I spent yesterday with 75 amazing teachers from around the world (yes the world! We had teachers from Greece, Ireland and Australia in attendance) sharing assessments, templates and structures for putting phonics skill groups into practice. After I shared a short 70 year history of the Science of Reading and operational definitions of some important phonics terms, we spent most of the day learning how to get Guided Phonics groups up and running in the K-2 classroom.
I have learned a lot about SoR in the last two years…and am keeping all the goodness of phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary instruction, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, oral language, writing, language & grammar study, spelling dictation, Elkonin Boxes, word sorts, phonics games, critical thinking, book-pushing, read-alouds, mentor texts, academic feedback, Guided Reading in grades 3-12, centers in grades K-12, and Secret Stories, all of which are all a part of SoR, AND making some simple shifts like: the shift from sight word reading to sound-symbol mapping, the shift to more systematic, explicit phonics instruction, the shift to more prompts for decoding, and the shifts from Leveled story word books to Decodable books for emergent readers.
If you want to get started learning more about how to make some simple shifts in your early literacy instruction, I encourage you to do your own reading and form your own opinions. Here are some of my favorite books to get you started.
I am so blessed to get to spend this time with teachers and I am so thankful that teachers continue to spend their free time with me improving their practice, they choose to continue learning to better themselves and their students.❤️
Join us for my Guided Phonics professional development next time on May 20 or August 3. Register at www.helloliteracy.com/courses