Parareading Course 2: Phonics for Paraprofessionals
How to Teach Phonics
Your experience with teaching phonics will vary depending on your classroom teacher and your school. But it’s more than likely that you’ll be asked to help students with lots of opportunities to review and practice each phonics pattern. Ideally, each student will learn to independently use each skill before moving onto the next skill in the phonics curriculum.
Teaching phonics is a systematic process. We start with the most common patterns that students encounter in reading and writing, and then we build to more complex patterns.
For example, to teach the consonant digraph ‘sh’, a teacher would introduce the sound /sh/ first. Then they would present the letters ‘s' and 'h’. Next would come simple words like ship and dish to provide practice in reading and spelling the pattern. All of this leads to the last portion of the lesson in which students put all the skills together and practice reading words, sentences, and paragraphswith fluency.
Structured Literacy
Reading Universe and Dr. Deborah Glaser use an evidence-based approach to teaching reading that is popularly known as structured literacy. It's a way of organizing and delivering reading instruction to ensure students get all the skills they need in an efficient timeframe — and without any gaps. And our daily instruction directly and explicitly teaches students the target phonics skill in this same approach — in clear and systematic steps that build from identifying sounds in speech to decoding letters, words, and sentences.
Daily Phonics Checklist: 6 Steps
Here's what you might expect to find in a typical 30-minute phonics lesson. A daily routine like this helps the students know what to expect so they are ready to focus on learning. Their cognitive load is focused on the task at hand!
What does this approach look like?
Let's Watch! In this video with Nicole Ormandy at Pennsylvania's AIM Academy, you can see her working one-on-one with a student on how to spell the /k/ sound. When do we use 'c'? When do we use 'k'?
Produced by Reading Universe, a partnership of WETA, Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book
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Nicole Ormandy: We've got our two letters that represent /k/. Now when it comes to spelling, that can be tricky, right? What do I use? 'C' or 'k'?
Narrator: In this one-on-one session, you'll see Nicole Ormandy guide second grader Bea through a lesson on how to spell the /k/ sound before a vowel with the letter 'c' or the letter 'k'. This is likely the first time Bea has had to decide between two possible letters to spell a sound.
Nicole Ormandy: Alright, Bea. Today we're going to learn a spelling pattern for the sound /k/. Alright, so listen first to these words and tell me the first sound you hear in the word. Cab.
Bea: /k/
Nicole Ormandy: Cub.
Bea: /k/
Nicole Ormandy: Cut.
Bea: /k/
Nicole Ormandy: Cut.
Bea: /k/
Nicole Ormandy: Kid.
Bea: /k/
Nicole Ormandy: Exactly, right? We keep hearing /k/ at the beginning of those words and there are two ways that we can represent /k/. We've been reading words that have /k/, and they typically start with which two letters?
Bea: 'C' and 'k'.
Nicole Ormandy: Exactly. They typically start with 'c' and 'k'. To warm up let's trace each letter and say /k/. /K/. We'll do each letter two times.
Narrator: Bea uses multiple senses — sight, touch, and sound — while tracing the letters. This type of multisensory learning reinforces the connection between the letters and the sounds they produce.
Nicole Ormandy: Now let's try the 'k'.
Bea: /k/
Nicole Ormandy: Excellent. Alright, well done tracing our /k/ sounds with 'c' and 'k'. What I want to show you now is that to help us remember when we use 'c' versus when we use 'k' when we're spelling, we can think about our cat and our kite images. Look at our cat. What letters do you see on the cat?
Bea: A 'u' and 'a'?
Nicole Ormandy: Yeah, I see the 'a'. What letter is this?
Bea: 'O'.
Nicole Ormandy: Yeah. And 'u', right? So we made our eyes out of 'a's, our little nose is an 'o', and the cat's little mouth is a 'u'. So I'm going to try to remember this little image to help me think, "oh, yeah. 'C' is used before 'a,' 'o', or 'u'."
Narrator: Ms. Ormandy helps Bea remember this pattern by using pictures with embedded mnemonics. Little clues attached to the letters.
Nicole Ormandy: What about the kite? What letters do we have at the center of our kite?
Bea: 'E' and 'i'?
Nicole Ormandy: This is because when we're spelling /k/ before 'e' and 'i', we use the letter 'k'. So I'm going to say a few words and you're going to fill it in, whether it's 'c' or 'k'. If you have to look up here to think about whether it's 'a', 'o', or 'u' or whether it's 'e' or 'i' to help you know whether to use 'c' or 'k', feel free to do that. Okay? Let's look at this one. The word is supposed to be "cub." What's the vowel in this word? Cub.
Bea: 'U'.
Nicole Ormandy: 'U'. So which one? 'C' or 'k'? For cub? What did you choose?
Bea: 'C'.
Nicole Ormandy: Perfect. Why did you choose 'c'?
Bea: Because there's a 'u'.
Nicole Ormandy: Exactly. We see our 'u' with 'c'. All right, the next word's going to be kin. Kin. Now you've got it. What was the vowel in kin?
Bea: 'I'.
Nicole Ormandy: Right? And 'i' has a 'k' before it. If 'i' is my vowel, I'm spelling that /k/ with 'k'. What I'm going to ask you to do now is read back all of these words that you just filled in the /k/ sound for.
Narrator: Ms. Ormandy ends her lesson by asking Bea to read each word with accuracy.
Bea: Kit.Cub.Kin.Cup.
Narrator: Reading words accurately is an important step toward becoming a fluent reader.
Nicole Ormandy: Well done. So let's just reiterate then. When do I use 'c' for my /k/ sound?
Bea: 'A', 'o', 'u'.
Nicole Ormandy: Perfect. Right before an 'a,' 'o,' or 'u'. When do I use 'k' for my /k/ sound?
Bea: 'I' or 'e'.
Nicole Ormandy: Right. Before 'i' or 'e'. Excellent. So I'm going to think about my cat and my kite to help me remember 'c' before 'a', 'o', or 'u'. 'K' before 'e' or 'i'.
Narrator: The next step for Bea and Ms. Ormandy will be to practice this new rule during dictation.
Nicole Ormandy: Nicely done. Good job.
Narrator: Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the Hastings/Quillen Fund, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the AFT, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and anonymous donors. Special thanks to AIM Academy and the AIM Institute for Learning and Research. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel @RUTeaching. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington , D.C, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.
Think about the following questions:
How does Ms. Ormandy help her student practice phoneme awareness with the /k/ sound at the start of the lesson?
What does Ms. Ormandy use next to help her student practice making the decision to use a ‘c’ or a ‘k’ to represent the /k/ sound?
Paras Know!
Students who struggle with reading sometimes have poor phoneme awareness skills — such as segmenting and blending the sounds of spoken words. This can make it harder for them to blend the sounds of written words as they work on decoding. If you suspect phoneme awareness is impacting a student’s phonics learning, add a listening game during the warm-up portion of the lesson to practice segmenting and blending phonemes with spoken words.
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DeAngela Huggins: All right. The first listening game that we're going to do is mystery word. Okay. I'm going to give you the sounds, and on my signal, which is going to be a thumbs up, you are going to put those sounds together and tell me my mystery word. So, for example, if I said /c/, /ӑ/, /t/ ... what's my mystery word? Cat would be my mystery word.
So you guys ready? Yes. All right. So first mystery word is /b/, /r/, ...
Students
/b/, /r/, ... bar.
Ms. Huggins: Very good. /C/, /r/ ...
Students: Car.
Ms. Huggins: Oh, this is a tricky one. /Sh/, /r/, /p/ ...
Students: Sharp.
Ms. Huggins: Very good. Yes. The next one ... /f/, /or/ ...
Students: Four.
Ms. Huggins: Very good. /M/, /or/ ...
Students: More.
Ms. Huggins: And last mystery word is /p/, /or/, /ch/ ...
Students: Porch.
Ms. Huggins: Good job. You guys are really good.
Narrator: For more information, please visit reading universe.org. Special thanks to Burgess Peterson Academy and Atlanta Public Schools. Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and two anonymous donors. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington, DC, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.
DeAngela Huggins: This is Reading Universe.
On the next page, we'll cover strategies you can use to help students build these essential reading skills.
