Kate Johnson

Situation

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During my practicum, my mentor attended a PD where they spoke about a free-flowing phonics session and I offered to implement one in the classroom. The children all know their individual sounds. The class is teaching phase 3 of the letters and sounds program which including digraphs such as oi, ow, and air. Some children are becoming proficient with these however the majority of the class still require practice and support. Although the children are able to identify the sound on flash cards, they still have difficulty remembering to use their learned sounds when they read a word. As a result, I wanted to ensure my phonics activities provided opportunities for children to practice implementing their learned sounds through reading words as well as practising early reading skills.

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Action

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Fellowes and Oakley (2014) note that phonics teaching should be taught daily through an explicit and systematic approach as well as include a variety of multisensory teaching and learning strategies. I independently planned and prepared resources for a 40-minute phonics session to run 4 days per week. The session was structures with 10 minutes for a whole class lesson before I transitioned children to the free flow of multisensory activities. The 10-minute whole class lesson involved a mat session where I introduced or revised the concept we were going to be focusing on. For example, during guided reading I had noticed many children in the class were getting stuck on words with a long vowel sound. Although this is a year one learning outcome, I decided to introduce it to the children as it was pertinent and the school has instructed teachers to introduce and/or teach outcomes from the next year level whenever possible. I created a long and short vowel sounds chart where children came up with their “magic e” wand and turned CVC words into CVCe words. We discussed how the vowel sound had changed from short to long and also changed the meaning. I also had a game on the Smart Board where children helped to make the correct words starting with a CVC and then turning it into a CVCe. We discussed how the word had changed and what the new meaning was. I also integrated this into our daily morning message by drawing children’s attention to CVCE words such as home and also words with a long vowel sound or where y takes the form of a vowel such as ‘my’. Additionally, I incorporated it into the daily warm up for phonics where I did the sound flash cards and then had the vowels separate at the end. I asked the children to give me words with the particular vowel and then we decided whether it was a long or short sound.

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During this time, I would work with a reading group each day for another 10 minutes on an activity that focused on the learning outcome of the whole class lesson. This enabled me to differentiate my teaching as the children were already in leveled reading groups. Assessment was also done during this period so it was achievable and in depth. In addition to various activities that focused on important skills such as sight words, blending, segmenting, handwriting and learned digraphs, I had a table set up to specifically focus on long and short vowel sounds. I had laminated words in black with the vowels in red. I had sorting tins and children worked in groups to read the word and then sort it according to a long or short vowel sound. I sat with this group for ten minutes before they were able to move onto different activities. I rotated the groups daily so each day I spent ten minutes with a different reading group which also enabled me to differentiate by changing the difficulty level of the words. Using a homogeneous small group approach to teaching word study has been shown to have a positive effect on literacy instruction (Williams, Phillips-Birdsong, Hufnagel, Hungler & Lundstrom, 2009).

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Then I would spend 20 minutes moving around the classroom to provide support to individuals and groups. I switched out one or two activities with a new one each day which enabled children to develop the familiarity and independence with the activities while also keeping it interesting. This was also linked with my behaviour management chart as I had children who were ‘role models’ from that morning or the previous day to choose the activities they wanted to go to first.

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Ultimately, I had a broad range of creative and engaging resources to teach phonics that were differentiated for the range of ability in the class. These included a variety of ICT resources such as iPads to practice letter formation, ‘magic E’ online games and Bob and Obb from phonics play (ref). We used the smart board to sort real and nonsense words by feeding them to Obb or Bob. I had then created my own Obb and Bob with nonsense and real words that contained the sounds we have been learning for children to practice on their own. Other resources included sand trays where children wrote words with sounds we have been learning and practiced letter formation, CVC sliders, a range of clip cards for blends, digraphs, vowels and initial sounds, sight word fluency cards, rhyming clip cards, syllable cards and sorts, blending puzzles as well as creating and writing words by picking out words with the sounds we have been learning this term with ‘say it, make it, write it’ mats. I had created the word cards by using colour coordinating all the sounds we had learned, to help children see the letter combination in words and assist them with sounding it out. I also had children do a word sort each day, which are mentioned by Fellowes and Oakley (2014) as effective strategies for teaching phonics. Additionally, I had clip cards set up at a table with children’s handwriting books and they were required to record 10 words in their books with a focus on letter formation and need handwriting. When they were finished they put a sticker on the chart to track their engagement, provide children with a sense of achievement and ensure everyone had finished their handwriting by the end of the week. I would have the education assistant, my mentor teacher or myself sit with these children to assist with handwriting.

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Finally, I transitioned children to guided reading by introducing a new reading strategy with an accompanied card, such as “Flippy the Dolphin”. This was to remind them that when a word didn’t make sense they could change the vowel sound to make it long or short. Mini-lessons are beneficial for introducing or reminding students of a particular strategy (Seely-Flint et al, 2013). These cards were provided to each reading group and worked very well as they provided an opportunity for children to apply their new learning to their daily reading.