters and letter combinations in written words, children learn to read and spell. The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn and use the alphabetic principle - the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds.

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Reading Rockets article on the alphabetic principle; teaching letter sounds...

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Reading Rockets article on the alphabetic principle; teaching letter sounds...

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Children's knowledge of letter names and shapes is a strong predictor of their success in learning to read. Knowing letter names is strongly related to children's ability to remember the forms of written words and their ability to treat words as sequences of letters.

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October 12, 2022 Down By the Bay - SD73 Verses

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TeachLikeThis video on Direct Instruction

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TeachLikeThis video on Direct Instruction

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How to do Direct Instruction - TeachLikeThis

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Segmenting CVC Words Using Toy Cars & Elkonin Boxes

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Segmenting CVC Words Using Toy Cars & Elkonin Boxes

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Watch as this student segments CVC words into phonemes, using toy cars and Elkonin boxes.

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Park Those Sounds!: Segmenting CVC Words into Phonemes in a Game

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Most of us were bored at some museum at least once in our lives - except this guy! France-based photographer Stefan Draschan always keeps himself entertained at famous art galleries with his creative photography ideas.

One of those projects is "People matching famous paintings ". Although at first Draschan's cool pictures seem perfectly staged, the secret behind them is patience. The photographer enjoys visiting different museums mostly in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin where he waits for visitors to suddenly match with a piece of classical art in a funny way. The result of his bright idea is these humorous and unique pictures of unexpected harmony between people and the classical paintings they're facing. It's usually the outfits that match the art, but there are also people who match with the paintings because of their hairstyles and colors, or even beards.

Scroll down to see this ongoing project for yourself and beware - Stefan Draschan might be somewhere out there "hunting" for you!ng" for you!

More info: stefandraschan.com

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Photographer Spends Eternity Waiting For Museum Visitors To Match Artworks And The Result Is Worth The Wait

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Most of us were bored at some museum at least once in our lives - except this guy! France-based photographer Stefan Draschan always keeps himself entertained at art galleries by creating his own art projects. One of those projects is "People matching artworks".

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Why Reading Fluency Should Be Hot!

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From your SD73 Team

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A collection of quotes from a range of literacy experts.

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Some suggestions for Literacy Centres that support Oral Language, Word Work, Reading and Writing development.

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Here are the verses you created for Down by the Bay.

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October 12, 2022 Down By the Bay - SD73 Verses

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Activity for read aloud "Simon at the Art Museum"

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Printable short and long vowel charts, vowel teams, blends and digraphs, and more...

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Many children have their first literacy experience by exploring their names: the letters and the sounds they make. Children need early exposure to begin to make letter-sound associations that then turn into early reading and writing experiences. As more skills are developed, children learn more tools to become active word solvers.

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Many children have their first literacy experience by exploring their names: the letters and the sounds they make. Children need early exposure to begin to make letter-sound associations that then turn into early reading and writing experiences. As more skills are developed, children learn more tools to become active word solvers.

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Check out POPEY's collection of books to support students' awareness of words, syllables, rhymes, and phonemes.

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The Development of Phonological Skills - by Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman

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Basic listening skills and "word awareness" are critical precursors to phonological awareness. Learn the milestones for acquiring phonological skills.

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Phonological skill develops in a predictable progression. This concept is important, as it provides the basis for sequencing teaching tasks from easy to more difficult. Table 1 outlines the relative difficulty of phonological awareness tasks. Table 2 is a more specific synthesis of several research reviews and summaries (Adams et al., 1998; Gillon, 2004; Goswami, 2000; Paulson, 2004; Rath, 2001) that ties specific ages to the typical accomplishment of those phonological awareness tasks.

Prerequisite to phonological awareness is basic listening skill; the acquisition of a several-thousand word vocabulary; the ability to imitate and produce basic sentence structures; and the use of language to express needs, react to others, comment on experience, and understand what others intend.

Table 1. Phonological skills, from most basic to advanced

Word awareness

Tracking the words in sentences.

Note: This semantic language skill is much less directly predictive of reading than the skills that follow and less important to teach directly (Gillon, 2004). It is not so much a phonological skill as a semantic (meaning-based) language skill.

Responsiveness to rhyme and alliteration during word play

Enjoying and reciting learned rhyming words or alliterative phrases in familiar storybooks or nursery rhymes.

Syllable awareness

Counting, tapping, blending, or segmenting a word into syllables.

Onset and rime manipulation

The ability to produce a rhyming word depends on understanding that rhyming words have the same rime. Recognizing a rhyme is much easier than producing a rhyme.

Phoneme awareness

Identify and match the initial sounds in words, then the final and middle sounds (e.g., "Which picture begins with /m/?"; "Find another picture that ends in /r/").

Segment and produce the initial sound, then the final and middle sounds (e.g., "What sound does zoo start with?"; "Say the last sound in milk"; "Say the vowel sound in rope ").

Blend sounds into words (e.g., "Listen: /f/ /ē/ /t/. Say it fast").

Segment the phonemes in two- or three-sound words, moving to four- and five- sound words as the student becomes proficient (e.g., "The word is eyes. Stretch and say the sounds: /ī/ /z/").

Manipulate phonemes by removing, adding, or substituting sounds (e.g., "Say smoke without the /m/").

Table 2. Ages at which 80-90 percent of typical students have achieved a phonological skill

4

Rote imitation and enjoyment of rhyme and alliteration

pool, drool, tool
"Seven silly snakes sang songs seriously."

5

Rhyme recognition, odd word out

"Which two words rhyme:
stair, steel, chair?"

Recognition of phonemic changes in words

" Hickory Dickory Clock. That's not right!"

Clapping, counting syllables

5½

Distinguishing and remembering separate phonemes in a series

Show sequences of single phonemes with colored blocks: /s/ /s/ /f/; /z/ /sh/ /z/.

Producing a rhyme

"Tell me a word that rhymes with car." ( star)

Matching initial sounds; isolating an initial sound

"Say the first sound in ride (/r/); sock (/s/); love (/l/)."

6

Compound word deletion

"Say cowboy. Say it again, but don't say cow."

Syllable deletion

"Say parsnip. Say it again, but don't say par."

Phoneme segmentation of words that have simple syllables with two or three phonemes (no blends)

"Say the word as you move a chip for each sound."

6½

Phoneme segmentation of words that have up to three or four phonemes (include blends)

"Say the word slowly while you tap the sounds."

Phoneme substitution to build new words that have simple syllables (no blends)

"Change the /j/ in cage to /n/.
Change the /ā/ in cane to /ō/."

7

Sound deletion (initial and final positions)

"Say meat. Say it again, without the /m/."
"Say safe. Say it again, without the /f/."

8

Sound deletion (initial position, include blends)

"Say prank. Say it again, without the /p/."

9

Sound deletion (medial and final blend positions)

"Say snail. Say it again, without the /n/."
"Say fork. Say it again, without the /k/."

Paulson (2004) confirmed the hierarchy of phonological skill acquisition in 5-year-olds entering kindergarten. Only 7 percent of 5-year-olds who had not yet had kindergarten could segment phonemes in spoken words. The production of rhymes was more difficult for 5-year-olds than commonly assumed, as only 61 percent could give a rhyming word for a stimulus. Only 29 percent could blend single phonemes into whole words. Although some young students will pick up these skills with relative ease during the kindergarten year - especially if the curriculum includes explicit activities - other students must be taught these metalinguistic skills directly and systematically.

Moats, L, & Tolman, C (2009). Excerpted from Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS): The Speech Sounds of English: Phonetics, Phonology, and Phoneme Awareness (Module 2). Boston: Sopris West.

For more information on Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) visit Voyager Sopris .

For any reprint requests, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Basic listening skills and "word awareness" are critical precursors to phonological awareness. Learn the milestones for acquiring phonological skills.

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Use this website to generate your own Wordles for use with your students.

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Guess the hidden word in 6 tries. You can also share your own word!

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ARCHIVE        Article: Phonics Faux Pas: Avoiding Instructional Missteps in Teaching Letter-Sound Relationships

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ARCHIVE        Article: Phonics Faux Pas: Avoiding Instructional Missteps in Teaching Letter-Sound Relationships

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Article by Nell Duke & Heidi Anne Mesmer

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The need to explicitly teach letter-sound relationships in U.S. classrooms is settled science. ¹ However, too often such instruction is not provided in the most efficient or effective way. These instructional missteps mean that fewer children will develop strong word-reading skills. In addition, ineffective phonics instruction is likely to require more class time and/or later compensatory intervention, taking time away from the growth of other important contributors to literacy development. We have encountered many dozens, if not hundreds, of phonics faux pas. In this article, we focus on seven in early reading instruction that deserve our serious attention.

1. Spending Too Little or Too Much Time on Phonics Instruction

Our field has long had a problem with teachers devoting an inadequate amount of time to phonics instruction. Although some children will pick up word reading with little instructional effort, many require considerable instruction to master the complex task of looking at a series of lines and curves to ascertain the spoken word they represent. In languages in which there is a relatively simple relationship between letters and sounds, such as Finnish and Spanish, by the middle of first grade, children are able to read real words and pseudo-words in the language accurately almost 100 percent of the time.* In languages in which the relationships are somewhat more complex, such as Danish and French, children are about 70 percent accurate by that time point. In English, in which the relationship between letters and sounds is extremely complex, children are about 40 percent accurate at that point. ² Put another way, English word reading requires a lot more effort to teach and learn than many other languages.

On the other hand, there is such a thing as too much phonics instruction. We have seen prekindergarten and kindergarten classrooms in which the better part of the day is focused on letter-sound instruction (and often in a manner inconsistent with what research would recommend). This is problematic because it leaves insufficient time for many other important areas of development. For example, vocabulary and concept knowledge, which are strong predictors of long-term reading and writing success, also need attention. In fact, vocabulary knowledge affects word-reading development. We sometimes cannot even know whether we have read a word accurately unless we already have the word in our vocabulary. Is the word lemic pronounced with a short e, like lemon, or a long e, like lemur? Unless you already know this word, you aren't sure. For children trying to learn to read words with low vocabulary knowledge, such uncertainty is common.

Likely the question on your mind is, "How much is enough and not too much?" Unfortunately, research does not offer a decisive answer to this fundamental question. Typically, recommendations range from 30 to 60 minutes per day in grades K-2, with that time including a number of different activities we discuss below.

However, we suggest that the answer also varies by child and should be informed by simple diagnostic assessments. Some children are able to develop letter-sound knowledge more quickly and efficiently than others. This is one reason why differentiated phonics instruction is so well advised. Some instruction is provided to the whole class, but then it is reinforced and gaps are filled in as needed in a small-group context. Research has shown that reading achievement is supported when instruction is differentiated. ³ A number of researchers have developed systems by which assessments determine which letter-sound relationships each child has learned and not yet learned, and a systematic series of lessons are provided accordingly. ⁴ An important direction for our field is to work toward determining the most time-efficient approaches to ensuring each child in a class meets grade-level expectations in word reading each year.

2. Neglecting the Alphabetic Principle, Concept of Word in Print, and Other Concepts of Print

Imagine going to work for a shipbuilding company. You go to work the first day and are schooled in all the different types of bolts, screws, and nails. You learn their names, the different sizes, and the different types, but you never learn that their purpose is to join pieces of metal and that those pieces of metal are used to build ships! Although this situation is clearly ridiculous, it is actually analogous to what we see in some prekindergarten and kindergarten classrooms. Children are being taught to name letters or even identify the sounds that the letters represent, but they are unclear about why they are learning it. Letter-sound knowledge is being learned in a vacuum; the child has no context for how to use the information, no "big picture."

To understand the big picture, children must understand the alphabetic principle-how our English system of writing works. The alphabetic principle is simply that visual symbols (letters) represent speech sounds (phonemes). To write the spoken word "dog," you use alphabetic symbols to represent the speech sounds. We can combine and recombine letter symbols to form words. As odd as it may sound, children can learn letters and even letter sounds in very rote ways without understanding the alphabetic system. When children do not understand the alphabetic principle, they may do the following:

Write something but not know how to read it back because they are not using letter sounds.

Copy words but not be able to read them back.

Write letters without any match to sounds (e.g., I went to the store = bmlssmii).

Use letters they know to write all words, regardless of sounds.

Look to the teacher when they can't read a word.

Say the name of a letter when asked to read a word (e.g., no = "en").

To understand the big picture, children must understand other concepts of print as well. Concepts of print are the many understandings about how print works, including that print serves specific purposes (e.g., to help us remember or to entertain us); that print is language written down; and that, in English, we read from left to right and from the top of the page to the bottom. All of these and other "mechanics" about how print works are important to learn alongside letters and sounds.

In order to have a true understanding of the purpose and function of letters and letter sounds, children must understand how words are represented in print, or concept of word. ⁵ This means they know that words are collections of letters that represent a series of speech sounds that collectively represent a unit of meaning. They need to understand that each new word is signified by a space that does not contain any letters. They need to understand that you can see a word as well as say a word.

To understand concept of word in print, children need to watch others reading print and pointing to words. ⁶ In classrooms, this may be a teacher reading charts or big books to children and pointing to the words as they read. Teachers may also use pointers and sometimes ask children to point to words. In addition to watching others, children need to practice pointing to words themselves. A great way to do this is to allow children to point to words in a memorized line of print, in a dictated story of their own words, or in a simple book with short, repetitive sentences. Although it sounds like a really simple task, it is not. In fact, there are actually stages that occur as children learn to point to print. Specifically, they must gain control of multisyllabic words and show understanding that a word like elephant, with three syllables, is actually one unified word. When children cannot handle multisyllabic words, they will point to new words for each syllable in a word (e.g., if the text said "kittens cry," the child would point at the word "kittens" for the syllable kit and then point at the word "cry" for the syllable tens).

Essentially, whenever phonics is taught, there should be a very print-rich environment, with teachers and children interacting with print to acquire the alphabetic principle, concept of word, and other concepts of print. Without these instructional nonnegotiables, letter-sound knowledge will remain inert information.

3. Teaching Letter Names without Letter Sounds

From the alphabet song to children's toys, much of the messaging that young children receive about letters is focused on the names of letters. Although research does suggest the importance of teaching and learning letter names, also vitally important is teaching the sounds associated with the letters. A common faux pas is neglecting instruction in those sounds throughout prekindergarten and sometimes well into kindergarten.

Some people think that teaching letter names is essentially teaching their sounds, but unfortunately that is not the case in English. Some letter names don't have a sound commonly associated with the letter at all. Neither Hh, Ww, nor Yy has its commonly associated sound in its name (e.g., there is no /h/, as in happy, in the name of the letter Hh ("aych")). Knowing these letters' names definitely does not lead children to know their associated sounds. Some other letters' names contain one of the sounds commonly associated with the name but not the other. For example, Cc has one of its common sounds in its name (/s/) but not the other (/k/).

The primary vowels are like this as well. We would have been much better off if they were named by their short sounds (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, as in pat, pet, pit, pot, and putt), because those are more common in the words read by beginning readers than their long vowel sounds (the letters' names)-but no such luck. Letter names are also challenging for young readers because they aren't consistent in whether the commonly associated sound is at the beginning or end of the name. For example, in Mm/"em," the letter's target sound is at the end of the letter name, but in Jj/"jay," the target sound is at the beginning. That means for letter names to help children, they must memorize whether the target sound is at the beginning or end of the name.

The complexities of letter names in English might lead you to think we should not teach letter names at all, but research suggests that teaching letter names is still worthwhile ⁷-it just needs to be accompanied by lots of attention to the sound or sounds commonly associated with each letter and by a thorough understanding of the challenges posed by English letter names. A teacher with such knowledge would understand, for example, why a young child might spell the word daisy as WAZ. Why? Sometimes children write "W" for the /d/ sound because the letter name for Ww-"double-u"-begins with the /d/ sound. The next sound we hear in daisy is the letter name for Aa (the long a sound), and the third and fourth sounds in daisy are the name of the letter Zz ("zee").

A final point about letter-name knowledge: it is often noted that letter-name knowledge in preschool and kindergarten is a strong predictor of children's later literacy achievement. This is true, but it is not because letter-name knowledge is an even-close-to-sufficient contributor to actual reading or writing. It is helpful, but some children learn to read knowing only letter sounds-no letter names. The predictive power of letter names lies largely in the fact that it is a proxy for other things. Children who know letter names early are more likely to have experienced a substantial emphasis on print literacy in the home and to have attended a strong preschool, for example, which in turn increase the likelihood of higher later reading and writing achievement. Naming letters is only one facet of letter knowledge, and probably not even the most important one. It is the application of letter-sound knowledge that advances children's reading and spelling.

4. Using Inappropriate Alphabet Key Words

A common tool for teaching the alphabet is alphabet key words, such as Aa is for apple, Bb is for ball, and so on. The idea is to make alphabet learning easier by creating meaningful associations between the letter and a word that begins with that letter. Unfortunately, too often, alphabet key words are problematic, creating more confusion than clarity for young children. Good alphabet key words need to begin with one of the sounds commonly associated with that letter. For example, Oo is for octopus works-the first sound in octopus is the short o sound. However, Oo is for orange does not work. The o in orange is what we call an r-controlled vowel. It does not make its typical short or long vowel sound. Similarly, Tt is for thumb does not work because there is no /t/ sound in thumb-there is a th digraph (two letters representing one sound). Another pitfall to watch out for is an alphabet key word that begins with a letter name, which can be really confusing to children. For example, Ee is for elephant is confusing because it begins the letter name for Ll ("el"), and Cc is for cake is problematic because it begins with the letter name for Kk ("kay").

Alphabet key words also need to be depicted clearly in a photo or drawing, not easily confused with other items, and they should be words that are known to or can be readily learned by children. We recommend two alphabet key words for the letters c, g, a, e, i, o, and u-one for each of their two common sounds. Caution should be exercised in using children's names as key words, as some do not make a sound typically associated with the letter in English (e.g., Juan). In these cases, we suggest using the child's name to show the shape and name of the letter but to focus on a different alphabet key word for the sound.

For key words to do their job, children must be able to separate the first sound in the word from the rest of the word (e.g., to separate the /b/ from the /all/ in ball). Ideally, children develop this skill, called initial phoneme segmentation, during or before the prekindergarten year. However, not all children meet this expectation. Fortunately, you can work on this skill while teaching the alphabet, including alphabet key words. Research strongly suggests that phonemic awareness (conscious awareness of the individual sounds in spoken words-for example, recognizing that sheep has three sounds: /sh/, /ee/, and /p/), although an entirely oral skill, is actually best developed with accompanying letters. This initial phoneme segmentation issue is also why you should be judicious about using alphabet key words that begin with blends (two consonant letters pronounced in succession in a syllable, such as dr in drum); it is especially difficult for young children to separate the initial phoneme in a blend.

5. Lacking a Scope and Sequence

You can teach phonics in many different ways. You can use word or picture cards, magnetic letters, letter tiles, games, or even more traditional methods. However, if you want phonics instruction to be effective, you need to know the content (e.g., consonants, short vowels, digraphs) that you are teaching and the order in which children typically learn, and thus that you will teach, that content. We call this a scope and sequence. ⁸ Across decades, evidence has accumulated to suggest that systematic phonics instruction with a scope and sequence will produce better outcomes than instruction that does not follow a scope and sequence. ⁹

Historically, a range of less systematic approaches have been popular. Typically, these approaches do not have a clear scope or follow a sequence but instead address letter sounds only as they arise incidentally in interactions with children or are needed to read words within a specific text. So, if a teacher is reading the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, she will teach the ee sound because it is found in the word see. The problem with this kind of serendipitous approach as the driver of phonics instruction is that information is not presented logically to the child and information gets missed. Of course, children should read connected text as they are learning phonics, and teachers should point out words they are reading that match taught patterns. But the scope and sequence of phonics instruction should not be based primarily on opportune moments in text reading.

Scope and sequence is also important because it helps children to organize information into cognitive categories, or "file folders," that support better cognitive storage and retrieval of information. For example, if one teaches information without a scope and sequence, one might move from teaching the short a sound in a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) pattern (e.g., bag), to teaching the vowel digraph oa (e.g., boat), to teaching ch (e.g., chip), to teaching i_e (e.g., bike). It would be a lot easier to remember these patterns if they were taught in groups: for example, teaching all the short vowel sounds ( a, e, i, o, and u), consonant digraphs that represent unique sounds ( th, sh, ch), all the CVC- e (silent e) patterns ( mate, Pete, bike, note, cute), and then both of the spelling patterns that represent the /oi/ sound (called a diphthong; oy and oi). If instruction follows a scope and sequence, the variations don't seem random but rather work to form a category (e.g., "Oh this th is kind of like the ch, two letters that make a new consonant sound").

6. Using a Problematic Approach to Teaching Sight Words

Often, even teachers who do devote considerable time to phonics instruction do not apply that instruction to teaching "sight words." Instead, they teach children to memorize sight words visually rather than to decode them. Research suggests that's the wrong approach. ¹⁰

Let's back up and talk about terminology. A sight word actually refers to any word that can be read by sight. Differentiation is a sight word for us-we recognize it essentially instantly when we see it. What many teachers call sight words are actually high-frequency words. Because a small number of high-frequency words have less regular patterns (e.g., was, the), some people call all high-frequency words sight words and think that they must be learned visually and holistically by sight.

In point of fact, letter-sound information amalgamates the word's units into memory better than any other process. When we teach high-frequency words, we need to fully analyze the letter-sound relationships within them, whether the word is comprised of expected letter-sound relationships, as in can (/k/, /a/, and /n/, just as we would expect); some expected and some unexpected letter-sound relationships, as in said (/s/ and /d/ are as expected, /ai/ would normally represent the long a, not the short e, sound); or entirely unexpected letter-sound relationships, such as of (/uv/). Nearly two-thirds of high-frequency words are actually very regular (e.g., at, in, it), but even with those that are not, we need to fully analyze the letter-sound relationships as well as read them accurately many times. We suggest studying each letter's association with each sound, relating the word to other words with the same letter-sound patterns when possible (e.g., no, go, so), and teaching high-frequency words alongside meaningful words (e.g., like with bike).

7. Missing Essential Elements of Phonics Instruction

We often observe phonics instruction that has some strengths but also some gaps. Effective phonics instruction is multifaceted. You've likely already heard about the need for explicit instruction. Explicit instruction is direct, precise, and unambiguous (e.g., telling children what sound the letters sh represent together, rather than making the connection indirectly or asking them to figure it out themselves). You probably also realize the need to apply general learning principles (e.g., specific feedback). Some other facets that must be present are:

Specific, Applicable Generalizations

Simplistic, broad generalizations or "rules" do not work. For example, if we say that silent e signals a long vowel sound all the time, then we have a lot of issues. But if the generalization is made more specific, it is more applicable. For example, the silent e pattern is consistent more than 75 percent of the time in a_e, i_e, o_e, and u_e, but only consistent 16 percent of the time with e_e.

Active Construction and Deconstruction of Words

Just explicitly teaching letter-sound relationships is not enough. If it were, we could just tell infants what each letter-sound relationship is and then they could read. Children need opportunities to move letter tiles to build and change words, listen to words and spell them by sound, and so on.

Opportunities for Application

The evidence is clear that young children benefit from opportunities to read text that emphasizes letter-sound relationships they have learned to date. ¹¹ This reinforces the value of their hard work and of using decoding to read words. Children's reading opportunities should not be restricted to decodable texts, or those with only letter sounds they have been taught, but such texts should be a regular part of the reading diet. TextProject.org is a great resource for texts, and information about texts, that support beginning readers to learn to decode, without being as boring or unnatural as some decodable texts are.

Responsiveness

Phonics instruction must be informed by our ongoing observation and assessment of children's phonics knowledge and word-reading skills. We should respond when we notice that a child is confused, is insecure with a particular skill, or has had a major breakthrough. If we are not responsive to our students, some students are likely to be left behind in their word-reading development.

For too long, much discourse around beginning reading instruction has focused on whether to teach phonics. It is time for greater attention to how-and how not-to do so. Universally high-quality phonics instruction-that avoids common missteps-should be our collective focus.
Nell K. Duke is a professor of language, literacy, and culture, and a professor in the combined program in education and psychology, at the University of Michigan. Her work focuses on early literacy development, particularly among children living in poverty. Heidi Anne E. Mesmer is a professor of literacy in the School of Education at Virginia Tech. A former third-grade teacher, her work focuses on beginning reading materials and text difficulty.
*Pseudo-words are words with letter-sound relationships that are plausible in a language but do not actually form a real word. ( back to article)

Endnotes

1. See, for example, Barbara Foorman et al., Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade, What Works Clearinghouse, NCEE 2016-4008 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2016).

2. Philip H. K. Seymour, Mikko Aro, and Jane M. Erskine, in collaboration with COST Action A8, "Foundation Literacy Acquisition in European Orthographies," British Journal of Psychology 94, no. 2 (May 2003): 143-174.

3. See, for example, Carol McDonald Connor, Frederick J. Morrison, and Leslie E. Katch, "Beyond the Reading Wars: Exploring the Effect of Child-Instruction Interactions on Growth in Early Reading," Scientific Studies of Reading 8, no. 4 (2004): 305-336.

4. See, for example, Heidi Anne E. Mesmer, Letter Lessons and First Words (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, forthcoming); Donald R. Bear et al., Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction (New York: Pearson, 2015); and Sharon Walpole and Michael C. McKenna, How to Plan Differentiated Reading Instruction (New York: Guilford Press, 2017).

5. Darrell Morris et al., "Developmental Steps in Learning to Read: A Longitudinal Study in Kindergarten and First Grade," Reading Research Quarterly 38, no. 3 (2003): 302-328.

6. See, for example, Laura M. Justice et al., "Print-Focused Read-Alouds in Preschool Classrooms: Intervention Effectiveness and Moderators of Child Outcomes," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 41 (2010): 504-520.

7. Shayne B. Piasta, David J. Purpura, and Richard K. Wagner, "Fostering Alphabet Knowledge Development: A Comparison of Two Instructional Approaches," Reading & Writing Quarterly 23 (2010): 607-626.

8. Heidi Anne E. Mesmer and Priscilla L. Griffith, "Everybody's Selling It-but Just What Is Explicit, Systematic Phonics Instruction?," The Reading Teacher 59, no. 4 (2005): 366-376.

9. Sebastian P. Suggate, "A Meta-Analysis of the Long-Term Effects of Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, and Reading Comprehension Interventions," Journal of Learning Disabilities 49, no. 1 (2016): 77-96.

10. Linnea C. Ehri, Eric Satlow, and Irene Gaskins, "Grapho-Phonemic Enrichment Strengthens Keyword Analogy Instruction for Struggling Young Readers," Reading & Writing Quarterly 25, no. 2-3 (2009): 162-191; and Linnea C. Ehri, "Learning to Read Words: Theory, Findings, and Issues," Scientific Studies of Reading 9, no. 2 (2005): 167-188.

11. Jennifer P. Cheatham and Jill H. Allor, "The Influence of Decodability in Early Reading Text on Reading Achievement: A Review of the Evidence," Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 25, no. 9 (2012): 2223-2246.

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The need to explicitly teach letter-sound relationships in U.S. classrooms is settled science. 1 However, too often such instruction is not provided in the most efficient or effective way. These instructional missteps mean that fewer children will develop strong word-reading skills.

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ARCHIVE                  Article: Movement into Reading

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ARCHIVE                  Article: Movement into Reading

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Movement into Reading: Is the First Stage of Printed Word Learning Visual or Phonetic? by Ehri & Wilce

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The Big Five: Phonics-Orthographic Mapping | Orton Gillingham Online Academy

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Orthographic mapping is now considered “the most current theory of how children form sight word representations” (Torgesen 2004b, p.36) From David Kilpatrick’s book, “Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties.” In my previous blog, I described the importance of pho

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Article: Hattie's Barometer of Influence

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Article: Hattie's Barometer of Influence

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Graphic to visualize the influence of various effects on student learning.

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Hattie’s Barometer of influence - Infographic - VISIBLE LEARNING

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Throughout his Visible Learning journey John Hattie has used the “barometer” to visualize the effect size of an influence on student achievement. It has also also been on the cover of several Visible Learning books. The barometer scale is divided…Read more ›

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Article: Nell Duke - What Wordle Reminds Us About Effective Phonics & Spelling Instruction

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Article: Nell Duke - What Wordle Reminds Us About Effective Phonics & Spelling Instruction

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It's hard to miss the meteoric rise of the craze. This game is not only a gift for lexophiles but also for educators. It reminds us that effective phonics and spelling instruction requires carefully designed, explicit teaching combined with volume reading, vocabulary building, and high levels of engagement.

The object of Wordle is to guess a five-letter word in six attempts. After each attempt, the game tells you which of the letters you guessed are in the word in the right place, which letters are in the word but in the wrong place, and which letters are not in the word at all. With 26 letters in the English alphabet, the game would be nearly impossible as a purely statistical exercise. But knowledge of English orthography (how words are spelled) puts the challenge within reach. Studying how to be successful with Wordle can be helpful to educators because it can remind us of some key points about effective phonics and spelling instruction. Here are the top five Wordle reminders that can boost literacy instruction.

1. Some letters are more common than others.

That some letters are more common than others is well known to players of Scrabble (think letter point values) or Wheel of Fortune (think of puzzle-starting r, s, t, l, n, e). Wordle players-I'll call them Wordlees-likely know this too. They're unlikely to play jazzy as their first word, whereas raise is a logical way to start.

2. The position of letters in a word matters.

Wordlees would consider placing ld at the end of a word (e.g., child), but would not consider placing it at the beginning of a word. The position of letters in a word matters. Although early on we teach children to associate the letter y with the /y/ sound, as in yo-yo, not long after in our scope and sequence, we need to teach children not to make that association at the end of words, lest they struggle to read words such as my and penny.

Wordlees were probably never explicitly taught that we don't begin words in English with ld. Rather, they learned this and many other things about English orthography from lots of exposure to a large body of words. Statistical learning from volume reading of texts in the language(s) one is learning to read, along with explicit instruction, is critical to word reading and spelling development.

3. Letters and sounds don't have a one-to-one match.

There are Wordle-eligible words in which there are five letters and five sounds, such as blast, but Wordlees will not be successful limiting themselves to those words. Rather, they must recognize that multiple letters can represent a single sound. For example, the word tough has five letters but only three sounds (/t/ /uh/ /f/), while the word thigh has five letters and two sounds (/th/ /ī/). One might think that the Wordle-eligible word queue is just one sound, as it is the letter name of the letter Q, but there are actually two sounds in the name of the letter Q (/k/ /ū/), as in most letter names in English (F = /eh/ /f/; G = /g/ /ē/), an important understanding for educators who teach reading .

Effective phonics and spelling instruction in English requires explicitly teaching the complex system of how letters and sounds relate . Letter-by-letter decoding is OK early on, but soon learners need to be looking at the letters around a letter-for example, s usually represents the /s/ sound, but if followed by h, we typically have the /sh/ sound. Some patterns require readers to look even further ahead-for example, to associate dge with /j/ and eigh with /ā/. Similarly, spelling development in English requires understanding that there are sometimes many different ways we can spell the same sound (e.g., eigh, a_e, ai, ay, ey. . .).

4. Vocabulary knowledge is important to word reading and spelling.

It doesn't take long playing Wordle to recognize that the larger your vocabulary, the better you are likely to do. You might easily think of words such as great and happy, but can you think of bezel or jugum?

We typically need to have a word in our vocabulary to even think to use it in our writing, and knowing the word's meaning can give us valuable hints about how to spell it-for example, spelling electrician rather than electrision. Explicit teaching of meaningful word parts (morphology) supports spelling development . Similarly, vocabulary knowledge helps us to read words-when we come across lemic, do we pronounce it with a short  e, like  lemon, or a long  e, like  lemur? Having the word lemic in our vocabulary would tell us. Of course, we need vocabulary knowledge not only to read and spell words, but to monitor and develop our comprehension and composition.

5. Phonics and spelling can be engaging.

Engaging with phonics and spelling can be highly engaging for children as well. One research-supported instructional technique for developing word reading and spelling called word building is not that different from Wordle. For example, young children might build sat, sap, tap, top, stop, and so on. Tim Rasinski, a professor of literacy education, incorporates meaning-based clues into word building . For example, from the word "dart," he asks students to "change one letter to make another word for soil or earth" (dirt).

Engagement deepens further as children actually deploy their developing phonics and spelling abilities to read and write texts to inform, persuade, entertain, and innovate.

Who knows-maybe one of your students will invent the hottest thing since, well, Wordle.

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What Wordle Reminds Us About Effective Phonics and Spelling Instruction

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It's hard to miss the meteoric rise of the craze. This game is not only a gift for lexophiles but also for educators. It reminds us that effective phonics and spelling instruction requires carefully designed, explicit teaching combined with volume reading, vocabulary building, and high levels of engagement.

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Word Wall I Spy: Developing Phonemic Awareness

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Word Wall I Spy: Developing Phonemic Awareness

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The Balanced Literacy Diet models how you can play Word Wall I Spy with your students

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Guess the Word: Developing Phonemic Awareness Using the Word Wall

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POPEY's Word Ladders video

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from the University of Florida Literacy Institute

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ARCHIVE - Inspiring Words from Mr. Rogers

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ARCHIVE - Inspiring Words from Mr. Rogers

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POPEY's collection of Language Games to Support Phonological Awareness

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Session 2:
Building Reading & Writing Foundations: Comprehensive K-3 Literacy Instruction

Click on either link to access the PDF handouts:

Print Handout

Electronic Handout

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Free Download: Phonics Activities & Games Kit

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Free Download: Phonics Activities & Games Kit

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From Wiley Blevins & Sadlier School

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Support your students' early literacy development by building their phonics skills with engaging and fun activities that will:

Foster phonics skills in your classroom centers or at home

Develop students' self confidence with peer collaboration

Add an element of vocabulary to word building

Fill out the form to download the Phonics Activities & Games Kit now.

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Phonics Activities & Games Kit K-3 | Download | Sadlier School

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Support your students' early literacy development by building their phonics skills with engaging and fun activities that will: Foster phonics skills in your classroom centers or at home Develop students' self confidence with peer collaboration Add an element of vocabulary to word building Fill out the form to download the Phonics Activities & Games Kit now.

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Archive - October 12th Handouts:

Electronic Handout

Print Handout

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Free Printable Resources: Phonological Awareness

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Free Printable Resources: Phonological Awareness

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The Florida Center for Reading Research has an extensive collection of free printable resources to support phonological awareness.

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From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently. Students can complete the activities in small groups, pairs, or individually.

Accompanying these Student Center Activities is a Teacher Resource Guide that offers important insights on differentiated instruction and how to use the Student Center materials.

Component

Name of the reading component: Phonological Awareness (PA), Phonics (P), Fluency (F), Vocabulary (V), or Comprehension (C). Each component is color coded: PA is purple, P is orange, F is red, V is green, C is blue.

Subcomponent

Name of the reading subcomponent, which is a subskill of the component.

Activity Name

Activity Number

The letters correspond with the reading component (PA, P, F, V, or C). The numbers are listed in ascending order within each component. The activities are sequenced from simple to more complex within each component and subcomponent.

Student Icon

The suggested number of students for the activity. One student icon indicates that students may work independently or with a small group. Two student icons indicate that the activity requires students to work in pairs. Two student icons with a plus sign indicate that the activity requires two or more students.

Objective

States the goal of the activity, which is aligned with the subcomponent.

Materials

Materials are located on the pages that follow the Activity Plan. Most materials are non-consumable to be prepared and used repeatedly (e.g., word cards can be laminated). Some materials are consumable and will need to be duplicated for each student doing the activity. Other materials, such as counters, are commonly found in most classrooms.

Activity Statement

One sentence explanation of the purpose of the activity and what students do to complete the activity.

Activity Steps

The first step describes how to setup the center. The second step begins with: The student, Students, Working in pairs, or Taking turns depending on the number of students needed to complete the activity. The second step also starts the series of steps to complete the activity. The next steps explain what the student does to complete the activity. The last step lists one of three accountability methods: Self-check, Peer evaluation, or Teacher evaluation.

Example

A visual of the activity and key materials.

Extensions and Adaptations

Suggestions that extend or provide an adaptation for additional practice on the skill addressed in the activity. Materials for the extensions and adaptations are included after the pages that align to the Activity Plan.

Users may use the FCRR Student Center Activities resources as long as modifications are not made, the resources will only be used for non-profit educational purposes, and the copyright belong jointly to the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research. These resources may not be used for any commercial purposes. These resources on our site may be linked to but not reposted, reproduced, modified, or copied to other sites. For questions about the use of these resources, please contact The Florida Center for Reading Research at fcrr@fcrr.org.

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From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently.