Teaching Phonics in Whole Group
“Who teaches whole group phonics anyway?”
YUP...that's exactly what I used to say. When people started talking about whole group phonics, I have to admit, I didn't see why it was important! I thought,
We need to meet our students where they are.
Phonics instruction should be differentiated.
Phonics instruction should be taught in small group only.
I mean.. seriously. What was I thinking?
Do we need to meet our students where they are? YES!
But does it hurt to expose them to grade-level content? NO!
I bet you are wondering why I changed my mind, aren't you? The truth is, I realized that I was failing my students.
Here in Virginia, we have a screening known as PALS (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening). This screening assesses spelling, oral reading fluency, phonological awareness, and letter/sound knowledge.
Two years ago, our students BOMBED the spelling portion of this assessment. I cried for days. I kept thinking "We did everything! We focused on phonics and decoding, we added in the dictation, and we connected it to decodable texts. What else could we have done???"
and then.....it hit me. I looked down at the word list and these were the words that I saw:
Guess what?? The particular group of students that bombed the spelling assessment, spelled every single CVC word correctly. They even did well on blends and digraphs. They had NO knowledge of r-controlled vowels or vowel teams.
Why? Because we were meeting their needs in a small group, but we were not exposing them to grade-level content.
You better believe the team and I got to work. We knew that if we wanted them to have a fighting chance at the end of the year, we had to expose them to phonics patterns that were appropriate for their grade level.
We first sat down to decide on a scope and sequence that would be appropriate across k-2. We examined the assessment and decided what should be covered in each grade level.
Then we brainstormed what our whole group phonics instruction might look like. We knew it had to be explicit and systematic, but we also knew that we had to keep it short and sweet.
Alas, our whole group phonics slides have arrived and I want to share the very first set with you!!
And if you LOVE them as much as we do, you can snag the entire short vowel set below!
I hope that your week is off to a wonderful start and that this freebie made it even better!
Don't forget, you still have time to sign up for the free phonics webinar!!
