Phonics with Yolanda Soryl 4.04.17

The best single predicator of future reading achievement at school entry is phonological awareness.

Gillon (2004); Pressley (2002); Elhri et al (2001); Goswami (2001); Blachman (2000)

Repetition is required build the neural paths for new knowledge and skills in the brain.

What is the single most effective thing you can do to help the low level reader? Hear them read out loud at instructional level every day.

Reading requires:

•         Knowing letter sounds
•         How to blend sounds together
•         Requires graphic knowledge & memory (e.g. for high frequency words)
•         Comprehension
•         Fluency
• When faced with a new word, a child can use graphic knowledge (word chunks e.g. ing; graph etc) and phonics (letter sounds). 

Spelling requires:

•         Segmentation
•         Re-reading and blending

Terms

Phoneme: the smallest sound you can hear in a word

Grapheme: the written form of a word. A grapheme can have one letter, two letters (digraph e.g. er) or three letters (trigraph e.g. igh) or more

The number of phonemes in a word will match the number of graphemes. 

Phonics Stages

You might teach the whole programme twice…but don’t teach stage 4 twice! If children have problems at stage 4, there is an issue with vowels. Spend time teaching more on vowels (e.g. vowel drills; songs; dictation)

1	Able to listen to and discriminate sounds Able to hear rhyme, alliteration and sound breaks
2	Able to hear the initial sounds Short vowels taught
3	Able to hear and write the final phoneme Short vowels taught
4	Able to blend and segment cvc words Able to read, write and hear medial sounds
5	Knows the digraphs/trigraphs Able to blend and segment words with more than three phonemes Generally one year after school entry if phonics has been taught since start date. Some children will need longer.
6 & 7	Long vowels are taught at this stage.

Suggestions for teachers: 

• Have children re-read their work after every sentence
• Discuss with children….what IQ is, and how IQ is not linked to reading (i.e. you can still be super smart and yet find reading hard).
• Clap rhythms for children to repeat, so they can hear and hold structures (e.g. first line of Humpty Dumpty). This is critical for holding a sentence in their heads during writing.
• Music and movement is fundamental for learning. Bring it in as much as possible, e.g. sing instructions and have the children sing them back. Singing lights up the left side of the brain, the same area required for reading. Therefore it is a great warm up
• Schedule daily poetry & story reading (at least five times a day!) to strengthen children’s phonological listening and enjoyment of reading, and train the brain for fluency by using triggers e.g. ‘on your marks’.
• Teach the five rhyming families: cat, pet, fin, dog, bug
• Be explicit about knowledge transfer i.e. tell children ‘you can use this in your reading and you come to a word you don’t know, you can use this letter…’
• ‘You can use this when you are trying to spell a new word.’

I’m keen to implement daily phonics this and next term, around collaborative times with other classes. I wonder, is this the explicit building block the struggling writers in my class need? 

See free downloads (vowel strip and rhyme cards)