e.Planning to use resources for phonics
Student teachers need to be aware of the resources available and their daily use in the classroom. It is useful for them to examine a range of games and discuss how these can form a valid part of children’s classroom reading. This can also deepen student teachers’ understanding of what phonics learning is about and how it can best be developed. Much of the terminology involved can be understood through working with phonic resources.
Student teachers need to consider how they will organise their resources to provide a coherent programme for their children. The NLS suggests a structure as do a variety of commercial schemes and the Strategy materials for teaching phonics. But there is no substitute for careful examination of resources and discussion about what children might learn from them, and how this fits into the bigger picture of becoming literate.
The NLS files on phonics and on the video Progression in Phonics include some useful games. The Primary English Magazine is a helpful resource, which will keep them up to date with a variety of practical approaches suggested by practising teachers. For example: Larraine Harrison’s (2005) ‘To synthesise or to analyse? That is the question!’ puts the current debate into perspective, defining the terminology with care, and drawing on teachers’ experience of what seems to work and what seems to hinder success in learning to read. She emphasises the importance of making the process enjoyable.
A vast amount of material is available to support this learning at every level. However, not all of it is well focused or based on sound learning principles. It is helpful for student teachers to evaluate such materials and work out what part each might play in children’s progression towards fluent word recognition. Talking about and sharing resources is helpful, as is observing good practice in school.
We encourage student teachers to build up their own repertoires for phonics teaching, through trying out different approaches and ideas in sessions, using their own ideas, as well as resources from the NLS and commercial schemes..
Activity i
Again using Frith’s phases of word recognition (see 3c. Word identification), student teachers can work in groups to sort a numbered list of activities that are claimed to promote learning in phonics, into appropriate categories, as follows:
Classroom Activities to Promote Phonological Awareness and Phonics
Phonics learning is linear. Some activities are more appropriate in one phase, some in another. With the help of group discussion, sort the activities listed below into the most appropriate categories, marking each activity with the relevant letter. You may find you use E more than once!
A Logographic - Phase 1
B Alphabetic -Phase 2
C Orthographic - Phase 3
D Any Phase
E Not helpful
- activities involving more complex rimes (involving vowel digraphs and/or consonant digraphs or blends), such as 'ound' or 'each'
- make an alphabet frieze with children on a given theme
- tell children phonic rules such as 'When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking'
- tap out the phonemes of a simple consonant-vowel-consonant word such as 'dog'
- collaboratively construct a poster showing patterns of patterns' , i.e. related rimes, such as 'ote', 'ome' and 'ope'
- get children to 'sound out' any unrecognised word, letter by letter
- during big book sessions, encourage children to spot words within words
- oral play with tongue twisters
- oral activities involving simple one phoneme onsets, using only continuous consonants such as 's', 'f' or 'm'
- make a tongue twister book with children
- split complex words into syllables
- tap out syllables in children's names, toys, what they like to eat etc.
- help children develop a sight vocabulary, drawing attention to the initial letter of each word
- label classroom objects, then change the labels around, getting the children to put them back where they should be
- take a word such as 'sit' made up of a simple onset and simple rime, place it in magnetic letters on a whiteboard, with suitable alternative onsets nearby and ask volunteers to change the word to possible alternatives and back again
- get children to put simple rhymes cut up into lines back in order again
- encourage children to try invented spelling with words they don't know
- ask a child who has recognised an unexpected word how she did it
- teach four letters of the alphabet a week, starting with continuous consonants
- teach children to 'read' large poem cards of simple rhymes
- oral sorting activities involving objects or pictures that rhyme
- take one sentence of a known text, cut it up into words and ask children to put it back in order
- get children to make lists of words using complex patterns such as 'ample' or 'ation'
- encourage children to listen to domestic sounds, such as the hoover
- oral games involving alliteration, such as 'I spy
Source: University of Brighton
Connections to Standards
Q 4, 8, 11, 14, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29.
See also 3b. Phonics
 
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