Effective teaching of phonics, syllabic analysis, and other foundational skills is based on continuous assessment, matching students with appropriate materials on their level; providing explicit, modeled instruction; and providing sufficient guided practice and application.
The key is to provide as much instruction and practice as is needed.
Foundational skills
Foundational skills include phonics, syllabic analysis, fluency, morphemic analysis, which is the study of prefixes, suffixes, and roots and word study, which includes phonics and syllabic and morphemic analysis. A highly effective approach for teaching phonics, based on my experience, is Word Building. If students have difficulty with Word Building, try Speech-to-Print Phonics.
Word Building
Word Building is an approach to developing phonics and syllabication skills that builds in step-by-step fashion on what students know. Combining a pattern approach with a sound-by-sound approach, Word Building presents the most basic pronounceable element in the pattern being taught and leads students to build words by adding to that core element. In presenting the –at pattern, for example, the teacher shows students how at is composed of a/a/ and t/t/ and helps them to build words like bat, cat , fat, hat ,mat, rat, and sat. They are then shown how to use this knowledge to decode unfamiliar words independently. When faced with a word that poses difficulty for them, students use the strategy of seeking a pronounceable word part and then use that pronounceable word part as the basis for reconstructing the word. A student unable to pronounce the printed word chat might use the pronounceable word part at to reconstruct the word, saying “at,” “ch,” “chat.” Here is sample lesson in which the –it pattern is presented.
On a more advanced level, Word Building helps students learn multisyllabic words by building on their knowledge of at to read multisyllabic words such as batter, matter, and chatter. Word Building is incorporated into Building Foundational Literacy, a five-level intensive intervention program.
Speech to Print
Because students are only required to recognize the printed form of a word spoken by the teacher, Speech to Print Phonics is about as easy an approach to phonics instruction as you can find. It also integrates phonological awareness and phonics (Vandervelden & Siegel, 1997; Bus & van Ijzendoorn, 1999). The teacher presents a vowel element, such as s = /s/, shows the students two word cards, and asks students to point to the word that contains that element. After two letter-sound correspondences have been introduced, the students are shown two words, one of which starts with the element just taught. For instance, having taught the correspondences s = /s/ and m =/m/, the teacher presents the words man and sun on cards and asks students to point to the word that says man. After a third correspondence has been taught, students choose from all three. However, as additional correspondences are introduced, drop one so that students are not required to choose from more than three correspondences. At-risk students who took part in Speech to Print Phonics improved in phonemic awareness, letter-sound recognition, and the ability to learn new words (Vandervelden & Siegel, 1997). Click here to see an adapted lesson.
Reinforcement and Extension of Foundational Skills
High-Payoff Practice Activities
Building Syllabic Analysis
Instruction in syllabic analysis is most effective when the skills students are taught are based on the skills students already possess, when skills are sequenced according to complexity and frequency, when ample practice is provided, and when students are taught research-based strategies for decoding multisyllabic words. Click here for a listing of major multisyllabic patterns and key strategies for decoding multisyllabic words.