Not long after I started teaching in the late 1980s, literacy educators were involved in a “reading war”. For those too young to remember, it was the “whole language vs. phonics” debate. While I embraced much of the whole language philosophy, I never abandoned systematic phonics instruction. I learned to read with a phonics approach and couldn’t imagine …
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Phonics
Homemade I Spy Game: Fun With Phonics
Last week was exhausting. We are no longer knee-deep in a pandemic–it’s more like chest-deep with no end in sight. My children are missing their friends and their cousins. And the colder weather outside means more time for my people to run around the inside of the house like little lunatics. Just to top things …
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Word Families: A Powerful Way to Strengthen Phonics Skills
Most of us would agree that English phonics is complex! Word families are a powerful tool to help our students internalize common phonics patterns, consolidate their decoding skills, and build greater reading fluency. How do we use them? First, a quick review: What are onsets and rimes? An onset is the consonant(s) before the vowel(s) …
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