Jolly Phonics V Sound Story

[James Talbot]

Idid a quick introduction to the sound /t/ this time and both boys were eager to practice their letter formation. They love the grooved letters in their finger phonics book that it is sometimes quite difficult to draw their attention to the pictures in the book. I explained how t is written, from the top down and straight across. Xxm could do it independently but Xmm needs me to guide him along.

Yeah, having learned three letter sounds, we made our first attempt at blending. We revised our /s/ and /a/. I demonstrated how to blend at and sat. You can watch this YouTube video on how to introduce blending.

I found a new iPad app called LetterSchool which makes for a fun and engaging way to practice writing your letters (both uppercase and lowercase) and numbers. There is a lite version which is free to try but I guarantee you, you will definitely get the full version after seeing it.

Xxm practiced writing t on LetterSchool. He actually went on to write other letters and enjoyed himself thoroughly doing so.

Xxm loves the letter t since he started learning his alphabets. In fact, it was his first letter which he had picked up from starfall months ago. His fascination with t and progressively the rest of the alphabets is primarily because t is for train. Hence, he worked on his usborne sticker book happily upon seeing the train in the book. Xxm learned that t is for truck, teddy bear, tree, toothbrush, table, tractor, train, tiger and tomato.

The action done when saying the m sound is associated with the picture story like all the other letter actions are. You put one of your hands flat on your tummy, rubbing in a circular motion, saying /m.m.m/.

There are many ways to teach phonics explicitly and systematically, drawing on various resources and texts to support the teaching and learning. Below you will find examples of phonics lessons using a range of texts such as decodable texts, picture story books, teacher constructed texts, predictable texts and high frequency words. Also included are lessons where students write their own texts, because it is through the writing process that students draw on their phonemic awareness and phonic knowledge (Ehri, 2022) to record words that can be read by others.

This classroom lesson demonstrates how a Foundation teacher supports students with their emerging knowledge about reading. Students in the class revisit known high frequency words (I, saw, the, in, a), practise matching a set of letters to sounds (p, b, w, g, i), use that letter/sound recognition to blend consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words and then use this knowledge to read a sentence. Comprehension of the sentence is supported through the strategy of visualisation and by teacher modelling of matching an illustration to the text.

Code spotting refers to the process of matching sounds to letters in a word. Early readers are required to recognise the letters (graphemes) in a word, match to the appropriate phonemes (sounds) and then blend the segmented (or code spotted) sounds into a word.

Additionally in this lesson, the teacher uses hand signals to visually prompt students as they are making the appropriate phoneme for each letter. Hand signals, known as Cued Articulation (Passy, 2010) mimic where and how speech sounds are made in the mouth as prompts for students. Cued Articulation was originally designed for students with severe language disability and hearing impairment but when used with these students alongside their peers in classrooms it has been found to assist other students in their learning. It is now a practice used with the explicit teaching of phonics to support student learning more generally.

Teacher: Oh, you're so clever. Do you think we can quietly make a circle? All right, I'm going to put our words out, as I put them down, you might want to read them, so you can remember what they say.

Teacher: If you finish reading your sentence, I want you to find a partner to read it too. And we're gonna have a go at reading some of the words that are in our sentence. Do you think you can do it?

Teacher: You need to code, spot, and blend. All right, [Student Name], here's your word. [Student Name], here's your word, buddy. Don't forget it makes two sounds. What's its first sound?

Teacher: Yeah. Are you going to draw that in your picture? Well done, I'm so proud of you. All right, papers down. I need to choose a few people who can come and share their learning with us today. Oh, let me see. [Student Name], can you come up buddy? [Student Name], I really love the way you're listening today, you're being so respectful. [Student Name], I'll hold it for you. Do you wanna read your sentence to the class?

Teacher: Blend. So, did you learn how to read some new words today? I'm going to collect your work, and tomorrow when we have reading, you're going to put it in your book box, so you can read it on another day.

Teacher [Interview]: We decide what codes to focus on in our lesson today based on the data from the previous unit. That data lets us know what codes students need to review on an individual and whole group level. At this school, we do fluid groupings across the whole prep community. We use the data to determine what fluid groups our foundation students are in, and we review this every five weeks. When students need help to remember a letter sound, we use the hand signal to help them remember how that sound is made. We spoke to the speech pathologist, and did some professional reading, and we found that continuous blending would be something we could try to help the students understand, and that was a focus in our lesson today.

This classroom lesson demonstrates how a Foundation teacher supports students to accurately spell high frequency words in their writing by referring to the classroom word wall for assistance. Learning to recognise and write words automatically contributes to orthographic mapping. Developing orthographic mapping is an integral part of phonics instruction as the association between letters and words become stored in long-term memory to assist the later accurate retrieval of these words (Flanigan et al., 2022).

The teacher models writing a sentence containing high frequency words and explicitly demonstrates how to locate and identify the relevant high frequency words on the classroom word wall. The teacher refers to the identified high frequency words to ensure accurate spelling. Students then practise this skill either in a small, guided writing focus group or by writing individually.

- [Teacher] To start our writing today, we are going to do our quick little warmup that we absolutely love in Prep A, don't we? We are going to play 'Word Wall Slap'. Can we all point to where the word wall is? Awesome, who could tell me what is all over our word wall? [Student Name]

- [Teacher] High frequency words. Okay, we've got all our high frequency words on the word wall. Now remember, high frequency words, we see a lot as we're reading and writing, and as we're talking, aren't we? Okay, so I'm going to pick two friends. They're going to line up on that side of the word wall because remember, we need to make sure it's fair for everyone. Standing side by side, I'm going to say a word and you need to carefully look for the sound that the word starts with, and then find the word, try and read the word and smack the correct word. The first one to smack the correct word wins the round, okay?

- [Teacher] H, it makes a /h/ sound, doesn't it? All right, so now we're going to move on to our learning intention for writing today. Now we've looked at this learning intention a few times this term in Prep, haven't we? So today, we are going to spell high frequency words correctly in my writing. I think it's important to teach high frequency words explicitly because in Prep, especially for reading and writing, is such a vital part of their work. It is everywhere when they are speaking to others, reading texts when they're starting to learn how to read, and writing their own texts as well. I believe it's important to expose them to high frequency words as often as possible because it is everywhere in the literature we're constantly reviewing in a Prep classroom, and it's building their independence to use these new words as well in their reading and writing. So to remind you, high frequency means we see them a lot. They're always in our writing, reading, and speaking. When we're spelling high frequency words correctly as we're writing, I say correctly because we need to make sure they're spelled right, don't we? And we can use what to make sure we spell them correctly?

- [Teacher] We use the word wall. Good job, it is very useful to make sure we're spelling high frequency words correctly. So in our story, the little monkey lost his mum, and he needs to look in lots of different places where his mum could be. Can anyone remember some of those places that the little monkey looked to find his mum? Can you tell the person next to you? What are some of the places? Tell the person next to you, yeah. All right, perfect. Who can share with me some of the places that the little monkey looked? [Student Name]?

- [Teacher] Up on the tree up in the tree, didn't he? Awesome, so he looked in the tree, he looked in the jungle, on the pond, and up high in the sky. So he looked in lots of different places to find his mum, and we are going to use the word wall to help us spell high frequency words correctly as we are doing our writing. Now, when I'm spelling the, I know that's a word that I find a lot when I'm reading and writing, I know it is on my word wall, and I can see some of us already know where it is because you've got your hand up ready to show me. When we say the word the, I know that there are two letters that join together to make this tricky first sound. Can you say the sound with me? /th/ /th/ Good job. It starts with, yes, thank you. It starts with 'th' because that makes a /th/ sound. The. Okay, I can see the 'th' on my word wall, and I look for the and remember that ends with a tricky e sound, doesn't it? I'm going to make sure I start my sentence with an uppercase letter. So I need an uppercase T, and then I need H, and E. Let's read it just to make sure my writing makes sense. The little monkey looks up.

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