Differentiating Instruction for Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Word Recognition

1. Differentiating Instruction for Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Word Recognition Sharon Walpole Michael C. McKenna

2. Agenda • Who needs this type of instruction? • What data must be gathered? • What planning decisions must be made? • What are some tricks of the trade?

3. We are combining ideas from Chapters 3 and 4

4. Remember our plan

5. What are we trying to teach? • These children still need to work on learning letter names and sounds, and they are not yet able to segment phonemes automatically. • They will work on coordinated activities to manipulate phonemes, learn new letters and sounds, and review letters previously taught. • They will work with letters and words during small-group time.

6. How will we know when we’ve accomplished our goal? • When children are able to segment and blend sounds easily, we should change our focus to word recognition and fluency. In that group, we will continue to work with word recognition, but we will be using phonics-controlled text for practice. • Remember that our goal is to make each of our groupings temporary and targeted.

7. In our tiered system, who is likely to need this type of differentiated instruction?

8. What data can we use to identify the children?

9. DIBELS ISF and LNF high risk or some risk • We KNOW: These children are not on track for achieving the spring first-grade ORF goal • We NEED to know: Which letter names they need and whether they have been taught?

10. Let’s find out • Give a letter-name inventory (in random order) to see which letters they need. • Use your phonics scope and sequence to see whether they’ve had an opportunity to learn those letters yet! • (For early emergent readers, find out whether they can sing, say, and finger-point the alphabet with an alphabet strip.)

11. DIBELS PSFhigh risk or some risk • We KNOW: These children are not on track for achieving the spring-first grade ORF goal. • We can FIGURE OUT: Whether they can segment to onset-rime or phoneme-by-phoneme.

12. Let’s find out • For children with extremely low scores, use an informal phonological awareness screening to see whether they can respond to syllables or onsets and rimes.

13. DIBELS NWFhigh risk or some risk • We KNOW: These children are not on track for achieving the spring first-grade ORF goal • We NEED to know: What letter sounds letter patterns they need to learn and whether they can blend sounds.

14. Let’s find out • Give a letter-sound inventory (in random order) to see which sounds they need • Use your phonics scope and sequence to see whether they’ve had an opportunity to learn those sounds yet!

15. Let’s find out • Use your scope and sequence documents to identify all of the words that you’ve taught already • Give a high-frequency word inventory only for those words.

16. And one more thing • Find out whether these children have concept of word (the ability to finger-point while pretending to read a memorized text). • You can do this with any poem or text that you’ve already used often enough that the children have memorized it, but it must have at least some two-syllable words.

17. Now you’re ready! • Do you have one group or two? • There may be one small group of extremely weak students, without any real alphabet knowledge. • Generally, it will be difficult to work with more than 5 students at a time • Combine all of the items that they don’t know into one list.

18. Combining these results will provide you a collection of known and unknown items for each child; their needs will probably not be exactly the same.

19. To make your plan, start with the letter names and sounds • Divide them into sets of two (and then you can add a review letter each day to make three) • Now choose your Phonemic Awareness strategy. Read pages 36-47. Think about whether you have pictures and manipulatives to use.

20. Initial Sound Sorting Script • Today we are going to work with words that have different beginning sounds. Some of our words will sound like /b/ bag, /b/ bag, /b/ bag. Say that with me. /b/ bag. Others will sound like /m/ mit, /m/ mit, /m/ mit. Say that sound with me. /m/ mit. The rest of the words we will work with sound like /r/ rat, /r/ rat, /r/ rat. Say that one with me. /r/ rat.” Then introduce the first additional picture for the day. Say, “Does mop start like bag or like mit or like rat?”

21. Segmenting and Blending Script • I’ll say the sounds in a word slowly, then you say them fast. ffff/iiii/zzzz. Say them fast. Fizz. mmmm/aaaa/nnnn. Say them fast. Man. p/iiii/nnnn. Say them fast. Pin. • Let’s say the sounds in the word fizz slowly. /ffff/ /iiii/ /zzzz/. I hear three sounds in fizz. Let’s say the sounds in man. /mmmm/ /aaaa/ /nnnn/. I hear three sounds in man. Say the sounds in pin. /p/ /iiii/ /nnnn/. I hear three sounds in pin.

22. Say-it-and-move-it Script • Line up your markers on your arrow, and get your finger ready to say it and move it. I’ll say a word. You say my word slowly. Then you say it and move it.

23. Say-it-and-move-it Script ffffffffff

24. Say-it-and-move-it Script ffffffffff

25. Say-it-and-move-it Script iiiiiiiiiii

26. Say-it-and-move-it Script iiiiiiiiiii

27. Say-it-and-move-it Script zzzzzzz

28. Say-it-and-move-it Script zzzzzzz

29. Move to Word Recognition Instruction • For your very weakest children, you’ll need to teach letter names and sounds; read pages 56-58. • You can also teach them high-frequency words.

30. Choose your Strategies • Read pages 58 to 67. Sounding and blending is appropriate for students who know at least a few letter sounds (including at least one vowel). Letter patterns are for students who can already sound and blend. Decoding by analogy is too hard for this group!

31. Letter-Name and Letter-Sound Script “The name of this letter is ___. What name?” (Students respond chorally.) “The sound of this letter is ____. What sound?” (Students respond chorally.) For new letters, some additional instruction might be useful. “Here is a new letter. Watch me write it.” The teacher demonstrates, verbalizing the strokes. “Now you write it with me” (in the air or on dry-erase boards). “The name of this letter is ____. What name?” (Students respond chorally.) “The sound of this letter is ____. What sound?” (Students respond chorally.)

32. Sounding and Blending Script • We are going to start today by sounding and blending some words. The way that you do that is to look at each letter, say each sound out loud and then say them fast to make a word. “Listen to me. /p/ /i/ /g/ pig. Now you try: /p/ /i/ /g/ pig. When you come to a word that you don’t know you can sound and blend it.

33. Letter Patterns Script • Today we will work on reading and spelling three vowel patterns. The /at/ pattern is the sound at the end of the word cat. It is spelled a-t. The /et/ pattern is the sound at the end of the word pet. It is spelled e-t. The /it/ pattern is the sound at the end of the word sit. It is spelled i-t.” “First I want you to listen to words and tell me whether they sound like cat, pet, or sit.” • “Let’s look at the spellings for all of the words that sound like cat. Notice that words with the /at/ sound have the a-t pattern. You can use that pattern when you read or spell a-t words.”

34. High-Frequency Word Script Today we are going to learn to read and spell some really useful words. The first word is from. Say that word. Now watch me count the sounds in from. /f/ /r/ /u/ /m/. We hear four sounds. Say the sounds with me. Now watch me spell the word from. The first sound we hear in from is /f/, and it is spelled with the letter f. The second sound we hear in from is /r/, and it is spelled with the letter r. The third sound we hear in from is /u/, and it is spelled with the letter o. The last sound we hear in from is /m/, and it is spelled with the letter m.

35. High-Frequency Word Script (cont.) Three of the letters and sounds in from are easy to remember. The only one that is tricky is the o. Remember that in the word from, the /u/ sound is spelled with the letter o. If you remember that, you can easily read and spell from.

36. Gather all of your materials • Word lists, word cards, Elkonin boxes, teaching scripts, white boards, notebooks – everything you need • (Use books with word lists in them; it’s faster) • Remember that our goal is that you plan for three weeks at a time

37. The very weakest group* *Minute allocations are simply an example based on a 15-minute session.

38. A more typical group* Use the same words for both activities! *Minute allocations are simply an example based on a 15-minute session.

39. A more advanced group* Use the same words for both activities! *Minute allocations are simply an example based on a 15-minute session.

40. Try it out! • Remember that we are hoping for a cycle, with teacher reflection. Your goal is to move this group into a word recognition and fluency group, but you’ve got to be successful here first. • At the end of the three weeks, you can use data collected as part of the instruction to inform your next moves.