This year my inquiry question is:
How do I effectively teach a structured approach to phonics?
Most people would quickly recommend BSLA or another structured literacy programme.
Great news! I will begin training in BSLA next term.
However, in the mean time, I have started my own phonics plan with my reading class.
At the beginning of the year, Charlotte Walker (teaches the other half of year 3), carefully placed children in each of our reading classes based on their reading ages. We noticed that there was a large chunk of students reading at blue and green on the colour wheel (5.9-6 years of reading age). Therefore, we placed all 21 of them into my reading class together.
I noticed big gaps in their basic phonics knowledge. Many of them had good comprehension but struggled to decode.
Therefore, I decided to base my inquiry on these children.
Something to ponder..
The children that were taught BSLA in year 2 had much stronger decoding strategies than those that didn't do BSLA. However, I noticed that several of these BSLA students had poorer comprehension and found it more difficult to make predictions, retell a story or infer. So my question is, how do I focus on phonics whilst also reading stories that are rich and give the students a lot to talk about?
I am currently balancing a mix of phonics lessons (Sunshine Decodables) and PM books (with a focus on comprehension) in my weekly plan.
So far, I have been following the Ready to Read scope and sequence as well as the Sunshine Decodables Scope and sequence. I have identified the letter sounds, digraphs and blends that each group needs to work on and teach at a small group level as well as at a whole class level when introducing new phonics of the week.
Not only are we focussing on phonics through books and whole class lessons, we also play games, watch videos, use flashcards and make use of our class library. My class has been enjoying choosing whichever books they'd like to read alongside a phonics task (as seen in photos below).
After only 3 weeks of a big focus on phonics, I have already noticed a difference in my class' confidence to decode unfamiliar words. I'm looking forward to seeing the progress that they make and will keep you updated.
