Getting ‘bang for your buck’ from instructional time.
Early in my teaching days I had heard faint whispers of this thing called ‘Phonics’. There was a focus sound of the week. In practice, there was lots of chanting of /ch/, looking for pictures that start with /ch/, looking for ‘ch’ in texts… technically this was phonics: We were teaching students the relationship between sounds and letters.
At SPELD NSW when we talk about phonics this is NOT what we are talking about. The primary goal of any phonics lesson should be to directly target word reading skills (decoding and blending). If phonics instruction focuses on single sounds rather than explicitly teaching word reading skills, then we are still leaving too much to chance.
As an example, in our Launch program we planned the sequence of GPCs to ensure that we could start teaching students to blend as quickly as possible. That starts in lesson 2 when they have been taught ‘a’ as /a/ in lesson 1 and then ‘t’ as /t/ in lesson 2. Now begins the journey of reading. Note that I have carefully used the word ‘taught’ rather than ‘learned’. After one lesson we cannot say that students have learned ‘a’ or ‘t’. They have been introduced and now over the coming days and weeks we will methodically practice reading AND spelling ‘at’: ‘Say the sounds and read the word’ will be heard through Launch hallways as we hear students painstakingly practice /a/ /t/ … /at/.
By the end of the first few lessons students will have been taught 3 GPCs, a, t, s and start practising reading and spelling (yes, spelling!) ‘at’ and ‘sat’.
Mastery takes time. For some students it takes a lot of time. In a future blog we will look at the importance of The Daily Review and spaced retrieval practice which is where the learning and mastery happens.
For now, consider:
- How many words are students explicitly practising within a lesson/day/week? There is no magical number of words but MOST of your phonics lesson should be focused on word reading skills.
- Are you spending valuable instructional time doing work with single sounds or doing phonemic awareness drills without letters? This is not the best use of time.
- Are students spending time doing activities such colouring in pictures that start with or contain the target sound? This is not practising word reading skills.
Remember, success begets motivation. Make every instructional minute count and as word reading skills develop, motivation for reading will come!
