Saxon Phonics Program Lesson 45
Takeshi Krueger
A study conducted by PRES Associates, Inc. showed that students using Saxon demonstrated significant gains in reading, phonics, and spelling. The program also works for speakers of languages other than English and special education students.
My dd has problems scanning left to right. She tends to let her eyes jump back to the left when she needs to be going to the right, hence she reverses letters. She also skips the small words (on, onto, in, no, him, her,etc.). She will guess at words but it is because she has read the vowel wrong calling a short vowel sound a long vowel sound and vice-versa. I am working on these things with her speech therapist. We are doing sciatic eye muscle training , phonic worksheets (timed), echo reading, as well as the Fast ForWord training. Her speech and learning therapist said that I should be able to use about any phonics program once she finishes Fast ForWord Language to Reading.
I also have the AVKO Sequential Spelling which I am using successfully with her brother. I tried it with my dd, but put it away for awhile. My dd has been using the computer program Fast ForWord (actually FF1 and FF2). Hopefully
she will finish it this summer and I can go back to her spelling program. It was just too much to do all the phonics and spelling plus FF.
Yes, Beth is right! Saxon is an excellent phonics program for typical kids. But it did move too fast for my child with APD. I think we were lucky to have it as the regular class instruction, but just as Beth said, she will need extra instruction in PG to master her decoding skills.
I had someone suggests this to me on another thread. I've never seen Saxon Phonics and I'm having trouble finding samples of it anywhere. I'm interested in hearing about saxon phonics and saxon phonics intervention. Pro/Cons, everything!
With the pressures and concerns about NCLB and working in a low socio-economic neighborhood, our school district has implemented some mandates to try to ensure the success of our students. It is sort of an interesting imbalance. First, they chose to mandate the use of the SAXON phonics program. It is required of all teachers of students in K- 2. The program teaches phonics in isolation and it takes 40 to 75 minutes to teach each day.
The second interesting situation is that we are given 4 aides that come into our rooms for an hour each day to teach fluency in small group direct instruction. We use programs such as Reading Mastery and Read Well. The idea was to meet the needs of all students on their level. The reality is that only 2 of my 23 students are in an intensively low situation. Then I have 2 more who are only slightly below benchmark. The vast majority of my students are READERS! and good ones at that. They do not NEED interventions in fluency. They need comprehension, vocabulary, and writing!!! Because about two hours a day is taken up by fluency and phonics- there is little to no time left for vocabulary, comprehension, or writing. I try to work these into my social studies and science lessons- but it is very lacking!
I was able to cover these areas at the last school I taught at. When I mentioned this, our reading facilitator answered, "Yes, but that was NOT a title one school !" We (our second-grade team) has finally gotten enough courage to approach the school district about our concerns that we are not teaching with a balanced literacy approach.
Dr. _________ told of the success you had in Chicago, I felt that you could give me information and ideas to bring to the table to help our district people understand better the value of a more balanced literacy approach.
Additionally, when you choose a curriculum that engages different learning styles, your phonics lessons will have movement and energy! The variety keeps kids focused and positive! One of my top strategies for teaching reading is to keep the lesson moving (Read My Top 5 Reading Strategies). Switching up learning activities is key to keeping frustration at bay!
This folder contains 10 Saxon Phonics SMARTBOARD lessons. You must have smart notebook software to open. The folder includes lessons 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74 ,76, and 77 (assessment lessons excluded) from the Saxon Phonics FIRST GRADE Curriculum. The lessons supplement the Saxon Phonics Program and teaches a different skill each day including compound words, suffix less/ness/ly, digraph ai, ay, ch, combination ar, ir, ur, and qu. Don't let your phonics lessons be boring anymore!!! Included in the lessons are fun links, interactive cubes, sight word review, phonics rule review, words for coding, fun pictures, and more. Keeps the class actively engaged during phonics!! Approximately 80 pages per lesson!! You can use this year after year!! GREAT USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM!!
Note: Students in this lesson have first attained a certain level of conceptual developmement in the area of phonemic awareness. Students also understand that letters are composed of individual sounds and they have worked on blending phonemes to form words. I used the Saxon Phonics Program but any program will do. My students were also familar with SMART Board and using a mouse on a computer before beginning this lesson.
Saxon Phonics or other phonics program (not needed if you introduce the letters as mentioned in this lesson). 1-6 Child letter vest(s) with two rows of pockets Multiple letter cards for letters taught (I did blank cards on white construction paper and lamenated them so that they could be reused). These will be the phonemes or letters that match the picture cards for the vest. Create picture cards to be placed in the student vest(s) and lamenate. You may use the pictures uploaded with this lesson.
- phonics lesson pictures.doc
If you use the Saxon Phonics Program or introduce the letters in the order provided in this lesson, it will work. If you are teaching phonics from a core reading program, you may have to adapt the pictures and words to go along with the order of that program. Some core programs may not allow the flexiblity to do this lesson until all of the letters and sounds have been taught. . This lesson works best with a small group of 6-10 or in centers. My students loved using the picture/word vest and the SMART Board to match the words that they learned to read!
Guidance for teachers includes information about common phonics misconceptions and guiding principles related to specific phonics skills. Guidance provides detailed and specific instructional strategies with consistent routines for teaching each phonics skill. Materials include some guidance for providing students with feedback. Materials provide detailed guidance for connecting previously taught phonics skills to new learning. Materials include some guidance on how to pace each lesson, including specific time suggestions for each component of the gradual release model.
Materials include embedded modeling and practice with word lists, decodable sentences, and decodable connected texts in the lesson. Materials provide activities to practice word reading fluency in a variety of settings. Materials provide a variety of grade-level decodable connected texts aligned to the phonics scope and sequence.
The Saxon Phonics and Spelling 1 materials provide some explicit instruction, practice, and review pertaining to print concepts. The materials contain Decodable Readers, Fluency Readers (optional), and printed sentences for teaching print concepts. The program teaches print concepts by writing sentences from the Decodable Reader on the board; however, lessons do not direct the teacher to connect the sentence(s) to the Decodable Reader. Students can review letter formation with worksheets; however, the lessons do not indicate when teachers review letter formation.
The Saxon Phonics and Spelling 1 materials do not consistently provide the teacher with systematic, explicit modeling for instruction in each phonological awareness standard. There is minimal instruction for distinguishing long and short vowel sounds, segmenting spoken single-syllable words, and blending phonemes to produce single-syllable words. There are three lessons in the program dedicated to blending phonemes to produce single-syllable words orally. Of the three lessons, one lesson provides a model of blending phonemes. There is no evidence that the teacher explicitly models isolating and pronouncing initial, medial vowel, or final sounds in spoken single-syllable words. Phonological awareness lessons include some examples for the teacher to use in the tasks. Some phonological awareness lessons include printed letter tiles, which is not phonological awareness.
The Grade 1 Saxon lessons have some explicit instruction of phonics skills. There is limited teacher modeling. The materials provide students with limited opportunities to decode words in isolation and in-context. Students have opportunities to review previously learned grade-level phonics. The materials contain limited teacher-level instruction/modeling for building/manipulating/spelling and encoding words. Students have frequent opportunities to build/manipulate/spell and encode when students use Letter Tiles and worksheets. The materials do not include directions for the teacher to model encoding words. Students have some opportunities to encode words in sentences, and they have frequent opportunities to encode single words on worksheets.
In the Saxon Phonics and Spelling 1 lessons, some, but not all lessons, contain explicit instructions for systematic and repeated teacher modeling of all grade-level phonics standards. Many lessons do not have repeated teacher modeling over time. Several lessons only have the teacher model an example, and students practice with a few words/sounds, and then students move to worksheet practice. Many lessons do not have repeated teacher modeling over time. Some lessons ask the students to figure out the letter-sound patterns rather than the teacher explicitly teaching the letter-sound patterns.
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