Phonics+and+Word+Work

Phonics and word work include direct instruction in assisting children in developing decoding skills. Typically this is starts with developing an understanding of the alphabetic principles and then moves on to teaching the letter/sound (phoneme/grapheme) relationship. This can be difficult for some children for a variety of reasons. There are 26 letters in our English alphabet, but there are 44 sounds and 96 different spellings. Some children come to this instruction with some prior knowledge of digraphs ("My name starts with c, my name is Charlie") that may or may not reflect refinement. Children who struggle with speech production, substituting the sound /w/ for /r/ can also have a more difficult time discriminating between sounds. This is why using the instruction modeled in Lindamood-Bell and Orton-Gillingham has been beneficial to some of the students who come to the Learning Center. We directly teach letter/sound positions, and label these together. Children learn to identify the sounds as poppers, tappers, windy or fat-pushed, as well as others. Children also learn that the sounds have a voiced and an unvoiced counterpart. For example the sounds /t/ and /d/ are considered tongue tappers, The tongue taps the roof or bottom of the mouth. But a /t/ is considered a quiet sound, because the throat makes no vibration. It is unvoiced. But the sound /d/ is voiced, the child can feel a vibration. This may be one way to help children and adults discriminate between sounds. Once the sounds are firm, letters are introduced, typically consonant sounds, and then short vowels. Basic rules are taught, such as closed syllable patterns, blends, digraphs and diphthongs. A lexicon of terms is also employed, and these terms are generalized throughout the child's general education classroom as well as within the Learning Center. Encoding (spelling) is also given equal time as children become proficient hearing sounds and assigning the correct grapheme. This is typically done in a "What Says" drill and then using Elkonin boxes, children spell words that follow phonetic patterns that have been previously taught. In order to become proficient writers, the children also compose sentences or write dictated sentences that relate to previous learning.