Anthony’s finishing 1st grade and he seems to be making strides in his reading. He generally aims to make meaning and his knowledge of high frequency words is growing steadily.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories he likes books, especially star wars books, and he can write a logical short paragraph…..However, you wonder whether the phonics activities you’ve been using are really sinking in with him.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories

Unfortunately, anthony’s inability to quickly master the trickier parts of our written code isn’t unusual. Nearly 100% of the struggling readers I have worked with in the last 20 years have had this exact same problem.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories our written code, as I’m sure you know, is particularly tough to learn–over 250 different spellings to memorize and use correctly!

First, consider what a typical basal or reading program recommends for the teaching of advanced phonics sounds (such as long vowels, diphthongs, or other vowel digraphs like “oa,” “ie,” “oo,” or “igh”).Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories often, one or two spellings are taught per day; sometimes these spellings relate to a particular sound that is targeted for several days in a row.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories

Similarly, and more importantly, grouping by sounds helps the student more rapidly memorize the variations in spellings of each sound. For instance, in one lesson introduce the long vowel “o” and its major spellings (i.E., “o,” “o_e,” “ow,” “oa,” “oe”).Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories your students, even the kindergarten ones, can comprehend this and….It speeds up the learning process!

This frequent, but brief, quizzing challenges the students’ memory to retrieve the spellings they are working on.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories frequent, staggered retrieval challenges are the fastest way to store information in long-term memory. The key sentence also provides a way to chunk the information down to even smaller bits–just the trigger of a boat may be what unlocks the sentence….And then the key spellings.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories

Teachers do this type of organizing and sorting of information all the time for their students. For instance, in math, children are often guided to learn how to add or multiply all the 2’s for one period of time.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories most math teachers don’t teach 2+3 on monday and 4+5 on tuesday. 😉 and, they often show images or charts that demonstrates 2 plus anything in a visual way.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories

One easy “other activity” is search for it: read a text with the target sound, as in the above. Then, after the whole text has been read and discussed for comprehension, have the students search for each spelling of the target sound and circle those spellings.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories if time allows, they may also add those words to a sort it page for extra multi-sensory practice.

I know that the creativity of teachers allows for almost limitless possibilities for the “other activities.” just keep trying to tie any creative idea you have back to the graphic organizer of the sort it page and encourage children to rely on the key sentence.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories also, the more often the students actually write and say the sounds as they write them, the faster they will learn. There are times for just reading or for just sorting, but they accomplish slightly less than when more senses are folded in.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories

Yes, I know that all the influential reading research reviews have clearly demonstrated the value of systematic, explicit instruction of phonics. (see jeanne’s chall classic 1967 review, or marilyn jager adams’ beginning to read from 1990, or preventing reading difficulties in young children from 1998, or the report of the national reading panel in 2000.)

cognitive behavioral and social learning theories

Share terms this theory of how children learn to decode the “self-teaching hypothesis” of word learning. Research and theory suggest that students do not need every bit of phonics information explicitly taught to them.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories rather, they just need enough knowledge of the code and skill in attacking it to be independently learning new spellings occasionally when they encounter them.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories

Yet my students regularly read well over grade level and I witness them figuring out sound-symbol connections of information they haven’t been taught. (and most of students for the last 15 years have been identified as struggling, learning disabled, or dyslexic, so please don’t think I’m just talking about reaching the top 50-75% of our children.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories I’m talking about reaching everyone with this general theory of word learning.) I try to guide them to discover a sufficient amount of the code (see list of the order of advanced phonics sounds we teach above).Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories then I ensure they read aloud…a lot…with adult support and/or by following along to narrated texts, so that they put their developing skills into play for themselves.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories

Unfamiliar spellings are encountered rarely–they’re rare remember? 😉 –so students have 95% or more of the information they need to be able to attack an unfamiliar word independently. [this assumes that they’ve developed the cognitive flexibility and strong decoding strategies that we teach through activities such as switch it and the pivotal decoding strategy flex it (coming soon.)]

cognitive behavioral and social learning theories

We DON’T think about a phonics rule to determine that it’s the /k/ and not /ch/ sound. We want our students to have these same decoding skills, sufficient phonics knowledge, and flexible approach to attacking unknown words.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories sort it is one of the main tools we use to ensure our students rapidly acquire sufficient phonics knowledge while always also reading for meaningful words.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories shaving your phonics activities to save everybody time

Organized around sounds, there are only a handful of major topics you need to cover: /oa/, /ee/, /ay/ /i_e/, /oo/, /er/, /ow/, /oi/, /aw/.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories if one group of student knows most of the spellings of 4 of these sounds, then you can advance with them to the 5th sound. With that subset of children for guided reading time, for example, they can sort /oo/ sound words, read /oo/ sound texts, search for /oo/ sound spellings, write /oo/ sound sentences, dictate /oo/ sound words, etc.Cognitive behavioral and social learning theories