How to Teach a Phonics Lesson: New/Review

Carla Stanford: So in this part of the lesson, which is like the new or review part, this is where you directly teach your children the phonics pattern or the phonics rule. So here we're going to talk about the direct instruction that happens in the lesson. And this is really important because one feature or characteristic of structured literacy is that instruction is direct and that it is systematic. It is cumulative, meaning it's scoops up everything that has been taught before, interacts with what's been taught before, so kids can take it and use it. And that it's diagnostic. This part of the lesson needs to be really tight. Any participation that I have kids doing, I've thought through that we can accordingly respond, that we can move through it. So we can actually get to the part of the lesson where they are doing the work. Where they have pencil to paper.

So I'm going to use the '-ck' rule as an example of how you could do this direct instruction with children while letting them participate using the information they already know about the way words work. When teaching kids directly about a new phonics pattern, we have to be really intentional about how we teach. In this rule, with '-ck', they have to know short vowels, they need to know closed syllables. And then all of the examples that were chosen for our work on the board really are easy for kids to look through and tap and read. So I would look at the board and I would say to my children, Hey guys, I want you to take a look right here. Reach into your pocket. Pull out your word detective goggles, and take a look. And I want you to look at these words and tell me what you notice.

They will say things like, oh my goodness, I notice that all the words end with a 'k'. And I would say, oh my goodness, you're so smart. Look, I'm going to underline all the 'k's. Looking all the way through. And at the end, they all would end with a 'k', and then someone else would go, oh my goodness, they also have a 'c'. And I'll say, oh, look. And we'll underline. We're acknowledging all their good, noticing, their word detective skills that they have. And then we'll talk about, oh my goodness, together, this is the '-ck'. And they are very excited. They've used their good noticing. And I say, look at these words. What else do you notice? I've done this enough times. And I'll tell you, they always say, oh my goodness, they all have a vowel. So we look here, and we can even call it 'v' for vowel if we wanted to.

Look, you are so right! All of our words have vowels. You are such good word detectives. And if they didn't get this part, I could give them a little hint. I could say, I want you to look at your vowel. Do you notice that it is closed in? And immediately they're going to say, oh my goodness, it is a closed syllable. If the syllable is closed, then the vowel will be short. So we can mark all our vowel short. So this would say, /ĕ/. This would say, /ĭ/. This would say, /ŭ/. This would say, /ă/. This would say, /ŏ/. This would say, /ĭ/. And I would say, you guys have been the most amazing word detectives, and you have figured out this rule that we can use for spelling and reading. And then at this point, I would teach them the rule, but they did all the detective work that got them here where they can see, I know what I need to have to move forward with this rule.

So immediately after a short vowel, at the end of a one syllable word, when you hear /k/ you spell it '-ck', hooray! And that's the rule. Of course, with the kids, I would take more time. We would practice it. They would love it. They would stand up and they would do the cheer. And the cheer is really just this opportunity to connect what they just verbalized and what we just talked about to the rule. So they're making this connection. So I want this chant to help them as they're spelling. And then as soon as they don't need it anymore, we'll take the chant away so that they're just automatically doing the work of spelling words. So from there, I would quickly say, all right, friends, now that you have learned that we have got to add this to our deck. So I could say, alright, here is our '-ck' flashcard that we're going to learn.

And if you look right here, it has a dash. And the dash reminds you that '-ck' can only go after a short vowel at the end of a one syllable word. So we could read it like the '-ck', duck, /k/. And then I would have them read it. And that is going to now be our flashcard that we'll have in our deck. And when we do our flashcard, for days to come, we can say '-ck', duck, /k/. And then the kids can quickly practice the chant. And then the chant can get shortened to immediately '-ck', hurray! Or eventually it just says '-ck' hurray. And they will say it as they're spelling, and it's a nice reminder. So the chant kind of starts really big and has all the words in it, and we go all the way through it. But eventually it's a scaffold that we take away the pieces of until the kids no longer need it. That is how we would teach the '-ck' rule directly and explicitly to our children to get them ready to do the work of reading and spelling the words.

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.