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Phonics for Reading

Program Training

Trainer _________________________Teacher ________________________Date ___________________________

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What is Phonics for Reading?

1. A research-based program that:

2. Focuses on the decoding, fluency, and comprehension skills usually mastered in grades K-3.

3. Utilizes explicit, teacher-directed instruction to introduce skills and strategies.

4. Provides distributed practice and cumulative review.

5. Targets students in second grade and above who have not mastered the skills generally taught in the primary grades.

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Program Goals• Increase students’ phonemic awareness.

• Strengthen letter-sound associations.

• Increase decoding skills for single syllable and multi-syllabic words.

• Increase instant recognition of high frequency words.

• Improve spelling of single syllable and multi-syllabic words.

• Promote passage reading fluency and related comprehension.

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Why might you want to use Phonics for Reading?

1. The components of Phonics for Reading match those recommended by the National

Panel of Reading (2000) and the Institute of Education Sciences (2009) as essential to

a beginning reading program:

1. Phonemic Awareness

2. Letter/Sound Associations

3. Decoding of short and long words

4. Spelling

5. High frequency words

6. Passage reading

7. Passage reading comprehension

8. Fluency

n The word length, illustrations, passages, and font size are appropriate for students

beyond first grade.

n The program has proven effectiveness, is cost-effective, and is easy to implement.

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Tour of Phonics for Reading

Level 1 (30 Lessons)– Scope and Sequence – Example Lesson

Level 2 (32 Lessons)– Scope and Sequence– Example Lesson

Level 3 (36 Lessons)– Scope and Sequence– Example Lesson

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Phonemic Awareness - Why

1. The best early predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten and first grade

is the inability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units.

(Lyon, G.R. 1995)

2. Phonemic awareness is more highly related to learning to read than are tests

of general intelligence, reading readiness, and listening comprehension.

(Stanovich, 1993)

3. Phonological awareness instruction will accelerate the reading growth of all

children, and it appears to be vital for at 20% of children to acquire useful

reading skills. (Torgesen & Mathes, 1998)

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Phonemic Awareness - How1. At-risk students need training that is more explicit. (Torgesen,

Wagner, & Rasholte, 1994)

2. Phonemic awareness activities should:

A. Be few in number.

B. Focus on blending and segmenting.

C. Be explicitly modeled.

D. Include all students.

E. Make tasks more concrete using gestures or objects.

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Letter-Sound Associations - Why

1. English is an alphabetical language.

2. Readers process virtually every word they read. (Rayner &

Rollatsek, 1989)

3. Successful readers rely on letters.

4. Students with letter-sound association knowledge perform better.

(Juel, 1991)

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Letter-Sound Associations - How

1. Struggling readers need explicit instruction on letter-

sound associations.

2. A distinction should be made between continuous and

stop sounds.

3. Consistent review is necessary to build rapid recognition.

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Decoding - Single Syllable Words - Why

1. Diverse learners must be encouraged to look carefully at spelling and sounds

and to repeatedly sound out and blend words. (Reitsma, 1983)

2. That explicit instruction in alphabet coding facilitates early reading

acquisition is one of the most well established conclusions in all of

behavioral science. (Stanovich, 1994)

3. Good readers rely primarily on the letters in a word rather than context or

pictures to identify familiar and unfamiliar words. (Ehri, 1994)

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Decoding - Single Syllable Words - How

1. Focused instruction in phonics is superior to other approaches when

teaching students word recognition, oral reading, and spelling.

(Chall, 1983)

2. Students need to be explicitly taught how to blend sounds into

words.

3. The words should include known sounds.

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Decoding - Multi-Syllabic Words - Why

1. Poor decoders have a difficult time with multi-syllabic words. (Just

& Carpenter, 1987)

2. The ability to decode long words increases the qualitative

differences between good and poor readers. (Perfetti, 1986)

3. The average 5th grader encounters 10,000 new words each year.

Most of these words are multi-syllabic words. (Nagy & Anderson,

1984)

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Decoding - Multi-Syllabic Words - How

1. As students are introduced to single syllable words, they should be

introduced to multi-syllabic words with the same letter/sound associations.

2. When students are decoding unknown multi-syllabic words, it is to their

advantage to know prefixes and suffixes. Such knowledge will also help in

learning the meaning of a word. (Chall & Popp, 1996)

3. It is particularly useful to introduce longer words to struggling students as it

increases their interest and motivation.

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High Frequency Words - Why

1. 100 words account for approximately 50% of the words in English print.

(Fry, Fountoukidis, & Polk, 1985)

2. 13 words (a, and, for, he, is, in, it, of, that, the, to, was, you) account for

25% of words in print. (Johns, 1980)

3. The quick and automatic recognition of the most common words appearing

in text is necessary for fluent reading. (Blevins, 1998)

4. Many of the words that appear most often in print are irregular.

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High Frequency Words - How

1. Focus on the highest frequency words.

2. Introduce using through modeling, sounding out, or spelling out the

word.

3. Provide distributive and cumulative practice that will build

automaticity (instant recognition).

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Spelling - Why 1. The careful examination of words that is part of formal spelling instruction can

beneficially affect not only the efficiency and quality of students’ writing experiences

but their reading experiences as well. (Adam, 1990)

2. Without fluent spelling skills, many students continue to struggle with the mechanics of

the writing process and cannot focus their attention and energy on what and why they are

writing. (Harris & Graham, 1996)

3. Research findings confirm that spelling, for most people, requires something above and

beyond experience with reading. The ability to read words does not always guarantee

that a child will be able to spell a word. (Treiman, 1996)

4. Spelling was included as a daily activity in the strongest primary reading classes. (Juel &

Minden-Cupp, 2000)

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Spelling - How

1. Select high frequency decodable words that the students can read.

2. Include single syllable and multi-syllabic words for older struggling

readers.

3. Teach students strategies for spelling words.

4. To enhance generalization, dictate sentences.

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Decodable Text - Why

1. The important point is that a high proportion of the words in the earliest

selections students read should conform to the phonics they have already

been taught. Otherwise, they will not have enough opportunity to practice,

extend, and refine their knowledge of letter/sound relationships. (Becoming

a Nation of Readers, 1985)

2. Decodable text is useful in beginning reading for developing automaticity

and fluency.

3. Beck (1997) estimated that in order for students to develop reliable word

identification strategies, 70% to 80% of the text students read in beginning

should be wholly decodable.

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Decodable Text - How 1. Passage reading procedures should provide students with as much

practice as possible.

2. First, have students read the story segment (or portion of the

segment) silently.

3. Then, have students read the segment orally (choral reading, cloze

reading, partner reading, or individual turns).

4. Passages should be read more than one time to increase fluency.

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Passage Reading Procedures

Silent Reading

– Tell students to read a certain amount.

– Ask them to reread material if they finish early.

– Monitor students’ reading. Have them whisper-read to you.

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Passage Reading Procedures

Choral Reading

– Read selection with your students.

– Read at a moderate rate

– Tell your students, “Keep your voice with mine.”(Students may silently read material before choral reading.)

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Passage Reading Procedures

Individual Turns

– Use with small groups.

– Call on an individual student to read.

– Call on students in random order.

– Vary the amount of material read.

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Passage Reading Procedures

Partner Reading

– Assign each student a partner.

– Reader whisper reads to partner. Students alternate by sentence, paragraph, or segment.

– Coach corrects errors.Ask - Can you figure out this word?Tell - This word is _____. What word?

Reread the sentence.

Alternatives to support lowest readers– First reader (better reader) reads material. Second reader reads the SAME

material.

– Students read the material together.

– Partners allowed to say “me” or “we”.

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Passage Reading Procedures

Cloze Reading– Read material orally, deleting words.– Stop and have students say the missing word.– Delete words that create meaning.

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Fluency - What

“The ability to read connected test rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically with little conscious attention to the mechanics of reading such as decoding.” (Meyer & Felton, 1999)

The ability to read connected text accurately with appropriate rate and expression (prosody).(Judson, Mercer, & Lane, 2000)

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Fluency - Why

Fluency is related to reading comprehension.(Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998; Fuchs, Fuchs, & Maxwell, 1988; Jenkins, Fuchs, Espin, van den Broek, & Deno, 2000)

When students read fluently, decoding requires less attention. Attention can be given to comprehension. (Samuels, Schermer, &Reinking, 1992)

An accurate, fluent reader will read more. (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998; Stanovich, 1993)

The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. (Stanovich, 1986 )

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Fluency - How

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE and more PRACTICE

Procedure #1. Provide extensive reading practice.

(Silent, choral, individual turns, partner, cloze)

Procedure #2. Work on fluency at the word level.

(When reading word lists, correct all errors, have students reread word lists until competent.)

Procedure #3. Utilize repeated reading exercises to increase fluency. (Chard et.al, 2002)

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Fluency - How

Procedure #3. Repeated Reading- Student reads the same material a number of times (at least three)

General procedure

1. Students whisper-read for one minute.2. Students whisper-read for one minute attempting to go beyond first

read.3. Partner # 1 reads for a minute. Partner #2 underlines errors and

determines number of correct words read per minute.4. Partner # 2 reads for a minute. Partner #1 underlines errors and

determines number of correct words read per minute.

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Comprehension - What Reading comprehension is:

- the ability to extract meaning from text.

- the intentional thinking during which meaning is constructed through interactions between the text and reader. (Durkin, 1993)

- purposeful and active. (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995)

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Comprehension - Why

Comprehension of text material is the goal of ALL reading instruction.

Comprehension is the REASON for reading.

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Comprehension - How

The following types of comprehension tasks are included inPhonics for Reading:- Answering literal and inferential questions on passage- Matching passage segments to illustrations- Sentence completion- Selection of sentence to match illustration- Passage reading and Sentence completion- Reordering words/phrases into sentences- Answering who, what, where, when questions- Answering range of passage questions- Identifying word that does not go in set

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Comprehension - How

Comprehension Exercises

1) Do the activities verbally.

2) Do the activities verbally and then have students complete them.

3) Have students complete activities independently.

4) If time is limited, delete activities.

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Additional materials found at back of book

Word Lists Individual Education Plan Letters of Progress Placement Test

– Individual Student Record– Group Record

Review of Related Research