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Chapter 7: Building Blocks of Effective Phonics Instruction with English Learners

Check for Understanding and Use Frequent Informal Assessment

According to the text, teachers can assess student learning through summative formal assessments at the end of a unit, but more important, they can use ongoing informal assessments and checklists for understanding.

Examples of informal checks: keeping a notepad nearby to take informal notes about what students are doing during small and large group phonics lessons, moving around the room and taking observational notes while students are sorting and playing word study games, having students read their sorts and share their reflections orally or in writing, instead of calling on an individual student, asking all students to show a thumbs up or down to demonstrate yes or no to a teacher's question, having students do mini spell checks or quizes regularly, and periodically having students turn to a partner and share about the current topic.

Connect Phonics Instruction to Meaningful Texts

Phonics is a tool to help students access print in meaningful ways in their world, so it is important for students to see the connection betweek skills and real reading so that they might be motivated to learn the code of written English.

Depending on students' developmental stage, different types of materials provide opportunities to practice what they are learning in phonics. it is important for teachers to provide such opportunities and to challenge students, but also to avoid unnatural language patterns that will be hard for English learners.

Integrate Vocabulary Study into Phonics Instruction

If words are presented in isolation and no attempt is made to define or use them in context, students will come to assume that learning the sound-letter code of English is an abstract task with no connection to real life.

Strategies: students read the pictures and words before they begin a sort or lesson, they set aside unknown words or pictures, a few words and pictures can be pretaught, teachers use pictures or actions to illustrate the vocabulary of unknown phonics words, sorts or lessons are discussed to give students practice hearing and using the words in context, and teachers should reconsider a sort or lesson if too many words or pictures are unknown.

Use Active Learning Strategies to Teach and Practice Skills

Phonics often becomes merely busy work to students, and their active thinking is shut down. When this happens, it is no longer useful for understanding the written code of English, so for English learners who are already experiencing challenges with oral and written language it is more dangerous for them to find phonics repetitive or meaningless.

Teachers should engage students in learning and practicing phonics skills through purposeful and active lessons, such as hands on sorts and games, using their bodies and voices, creating products and interacting with other students.

Make Phonics Instruction Clear and Explicit

Learning is often difficult for ELL students because they are constantly trying to figure out what is being communicated; therefore, teachers should do their best to incorporate explicit instructional strategies.

Some examples include: model activities to show students your expectations, bring in real objects and activities to help demonstrate the context of skill based lessons, use metacognition to think out loud about the skill being learned, modify your language so that is is streamlined and simple, and have visual support materials readily available for students to reference.

Follow a Systematic Sequence of Phonics Development

For English learners, learning the building blocks for written language will require extra support and direction. It is critical that teachers present the alphabetic code in a systematic format, building on the simplest features and extending to more complex patterns.

Many established phonics programs have clear scope and sequence that build from letter-sound knowledge to short vowel words to long vowel patterns and into more complex vowel patterns.

Build on Students' Home-Language and Literacy Skills

Students come to school with a variety of language and literacy skills, which can be viewed by teachers as a foundation to build upon. In order to determine where a students stands as far as reading and writing skills are concerned, teachers must utilize a variety of informal and formal assessments to figure out what strengths the students currently have.

From the example, some suggestions for evaluating a student's current level of literacy development are: have a brief conversation with the student in English, attempt to have a three way conversation including another student from the same native language, ask the new student to draw and write a short story using any literacy skills the student has. and observe and take notes regarding the student's literacy habits over the first week of school.

Work with Students at Their Developmental Level

By matching phonics instruction to student's current level of understanding ensures that content is accessible to students and builds on their prior knowledge.

As classroom instruction becomes more closely aligned to a student's developmental level, he or she will be able to understand phonics features without relying so heavily on merely memorization of whole words.