Time out to consolidate blending and segmenting skills?

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Time out to consolidate blending and segmenting skills?

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pdwroe
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:54 am

Time out to consolidate blending and segmenting skills?

Post by pdwroe »

A friend is having a debate in her school at the moment about whether to keep on introducing the phonemes at a rate of 3 per week or whether to take time out to consolidate segmenting and blending skills.
Let me elaborate. They have 2 reception classes. So far they have taught all of PI Unit 1 GPCs and have nearly completed Unit 2 GPCs. However, the ability range across the 2 classes is quite wide and some of the staff are concerned that blending and segmenting skills are poor. In one class all the children are able to recognise all the GPCs taught and nearly all can blend and segment cvc words orally, with the exception of 1 or 2 who are having some extra support. In the other class the picture is similar, but there are a much larger number of children who cannot blend and segment cvc words orally yet, although they can recognise the majority of the GPCs taught so far.(Incidentally this class has 5 children who are on Speech and Language programmes)
The phonics lessons follow the PI suggested format so the children have had lots of blending and segmenting orally and with graphemes.
Do they take a couple of weeks out to consolidate these blending and segmenting skills without new learning, extending the more able by giving them sentences to blend using GPCs they know, or do they continue to introduce 3 new sounds a week and hope that blending and segmenting skills improve through their normal daily belnding and segmenting activities?
What have others done? What do you think is best?
Any comments gratefully received! :wink:
Last edited by pdwroe on Mon Apr 27, 2009 12:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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debbie
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Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: UK

Post by debbie »

This is a very interesting question:

First of all, I am going to be rather provocative in what I say!

You have couched the question in terms of the children's natural abilities but teaching and learning goes much deeper than this.

You describe that there are two parallel reception classes. Of course these classes have different children in them - but presumably they are also taught by different teachers.

Is there any chance at all that the issue of many children not yet able to blend and segment at a simple level could reflect the teaching and learning activities/techniques and not just the children themselves?

In other words, is one teacher better at teaching the synthetic phonics teaching principles than the other?

Is one teacher more experienced at teaching SP than the other?

Is there an issue here for professional development or collegial support?

How confident are you that this is a straightforward matter of one class having children who are less able to take on board the learning and skills?

I know that the children themselves DO make a difference in our cohorts of children. You might only see a pattern develop if year after year one teacher's class consistently fell behind the results of the other teacher's class.

(It could also be an issue that the reading instruction programme/resources are not good enough!)

What would I do then?

1) First of all, make sure there is good liaison between staff and that provision for both classes is appropriate to both classes.

2) Consider grouping the children from both classes so the struggling children 'collectively' received more revision type teaching at a level appropriate to them. This may make better use of time and staff.

3) Examine the content and resources of the teaching - is it truly 'fit for purpose'?

4) By all means 'take a week out' for revision - but actually I would be more inclined to look at my regular lessons and assess whether each lesson has sufficient emphasis on the blending and segmenting elements of the teaching.

5) If children are not struggling to learn the letter/s-sound correspondences, then there is perhaps not a case for stopping the further introduction. There may be a case for reducing the time taken to introduce new letter/s-sound correspondences and to increase the time spent on applying that new learning to the blending and segmenting skills. Teachers may need to look at the available resources and consider a different emphasis for a while.

6) How much time, if any, is devoted to 'reading books' within school and at home when children (or some children) are not ready to 'read books' independently? Could this time be better spent?

7) If reading books are provided and 'sent home', are resources such as the BOOKMARKS (grapheme level) and WORD LISTS (word level) sent home ALONG WITH the reading books to keep reinforcing all the elements of the learning?

You see, once you start applying analysis to your work, nothing is ever as straightforward as it might appear.

You thought you were asking a simple question, and I seem to have turned it into a much more complicated question!

These are the type of issues, however, that all teachers and parents need to consider regarding teaching reading and spelling.

Children's brains are like sponges - they are designed to learn - but we do not always teach them well enough even when we feel like we are 'teaching our hearts out'!

This is not a comment on the teaching going on in pdwroe's school by the way - I am just trying to explore the full range of possibilities of why some children don't make the progress that others make! :wink:
Debbie Hepplewhite
pdwroe
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:54 am

Post by pdwroe »

Thank you Debbie, as always you have raised some very interesting points. Some of which I can answer and others I don't have enough info to be able to answer. One of the things I will say though, is that as a school they only send books home for parents to share with children, not books that the children are expected to read themselves. There are a few children who are ready to start the earliest decodable readers in school, but up until now they have been mainly working on decoding at word level. So at least they know that they are not wasting time on books that the children cant read.
Thanks for your advice.
Anyone else got an opinion??!! :wink:
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