Module 5: Reading Reflection

After completing the reading for the week, consider these questions:
Where does phonics instruction fit within a comprehensive literacy program? When and how would you teach phonics?

When using a literacy program in your classroom, there are many opportunities to include teaching and using phonics. One place it fits well is during the shared reading portion of the literacy program. In shared reading, the teacher reads a book aloud with students and helps them with skills and strategies they need during reading. Phonics skills such as letter-sound relationships, word predictions and word recognition can be introduced and modeled. Guided reading would also be a place for phonics instruction to fit into the literacy program. By using guided reading, the teacher has the chance to work with students in a small-group setting and help them specifically with what they need. During guided reading, skills such as breaking words down into chunks or reading words by analogy could be focused on. In this way, the teacher can help students find ways to read unfamiliar words using phonics skills. However, it is important that this time is also spent on gaining meaning and comprehension in order to make students strong readers. In addition, mini-lessons are another place where phonics instruction could take place. While mini-lessons can cover a multitude of topics, teachers can spend time on strategies such as decoding, thinking ahead and checking for comprehension. In lessons such as these, students will gain an understanding of how phonics is connected to reading and when and how to use it. They can then take these skills with them and use them in reading throughout the literacy program.
Writing components of the literacy program would also give teachers a way to help students understand phonics. For example, in guided writing the teacher can work with students in small groups to see how they are developing words and in what way they are writing them. They can then take time to show students how to write according to phonics in such ways as chunks and sounds they already know. In the same way reading mini-lessons help to teach students skills and strategies, writing mini-lessons can do the same. Teachers can explain ways to spell words and develop them based on phonics. Individual conferences in both reading and writing would also be ways for teachers to check to make sure students are using the correct phonics skills while reading to determine words they do not know or to help them when they make miscues.
Each of these components of the literacy program allow for teachers to find ways to teach phonics. However, it is important to keep in mind that much of phonics instruction should be geared towards younger students and emerging readers. Often when students spend too much time breaking down reading into each word and its parts, they lose sight of the reading's meaning. Still, teaching phonics gives students a way to be on the path to becoming a strong reader.