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Your Phonics Instruction Strategies

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    • ASU
      Keymaster
      #2258
      • In your own reading classroom, do you see more of a need to spend more time on foundational skills or provide more multisensory approaches? Why? 
      • What are some of your favorite strategies for teaching phonemic awareness and phonics?
    • rhondajordan2012
      Participant
      #2584

      – In my current classroom, 25% of my students need more time practicing foundational skills because they simply do not know how to read in 3rd grade or are EL students who need more practice. Another 70% needs more multisensory approaches to cement the skills they have but are not totally permanent as yet. The other 5% are doing well because they have mastered these skills.

      – Some of my favorite strategies for teaching phonemic awareness and phonics are dance and movement.

      • susan.spigelmire
        Participant
        #2988

        I think it is great that you are incorporating dance and movement into your lessons. As a student who has ADHD I wish more teachers did this when I was growing up.

      • hannahmoran2502
        Participant
        #3193

        Absolutely. The knowledge I grasped could help my students understand my content in more depth.
        Breaking down the words using sounds and meaning could really help my students understand large words. History uses a lot of big words with a lot of meaning within them. Students being able to break down the word and remember meanings could help become more successful with reading and understanding.

      • sb861
        Participant
        #3714

        It’s great that you know what skills your students need next in such a detailed way! I want to try incorporating dance and movement into my language lessons too, as this is something we only do for math right now.

    • charlotte.reading
      Participant
      #2976

      I need some foundational skills for about 3 of my students. All my students would benefit from multisensory. I am very excited to try some of the strategies that they gave me. I am excited to use the tongue twisters! We have been doing alliteration with our cursive writing and now I can have them say them out loud as fast as they can. They will be thrilled. I am really excited to use the highlight suffixes prefixes. thanks for the ideas. We have done the fly swatter with vocabulary it it will be fun to use for reading skills.

      Some of my strategies have been word games that they do coming up to the board or on their own dry erase boards. I’m looking forward to implementing different ways.
      My ELL students and I do play games for learning as well. They are usually memory games, four in a row or tic tac toe 🙂

      • susan.spigelmire
        Participant
        #2987

        It is nice to see that you are using a multi-sensory approach in a older grade, I feel most teachers 2nd and above drop this and it is very much needed especially for our ELs and Dyslexic students.

      • roberta.deaso
        Participant
        #3126

        The tongue twisters idea is a great one. You might try the stand up, hand up Kagan technique and have students try to perform the tongue twister for their partner. They will think of it as a game. I find gamification of learning to be a great tool to help students. I always say that students will try so much harder when they are playing a game, even if the content of the game can be found on a worksheet.

      • sb861
        Participant
        #3713

        My students love doing games on their dry erase boards too! I think it makes it fun to be able to practice writing skills but do so in a low-stakes way, since it can always be erased. Memory games are a great idea to help with enhancing long-term memory of letter-sound recognition.

    • charlotte.reading
      Participant
      #2977

      Rhondajord, I had recently asked you your grade level. It looks like we both are teaching third. It is very different for us. I have seen since the pandemic a greater need for phonics in our grade. This has made me reach out for PD such as this to try and help my struggling readers get back on grade level.

      • sprice
        Participant
        #6824

        Many of the teachers in my district agree with your comments. The 3rd graders have a definite need for more phonics to be added to the current curriculum.

    • susan.spigelmire
      Participant
      #2986

      I teach Kindergarten so my entire day is surrounded by foundational skills. I provide a lot of multi-sensory approaches to learning as I am Orton gillingham trained. I know that young students learn best though hands=on experiences which is why I provide them.
      For Phonemic Awareness I use Heggerty which incorporates a lot of hand motions. For phonics we use sand try, tactile letters, screens with crayons to write among others. I am currently working on revising how I teach HFW as I want to focus on the sounds the words make not the letters so that students can begin to orthographically map the word in their brain to grasp a firm knowledge of it and move it to a sight word.

      • roberta.deaso
        Participant
        #3127

        I love the hand motions for Heggerty. I find that the techniques they use, like the roller coaster method for finding middle sounds, can really help students later when they are trying to sound out a word and spell it. I think that bringing in those techniques during writing time, or even social studies/science, can really help them learn to spell and recognize word patterns faster.

      • marialignos
        Participant
        #3844

        I am also Orton Gillingham trained and believe it is the most effective way to teach reading.

      • alara
        Participant
        #6816

        In regard to the HFW, at my school we are now using “Heart Words” which focuses more on the specific difficult and different sounds in HFW, students are not only learning them by memory but making an understanding of those different sounds in each word and how two letters can make a huge difference from word to word. It is interesting and fun to learn since you use a mat and different shapes to put on top of letters.

    • roberta.deaso
      Participant
      #3125

      In your own reading classroom, do you see more of a need to spend more time on foundational skills or to provide more multisensory approaches? Why?

      I teach Kindergarten, so I feel like there is a need to provide both at the same time. I try to repeatedly review what we have learned in a multisensory way. Students will forget the foundational skills they have learned, if they are not practiced consistently, especially in Kindergarten, where they are learning how to learn.

      What are some of your favorite strategies for teaching phonemic awareness and phonics?

      I use Heggerty, dance and movement, playdoh, and other fun activities to help students learn. I also incorporate games as often as possible.

      • alara
        Participant
        #6817

        I agree, I think they both go together specially on lower grades. It is a very good way to lock in what they have learned by putting it into practice with a multisensory activity.

    • williwoodz
      Participant
      #3184

      These last couple of years I have noticed a greater need for foundational skills as many students did not do well with online learning. Favorite strategies include play dough, movement, and hand motions.

    • williwoodz
      Participant
      #3185

      I agree that movement is essential for our ADHD population and our littles need to wiggle.

    • williwoodz
      Participant
      #3186

      I have used tongue twisters in these past with older students. They love it!

    • hannahmoran2502
      Participant
      #3195

      I understand where you are coming from. Great response.

    • hannahmoran2502
      Participant
      #3196

      There are a lot of things that I learned that I did not think I could use in my classroom but I can. I know I teach high schoolers but thinking outside of the box and figuring out how I can use these strategies to help my kids understand better I think would be cool.

    • sb861
      Participant
      #3712

      1. I am a new teacher, but I think the students in my classroom will need a mix of both foundational skills and multisensory information because of their sensory needs. They will need to have explicit instruction in the basic phonemic and phonics skills, but these can be done through multisensory approaches that help with their sensory and attention needs.

      2. One approach that I have seen so far that I really like are letter songs and videos that the kids learn and can sing from memory because they enjoy them so much!

    • jmaddox80
      Participant
      #3736

      1. It depends on my students. I teach special education and I have students from kindergarten to 5th grade. They are each at different points in their ability for reading and understanding phonological awareness. The majority of my students still need the foundational skills, but do best with a multisensory approach. They need explicit instruction, repetition, immediate feedback, and different strategies to help them progress through the continuum of phonological awareness and reading skills.

      2. Using real objects has always been an engaging strategy for my students. Using items and having students match the beginning sound to a cup with a letter on it is an example of a strategy to use that incorporates real objects. Playing fly-swatter games, using playdough, and rhyming activities are always a hit with all grade levels that I have worked with. I think it is important to continue to use a multisensory approach, even as the students get into the upper grades.

      • marialignos
        Participant
        #3843

        Have you tried singing “Down By The Bay” by Raffi with your SPED kids? It is a fun way to familiarize them to rhyming words. Sometimes I even invite them to give me the word they would like me to find a rhyme to sing about. That is usually really challenging for me but fun for them when they get to stump the teacher. If I cannot find a rhyming word I fall back on “Did you ever have a time when you couldn’t make a rhyme down by the bay?”

      • sprice
        Participant
        #6825

        Since you have students that are in 5th grade, do you have any suggestions for working with 6th graders that are in special education reading at a 3rd grade level? I would love to get some more ideas for what I can do for my students to help them make even more progress.

    • marialignos
      Participant
      #3841

      I do not need to incorporate more multi-sensory activities as I use sky writing and arm tapping to reinforce spelling. The kiddos think it is silly. I also ask them the spell words on their palms with their pointer finger.

    • marialignos
      Participant
      #3842

      I responded to someone else’s post.

    • grael
      Participant
      #3992

      Gloria Rael Where I teach, the preschoolers are starting to learn the letters and most do not know the sounds of any letter. So, I will start with introducing a letter and sound a week. My preschoolers are not ready for any other task. I will make sure that my preschoolers are learning and reviewing constantly. I want my preschoolers to be able to know the letter and sound at the end of the year.

    • grael
      Participant
      #3999

      Gloria Rael Currently, I have just a very few students that is there second year at the preschool. The mayority of the students is there first year in the preschool, so the students are verly learning about 4 letters and their sounds. I hope that by the end of the year most of the students have learn most of the letters and the sounds. I want all the students to have good letter and sound foundation for them to be futere great readers. I always try to give the students daily an activity with the letter of the week, so that the students can relate the activities wwith the letter and sound. I know that those activities will be great adventures for them to be successful readers. I know I am doing my part for all the students to love reading.

    • grael
      Participant
      #4000

      Gloria Rael I know it is very important for us teachers to constantly be reviewing the letters and the sounds, if not the students might forget. So we as teachers, must review letters and sounds in a variety of activities so that the students automatically can see the letter and know the sound for the students to be able to learn many words, then be able to read simple sentences. Finally, be able to read stories.

    • alexandra.hausman
      Participant
      #6755

      In my own classroom I need to incorporate more multisensory activities for students. Using movement or tactile may help some of them make a better connection to when we are using visual and auditory. Some of my students also need foundational skills since many are speaking more than one language. Some of my favorite ways to teach phonics are music for movement.

    • alexandra.hausman
      Participant
      #6756

      I think most students need to review some foundational skills and using multisensory activities can help them make connections.

    • alara
      Participant
      #6815

      In your own reading classroom, do you see more of a need to spend more time on foundational skills or provide more multisensory approaches? Why?
      I think my students will benefit from both spending more time on foundational skills with a multisensory approach because this will help each students with their individual goals.

      What are some of your favorite strategies for teaching phonemic awareness and phonics?
      I like using different songs where my students can hear rhymes, I use different games, and my students really like working with sound mats and magnetic letters.

    • sprice
      Participant
      #6823

      -I do see a need in my classroom for more foundational skills practice. I teach 6th grade and many of my students are reading far below grade level. This may be because of their lack of phonemic awareness.
      -I enjoy working with my student on morphology. We work a lot with understanding the meaning of words based on prefixes and suffixes.

    • fallon.trisoliere
      Participant
      #6961

      I can see that I need both. I have students that need the foundational skills and could benefit from that in small group, but I also have a lot that would benefit from multisensory approach. I have some that don’t have that quick and automatic oral response to letter/word manipulation and need practice. I teach third grade, so closing the gap is so important. I love using the arm tapping for word parts and using tongue twisters for sound manipulation.

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