I don’t know about you, but during the second half of any school year, I really begin to think about where my students are and where they need to be by the end of the year. I take a look at what will be expected of them the following year, factor in the dreaded “summer slide”, and kick instruction into high gear to make sure everyone is growing.
Stanovich & Siegel, and Shankweiler tell us, “At any age, poor readers as a group exhibit weaknesses in phonological processing and word recognition speed and accuracy, as do younger poor readers”.
Through read aloud with my K-2 students, I am aware of their listening comprehension skills. When they are unable to answer similar comprehension questions after reading material on their own, it’s clear to me that their decoding skills and phonological processing must be to blame.
For some reason, decoding and phonological awareness seem to be overlooked. They may seem like silly, unrelated activities, but they are crucial.
Here are four tips I swear by to help struggling readers improve their decoding abilities.
Tip #1: Hear It & Write It
As much as possible, when you are working on hearing sounds in words, have your students write them down. I always had my students have a dry erase board and marker out during phonemic awareness time. (Add motions, as well. Tap on your fingers or use counters to represent sounds.) This will help struggling readers make the connection between decoding and encoding.
Blending words might look like this:
If you blend these sounds together,/m//uh//d/ what word did I say?
The students: Mud!
Now let’s write down the sounds we heard. /mmmm/ What letter makes that sound? Write it down. Next, /uhhhh/ Write down the letter that makes that sound. /d/. Write down the letter that makes that sound. What word did you write?
The students: Mud!
You: How do you know? Read it out loud to yourself.
/m/ /u/ /d/ mud, students!
Strengthens their phonemic awareness and spelling (encoding) abilities.
Tip #2: Be Consistent
Practice these skills on a consistent basis, not once in a while or after you notice students having difficulty decoding. Take note of where blending, segmenting, and manipulating sounds appear in the image above; these skills can be difficult for even experienced readers. Show your students grace and patience as they learn these concepts – you deserve the same! It can be hard to both teach and grasp this material, so keep at it. Just because your students have learned syllables doesn’t mean you should overlook them; review these topics regularly to guarantee retention. If your pupils are making little sense when speaking sounds out loud, don’t give up hope; combine sounds more closely together while adding visuals and manipulative materials. Work with them until they master the basics!
There is a breakdown of all of these skills here.
When students struggle to read, they don’t need a new intervention every few weeks. They need research-based solutions that will work over time. Phonological awareness is one of those solutions!
A number of studies have shown that our brains work differently when we are learning to read and when we are reading. Unlike talking and walking, reading does not come naturally to most of us. It is a skill that needs to be introduced, practiced, and mastered. Twenty hours a school year is sufficient. That’s just a few minutes a day.
I practice these skills whole group. I follow an I do, We do, You do model over the course of the year. At first, I ask myself and answer my own questions. Hearing sounds can be tough! Make sure they get exposure and practice hearing the individual sounds in words. Pronounce them clearly and loudly, and give them a good amount of time to process what they heard.
Tip #3: Teach Phonics Skills in a Systematic Way
The important thing is to have a scope and sequence for teaching letters, sounds, and skills in a certain way… on purpose… with a plan. 🙂
When you are teaching kids to read, you will quickly notice that the 26 letters and sounds you taught them will only get them so far for so long. For them to continue on, long vowels, blends, digraphs, diphthongs, and phonics rules are necessary. What are your plans for that? When will you teach what?
(Depending on your students’ available guided reading books, you may find that you need to follow a different path for your students.) Here’s the scope and sequence that’s worked for me. (I told them that sometimes we will run into sounds we haven’t yet learned, but eventually we will learn them.)
The following is a tentative scope and sequence:
Vowels with short vowels (e, i, o, u)
Focus on 2 letter and 2 letter blends like st and str. Show how finding and grouping blends can make it easier to blend words.
The digraphs (th, ch, wh, sh)
Sounds glued together (ang, ing, ong, ung, ank, ink, onk, unk)
Flossing
The silent E and vowel teams and diphthongs
The Bossy R (ar, er, or, ir, ur)
Sounds glued together (ang, ing, ong, ung, ank, ink, onk, unk)
So on and so forth…
(Prefixes and suffixes are covered during foundational skills.)
All of this is accomplished by introducing a sound of the week. Find Word chains Freebi that I’ve created based on the sounds of the week and add the sound and spelling(s) to our Sound Anchor Chart.
I would draw a star and write “ar” under the star. I would model how to use the anchor chart throughout the day by recalling sounds and spellings myself.
My job is to respond to the needs of the students in front of me as they arise.
Tip #4: Bring it to the Real World
Working on all of these skills in isolation won’t magically turn your students into strong readers without you helping them make the connection to reading.
Let me set the scene:
You’ve been working on phonological awareness strengthening activities with your students for months now.
You have led guided reading groups in small group, but the students are still struggling. When it’s time for them to decode independently, they clam up. What’s going on? They blend, segment, and add sounds as a group, but when it’s time for them to decode independently, they don’t. What’s wrong?
Make the connection between the skills they’ve learned and how they apply to reading (and spelling).
When they are trying to read the word ‘lump,’ you might remind them to blend the sounds together. “Remember how to blend sounds? Say each sound quickly, then say your word.”
You might also suggest switching the beginning sound. “This looks like jump. I know you know that word. How can rhyming help you figure this out?””
Also, I make connections across disciplines when modeling writing. To demonstrate how I am using skills they have to strengthen my writing, I will either segment a word and write down its corresponding sounds or use the anchor chart we created to find the correct sound spelling when I am modeling writing.
Reading is not natural. They are training their brains to do something they haven’t evolved to do. Keep doing this until they do it on their own.
Here’s a bonus tip:
Give students independent practice. Yes, your students need to hear you making sounds and practice understanding them, but they also need to be able to do the same thing when the sounds come from them. It’s a skill they have to continue working on, as they often pronounce sounds incorrectly or say them too slowly.
After playing a few games at my teaching center, I put them out into student centers so they can practice with each other.
The skills can be reviewed and practiced individually or as a group.
It’s all in your hands!
