Practice and Learn

In this activity you will revisit what you've learned in the previous four sections. You'll prepare a lesson, teach it to a teaching partner or your students, and practice corrective feedback.

Instructions:

To prepare for your roleplay, download or print this form (opens in new window) to plan your practice lesson, including correcting errors using the corrective feedback process.  

1. Begin by reading this short story. 

   

2. Choose Level-Appropriate Words for the Lesson. Pick out 12 one-syllable words in the story to practice phoneme awareness instruction with your partner as the student. Write them down in the lesson plan template organized from simple to complex. Remember that words with two sounds are simpler than words with three sounds, followed by words with beginning blends. Words with final blends are more complex. 

   For example, these story words are ordered from simple to complex: odd, it, see, then, town, sky, small, sound, clouds.

   Then sort the words into short lists that will help focus instruction into practicing words with beginning and ending sounds, middle sounds, and then consonant blends (both beginning and ending blends). 

3. Prepare for Word Play. For each of your twelve words, use word play and multisensory cues to help your partner learn to isolate, segment and blend the sounds of the word.
4. Use Multisensory Cues. You may want to encourage your partner to tap out the sounds with their fingers as they segment the word, or use another multisensory strategy you learned earlier in this course.
5. Build Speaking and Listening Skills. As you provide instruction on one of the words, point to the word in the story. Mark the word on your planning for your partner to see.  
6. Give Corrective Feedback. Make sure your partner knows to make a few mistakes in the activity so that you can practice giving them corrective feedback. When your partner makes a mistake, record the type of error in the Error Recording Form. Then follow the corrective feedback procedures you learned on the previous page.
7. When you finish the roleplay, ask your partner to give you feedback on your efforts to provide corrective feedback. 

Taking good notes on your students’ progress with phonemes can be really helpful for your lead teacher to know how to support each student. We included a sample phoneme awareness error recording sheet (opens in new window) that you might want to try with your lead teacher. You may also want to ask if any other information would also be helpful for you to track in your lessons and share with them.

On the next page you can check your knowledge about giving meaningful and encouraging corrective feedback.