Talibiddeen Jr.

According to the National Right  to Read Foundation

"Phonics is not a method of teaching reading; it's a body of knowledge consisting of 26 letters used to symbolize 44 English speech sounds. There are about 70 most common spellings for these speech sounds. There are about 70 most common spellings for these speech sounds."

Source: http://www.nrrf.org/

If you are new to teaching reading and have been researching reading instruction, your head may be spinning deciding how to teach your young child to read.

I first started teaching my oldest to read about nine years ago.  I did a  lot of research myself and after trying this and that, I finally settled on the teaching of phonics. To this day, I still believe that teaching phonics is the most effective way to teach reading.  I feel teaching children phonics gives them a finite set of rules (of course there are exceptions) to help a child attack new words.  I have seen data stating that somewhere around 85% of the words that are in our language can be sounded out. So to me, it made sense to teach the rules rather than having my children memorize words in a seemingly haphazard fashion.

On this page is a compilation of some phonics resources that I have used and some materials that I have created.

If you are new to teaching phonics and perhaps don't know where to begin, the NRRF (National Right to Read Foundation) has an excellent phonics primer which has a chart of the 44 sounds in the English language (with a sample word to illustrate each sound) and 15 steps to teaching phonics. Also includes the teaching of sight words:

I think this is a great place to start if phonics is new or foggy for you:

http://www.nrrf.org/PhonicsPrimer.pdf

There are even suggested time frames given, which may make instruction helpful as well, but use only as guidelines.

If you find that this doesn't quite work for you........

another excellent resource is www.donpotter.net. On the education page there are loads of free phonics resources including old phonics teaching materials and articles about phonics and reading instruction in general.

Definitely a TJ favorite.......

In a nutshell, here is a sample sequence for teaching phonics

1. Consonant sounds Initial and Final

2. Short vowel sounds CVC words (h - a - t)

3. Blends Onset and rime (m -an man, c - at, cat)

4. Digraphs Initial and Final (ship, dish)

5. Clusters: 3 consonant sounds (split)

6. Long vowels Spelling patterns (a_e, ai, ae)

7. Tricky patterns (er, ar, oo, oi, au, ou, igh)

8. Multisyllable words blending syllables together

9. Root words prefixes, suffixes

10. Synonyms, antonyms, homonyms
 

Source: TEAMS Language Arts—Reading: Basic to Success, K-1

Los Angeles County Office of Education

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"Work on phonics for at least 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week with your student. Frequency and consistency are more important than the length of time spent on each lesson."(http://www.nrrf.org/)

 

I totally agree with this as well as making sure that you review previous concepts on a daily basis. I am struggling with two new readers now and the thing that I notice that I do not do now, that I did with my first two readers, was to review previous sounds with flashcards daily. I would make up improved games or little quick activities to liven up the review time, but I did not leave it off. It's funny because my first reader, now aged 14, remembers the flashcards and our daily review activities and feels they were key to him remembering the sounds.

 

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Sample Phonics Syllabus. This is a syllabus that I based upon "Remedial Reading Drills" (see sidebar). I am in the process of adding links to flashcards, worksheets and other learning aids that I have made.

 

Also see TJ's Sample Daily Language Arts Plan for a sample anatomy of a daily phonics session.

 

Phonics Activity Bank. Activity ideas for practicing phonograms.

 

TJ Learning Aids/Printables. See below.

Dictation/Spelling Paper

 

Primary lined; words and sentences.

Secondary (older students)