I think phonics instruction fits well within a comprehensive literacy program. I think components of phonics education should be seen in many areas of a comprehensive literacy program and across a variety of activities. Beginning readers need instruction in decoding and understanding letter/sound relationships. Weaver discusses the ineffectiveness of isolating phonics instruction. Phonics instruction is most effective when it is used alongside other teaching strategies like guided reading and writing conferences. Phonics instruction is extremely beneficial in guided reading. Guided reading is an opportunity to work with small groups of students and reinforce the skill being taught that week. The teacher can guide students in reading a passage that allows for discussion of that phonics skill. This allows the student to have multiple interactions with that skill both visually and verbally. Writing conferences are also a key opportunity to integrate phonics instruction. Spelling is all about the understanding of letter/sound correspondences. When looking over a students writing, it becomes very clear which correspondences the student is missing. What phonics skills need to be reinforced or re-taught? Is there a particular sound that the student struggles with? The teacher can use this time to go over why a student misspelled a word and talk about the phonics component of that word.
The majority of my teaching experiences have been in a first grade classroom. Because those students are still in the early stages of learning to read, phonics instruction is more heavily intertwined into the curriculum. I believe that phonics instruction does not need to play a large role in the upper grades, but I do believe it is very important in the younger grades. Phonics instruction builds the foundation for students' reading abilities as they develop into fluent readers.
Weaver, C. (2002). Reading Process & Practice (3rd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Madison,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your reflection. I also teach young students and I can see how important it is for them to be exposed to phonics. Learning that initial letter and sound relationship is one of the first steps in learning how to read. With my pre-k students, when they tell me something like “D is in dog” they get so excited and want to learn new letters and sounds. They think they can read all words when they are able to get the initial beginning letter sound. I think that continuous exposure to phonics for children in the early grades builds fluency by teaching how to decode so they can quickly read unfamiliar words. I really like what you said about how you can examine students’ writing to determine what phonics skills they are struggling with. I think phonics is a very important component in spelling. In helps students write/spell unknown words by recognizing the vowel and consonant patterns.