Yolanda Soryl Phonics and Early Words Workshops

The best single predictor of future reading achievement at school entry is phonological awareness.Gillon (2004); Pressley (2002); Elhri et al (2001); Goswami (2001); Blachman (2000)

Today 3 colleagues and myself participated in Phonics and Early Word workshops taken by Yolanda Soryl. As a New Entrant teacher I am noticing year-by year a decline in oral language skills [listening, speaking, understanding] of children starting school. Low level oral language skills impact on learning to read and write. As a junior syndicate we are interested in addressing this issue in as many ways as possible. Phonics has always been a foundation to literacy learning at our school however we need to change teaching practice to make learning more effective. Attending these sessions was the next step on our phonics learning journey.

Our Observations prior to attending

Students who are making slow progress in reading and writing:

• have difficulty tuning in and noticing detail in what what they hear and see
• have difficulty distinguishing between letter-sounds
• communicate with gestures only or incomplete sentences 
• use incorrect grammar
• have difficulty forming letter sounds which makes it hard for the listener to understand what is being said
• have limited vocabulary which affects their understanding of what they are hearing and also makes reading for meaning difficult
• make little or no connection between spoken ideas, reading and writing

All of the above points impact on a healthy self-esteem and growth mindset required for learning. Based on these observations my inquiry question is:  

What strategies and resources can we use to increase/improve/develop the oral language skills, and raise achievement in reading and writing for our priority learners?

'Phonemic awareness is fundamental to early success in reading and writing … An understanding of phonics also underpins children's literacy learning. Children need to learn, through deliberate, focused instruction, which letters represent which sounds.' — Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1–4, (2003, p.32), Ministry of Education, Wellington.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of phonics and the teaching of phonics?

Phonics Workshop
Reading requires:

• Knowing letter sounds
• Knowing how to blend sounds together
• Graphic knowledge and memory [e.g. for high frequency words]
• Comprehension
• Fluency
• That when faced with a new word, a child can use graphic knowledge (word chunks i.e. ing; gr-a-ph etc) and phonics (letter sounds).

Writing requires:

• Knowing letter sounds
• Knowing how to blend sounds together
• Graphic knowledge and memory (e.g. for high frequency words
• Segmentation
• Re-reading

Terminology
Phoneme: The smallest sound you can hear in a word
Grapheme: The written form of a word. A grapheme can have 1 letter, 2 letters [digraph e.g. th], or 3 letters [trigraph e.g. thr]. The number of graphemes in a word will match the number of phonemes.

Stages for teaching phonics

Key points for teachers:

• Clap rhythms for children to repeat, so they can hear and hold structures (e.g. first line of Humpty Dumpty). This is critical for holding a sentence in their heads during writing.
• Music and movement is fundamental for learning. Bring it in as much as possible, e.g. sing instructions and have the children sing them back. Singing lights up the left side of the brain, the same area required for reading. Therefore it is a great warm up
• Schedule daily poetry & story reading to strengthen children’s phonological listening and enjoyment of reading, and train the brain for fluency by using triggers e.g. ‘on your marks’.
• Teach the five rhyming families: cat, pet, fin, dog, bug
• Be explicit about knowledge transfer i.e. tell children ‘you can use this in your reading. When you come to a word you don’t know, you can use this letter…’
• ‘You can use this when you are trying to spell a new word.’
• Have children re-read their writing after every word and sentence
• At Stage 2 teach a new phoneme everyday.
• Separate handwriting and phonics lessons - phonics lesson first

What did I learn that I could use with my learners?

I intend to make an immediate change to my phonics programme by teaching a different phoneme four days a week. In term 3 I will follow Yolanda's programme more explicitly. I will also use/teach more nursery rhymes and rhyming games, and intentionally focus on listening for sounds in our environment.

Early Words Workshop

This was the second workshop of the day. The Early Words programme is set out clearly in Yolanda Soryl's handbook which I purchased for the school. The programme helps lower level students to achieve success in word recognition and graphic knowledge of high frequency words. The programme takes 5 minutes per child, per day. It involves simple home learning activities related to that day's learning. My intention is to train two teacher aides to use this programme daily with our struggling readers. 

The structure of each 5 minute lesson:

•  Probe test – gives the score from the word learnt yesterday. Students are given the words and then the teacher tests the errors and the time taken to complete and then scores them accordingly.

• Teacher decision – after testing with the probe the teacher decides whether the student goes up a word or remains at the same for another day.

• Word cards – this is the time spent teaching the student the word using a range or games and having the word in isolation (out of text).

• Worksheet – this is either a reading or writing worksheet where the word is transferred into text.

•  Probe test – as above, gives the score from the word learnt.

•  Revision – an activity not needing adult supervision usually completed for home learning.

As part of her commitment to providing clear and valuable information to teachers and parents, Yolanda has produced a collection of lesson videos. These cover varying techniques and stages of Phonics, Early Words and Developing Phonological Awareness. 

Free resource downloads from Yolanda Soryl