Some clarification for Kenneth here. I am an upper grade teacher who asked about testing lil' first graders. I am definitely at a "phonics" school. Lori and Joy described teaching phonics at the first grade in a less defined, step-by-step manner than many of the programs suggest. Joy, sounds like, gets good test results despite not being overly phonics oriented. I teach fifth and hate to hear about testing little ones.
My thing at the fifth grade level is that when phonics has been over-stressed I receive more word callers at the upper grade. These are students (unlike yours) who can read anything put in front of them. AND they have NO IDEA what they just read. One boy thought Encyclopedia Brown was a story about a big book... In another case I had a friend whose first grade very gifted son was reading HArry Potter Five fluently and explaining it all to me (before the movie) and was still being made to sound out vowels in his class and read little tiny phonics books and reflect on them. So, I am all about balance in instruction and well, just using some plain common sense, too. I am glad to learn that Joy can teach with phonics integrated, but not defining the program, and still get good results. I am also glad your school has adopted some phonics because to teach entirely without it seems also a shame. I do hope as you look at the program you are teaching you look at results not just in the primary grades, but what happens to those students as they get to higher reading in upper grades. That feels like the missing link in phonics research to me, but I could be wrong. :)Bonita > Bonita, > I'm glad to hear that your students are doing so well without phonics > instruction. However, as a 15 year veteran of teaching Title I kiddos, I > consistently find that the students who are still with me or have moved in > after second grade, bring two major areas of weakness with them - phonics and > fluency. They just don't know what to do with those vowel sounds, and they > don't have the background knowledge to "try it both ways". We began teaching > phonics again this year (after not having it in the curriculum for several > years) - we are using Animated Literacy. I am already seeing a huge > difference in our K-1 kiddos who are receiving this instruction. I can't wait > to see how they do on their DRAs at the end of the year! The four elementary > buildings in our district are currently conducting some action researach on > the effectiveness of this phonics instruction - not all buildings are using > it, so we'll be comparing notes at the end of the year. I'll keep you all > posted on what we discover. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
