Where does phonics
instruction fit within a comprehensive literacy program? When and how would you
teach phonics?
I do
believe phonics instruction is important in the primary grades and should be incorporated
into a comprehensive literacy program.
However, I do not think children must have phonemic awareness before
they can learn to read. I actually think phonics instruction plays a bigger
role in a child learning to spell correctly than learning to read. The Weaver text referred to three
relationships between phonemic awareness and learning to read. The third relationship stated, “Learning to
read and phonemic awareness facilitate each other.” Right now I would have to say I agree with
this relationship the most. They are a “reciprocal
mutually supporting relationship” (Weaver, 2002, p. 316). Students will be able to learn how to read
without the explicit phonics instruction, but in my opinion the lessons don’t hinder
the reading process, so I prefer to use them.
I have
taught phonics by embedding it into the reading instruction, and I’ve also
taught it by using a phonics program with daily lessons. I have to say I prefer having the phonics
lessons while teaching. This way I am
sure to cover all the age appropriate phonics skills. There is no way I would have taught the 100+
phonics lessons during my reading lessons, this past year with my first graders,
without having access to the phonics program.
The phonics lessons only take about 15 minutes. I don’t
teach the phonics lesson and think I’ve taught my students reading for the
day. I look at it as a separate component
and a tool for the students to use while learning to read and spell. My students have a 45 minute block of reading
centers, about 15 minutes of phonics, and 30-40 minutes of reading
instruction. I believe the goal of
reading is to gain meaning from text, and I do not think phonics lessons help
students gain meaning, but it does help them understand words and sounds. I don’t remember being taught phonics as a
child and spelling was never my strongest point, and I believe lacking basic
phonics skills and knowledge early on in school may have been part of the
reason why. Once I started teaching
phonics in my own classroom I began to learn a lot that either I was never
taught or maybe forgot, but immediately I thought about how critical the letter
and sound knowledge was for spelling. By
no means do I expect my students to memorize all the phonic rules because I don’t
even know them all, but I do think the exposure to the phonics rules and
lessons is beneficial for emergent readers and writers. Since I have a separate block of time for
phonics instruction in my class I don’t have to worrying about covering it
during my reading instruction, and I can focus on reading skills and strategies
and developing comprehension and the importance of gathering meaning while
reading.
I support
the separate phonics lessons because once my students have been exposed to the them
I start to notice them pointing out words with blends, digraphs, final stable syllables,
long vowels, suffixes etc. while we are reading. I also teach coding symbols for long vowels,
short vowels, etc., and I also notice students using some of the coding symbols
while writing to help them spell. I
truly believe the 15 minute systematic phonics instruction is beneficial to my
students, because I see them using the knowledge and skills they have learned
from phonics lessons while reading and writing.
The Weaver text mostly talked about how having separate phonics lessons isn’t
necessary, but I fully support the phonics program I use because I feel I saw
more results with using it this past year than in previous years when I didn’t. However, I believe the purpose of phonics
lessons is to help students understand letter/sound relationships and how words
are made and not to teach students
how to read.
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