Literacy Matters - Winter 2020

information (Robinson et al., 2006), specific short phonics- concept-related activities during reading may include:

in a clear, well-sealed bag or a soft, thick piece of rug. After saying the letter names of each letter of a non-phonetic word, students pronounce the entire word at the end while underlining it with their pointer finger of their writing hand in a swooshing gesture. This last step ensures that students remember how to pronounce an irregular word while the first steps ensure that students master the spelling of an irregular, non-phonetic word. Students repeat these procedures at least 3-5 times before moving on to another irregular word. knowledge about a specific pattern by engaging them in a brief word pattern sort or word picture sort similar to materials used in the commercial program or reusing materials such as provided in the Words Their Way series for native and non-native speakers of English (i.e., Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2015; Helman, & Bear, 2013; Templeton, 2008). Such sorting activities can include words from the to-be-read text. Where necessary, teachers make spelling or reading rules explicit to students to ensure that any sorting activity is meaningful and reinforces correct knowledge about a phonics concept. 2. Knowing what phonics concept/s is/are to be focused on in post-reading activities, teachers pre-activate students’ 3. If a word sort in which students work in teams and discuss reasons for placing words in certain patterns is not appropriate for certain spelling or reading rules in the text, students may engage in word detective work by dividing teacher-provided words according to a learned rule (see concept 7), or correct spelling errors based on a learned rule (see concept 8). 4. Depending on the diverse nature of learner needs, teachers preteach the meaning and pronunciation of the key words that contain the phonics concepts in focus is key. For such practice, students repeatedly pronounce words syllable by syllable and then blend these syllables together into the entire word either in individual, pair or choral response activities. Word meaning practice can involve providing image-supported contexts in which students may use a given word or phrase that contains a phonics concept. For instance, teachers state examples of how to use the word ‘ replace’ (see concept 9) and gives students opportunities to orally use the word multiple times in different contexts giving their own meaningful examples. Later, they encounter that word reading in the authentic literature source (Archer & Hughes, 2010; Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2013). During Reading Activities with Identified Patterns Aside from allowing students to use strategies to keep their eyes focused on reading line by line from left to right (i.e., finger tracking, a card strip or a colored transparent slip) and common teacher- or student-led comprehension strategies such as taking side notes on a separate piece of paper, in a notebook, on sticky notes or a graphic organizer to record key information, arising questions, or predictions about upcoming

1. Aside from text and vocabulary comprehension questions, during teacher-led read-alouds, teachers can prompt phonics- related comprehension/decoding questions to reinforce the use of a learned phonics concept while reading authentic literature. Among them could be how to double-check if a certain word is really what it is by prompting a sounding out technique for words (see phonics concepts 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6 in this article) or by prompting the application of a syllable division strategy (see concepts 7 and 9). Words following certain learned spelling rules (see concept 8) can be prompted for as well at the end of a paragraph. Individually or in teams, students practice metacognitive reasoning for their responses that they can provide orally or in writing on portable small white boards. When students read on their own teachers can provide such prompts on an individual basis as they discover decoding and/or reading comprehension issues or want to just reinforce a learned phonics skill. Such prompting for metacognitive processing strengthens students’ independent self-correction skills and self- esteem as successful readers in meaningful repetitive reading practice with authentic literature (Birsh & Carraker, 2018). Post Reading Activities with Identified Patterns Post-reading activities for students to enforce their phonics-concept awareness with multisensory, structured, metacognitive activities after their reading experience with authentic literature may include the following: 1. Students become language detectives by completing a chart similar to that the teacher completed about phonics patterns in the piece of ACL (see Figure 1). They can be asked in teams (and under a time constraint of a few minutes) to scan the text for specific words with a given phonics concept (see concepts 1-9) such as a {oo} words in long or short pronunciation, words that start with a certain prefix, irregular words, words containing a certain spelling or word division rule. Students may all work on the same book but different sections and look for same or different phonics concepts to make the practice more time efficient. They may also search for an aspect in different pieces of ACL. 2. Post-reading writing activities can include asking students to select 3-5 words that carry the phonics concept in focus and either write a brief free poetry piece in response to the content of the piece of literature that they can also illustrate. Another context in which to respond to the content of the book or the personal reading experience would be journal entries or responses to teacher-provided questions about 2. To foster fluent, comprehensible reading with proper intonation of phrases, sentence or paragraphs that contain a specific phonics concept, teachers ask students to repeat certain troublesome sections until they have accomplished that goal (Ardoin, McCall, & Klubnik, 2006).

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