Alaska ELA Foundational Skills for Phonics and Word Recognition by AkPLN https://padlet.com/akplnteam/ihcirfcevybg •What role does phonics instruction currently have in the scope of your literacy instruction? •What aspects of effective phonics instruction are critical for the students you teach? •What is most challenging for your struggling students? en-us 2016-12-21 23:04:27 UTC 2019-12-28 00:00:28 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Optimplaces.png crowe_kristy https://padlet.com/akplnteam/ihcirfcevybg/wish/228951183 Phonics instruction is actually a core part of my literacy instruction. It's how we start our Language Arts block. During our phonics time we use our sound/spelling cards to learn how letters work together to make sounds in our words (example: ge, gi make the j sound), we then take that knowledge and practice decoding words and then encoding words through dictation routines. We also have decodable books that then focus on the target sound, to be able to work on reading/decoding in a text with previous sound spellings and high frequency words learned.
However, I feel that the curriculum that we have is too fast paced for my struggling students, they need more time and exposure to the specific targets before moving on. Some of them have previous holes that need to be filled in also.

]]> 2018-02-07 05:01:33 UTC https://padlet.com/akplnteam/ihcirfcevybg/wish/228951183 I use work sheets packets daily, that I really like. They come in different levels and the students work through them, moving up levels. We meet as a rotational group and the students receive instruction followed by guided practice then on their own. The work sheets work on letter sounds, encoding words and sound lines instead of boxes. The students then get practice writing on their own with the help of illustrations. https://padlet.com/akplnteam/ihcirfcevybg/wish/249083394 2018-04-06 00:43:34 UTC https://padlet.com/akplnteam/ihcirfcevybg/wish/249083394 K.Adelmann Response https://padlet.com/akplnteam/ihcirfcevybg/wish/426913401  
Phonics instruction is a core tenant of my literacy instruction. Every language arts block begins with phonics and phonemic awareness. As a class, we learn letter/sound isolation and replacement, practicing of sight words, phoneme blends, instruction of common sound-spelling patterns and blending of those patterns, reading of decodable texts, and sound-spelling practice. In small groups, we will work on sight word automaticity and reading fluency and comprehension.

There are many aspects of effective phonics instruction that are critical for the students I teach, primarily is student engagement. If students are not interested or willing to participate in lessons it can make it very difficult to learn the skills from week to week.  Lack of engagement stems from a variety of reasons. In this instance, I’m thinking of students who’s struggles are not systemically academic but more social/emotional in nature. Lack of maturity can make it very difficult for a student to attend to the task of learning to read. 

The most challenging thing for struggling students is if they were not secure in skills from Kindergarten. First grade hits the ground running and if a child is not solid in letter/sound skills they will have a very difficult time catching up and keeping up. Our school does a great job with interventions getting the kids the skills they need but the challenge is still there.


]]> 2019-12-27 23:41:56 UTC https://padlet.com/akplnteam/ihcirfcevybg/wish/426913401 Coppa Response https://padlet.com/akplnteam/ihcirfcevybg/wish/426914252 Phonics instruction currently plays a large role in my literacy instruction. We spend almost half of our literacy block focused on phonics instruction. A typical day starts with a practice set where we focus on specific sounds, reading words with a focused sound-spelling pattern, breaking words apart, reading prefixes and suffixes and words with affixes, focused word learning strategies, etc. We then move on to a specific sound(s) that we focus on each week and do phonemic awareness activities, reading words, reading high frequency words, decoding practice and spelling practice, then reading decodable texts that focus on that specific weekly sound. 
 
I agree that an explicit, systematic approach to phonics is a necessity. The practice sets that we do every day are very intense, however, I am seeing improvement with my struggling students. They are gaining confidence in their reading skills and need that repetitive, focused practice each day. The one challenge that I see occurring with my struggling students is that they can only tolerate so much phonics instruction before they get bored, so it is a challenge for me as a teacher to keep them engaged and motivated during intense phonics instruction. I have found that it is more engaging for them if I keep a very fast, but intentional, pace.
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