General Guidelines for Evaluating Programs in Terms of Their Efficacy in Delivering Phonics Instruction

The program helps teachers explicitly and systematically teach students letter-sound correspondence, how to break spoken words into sounds, and how to blend sounds to form words.

The program helps students learn why they are receiving instruction in letter-sound correspondence.

The program helps students apply their phonics skills as they read words, sentences, and connected text.

The program aids students in applying what they learned about sounds and letters to their own writing.

The program offers an assessment feature that allows it to be adapted to the needs of individual learners.

The program includes alphabetic knowledge, phonemic awareness, vocabulary development, and text reading in addition to systematic and explicit phonics instruction.

When we use the term phonics instruction we need to know which type of phonics instruction is actually being used in the program. Unfortunately, the distinctions between approaches are often not absolute; some programs often combine phonics approaches (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2006c). These types of phonics instruction are described next.

• Synthetic phonics programs teach children to convert letters into sounds or phonemes. They also teach students to blend these sounds together to form words. This activity is typically done in isolation. For example, the teacher points to an m on the board and says, “The letter m makes the sound /m/. What sound?”
• Analytic phonics involves teaching children to analyze letter-sound relationships once a word is identified; this is usually not done in isolation, as is done in synthetic phonics. For example, after identifying the word man, the children examine its sound/letter parts—m = /m/, a = /a/, n = /n/.
• Analogy-based phonics has children use parts of word families they know to identify words they do not know that have similar parts. For example, the sound /ar/ in farm is taught; then children practice with words they have not been exposed to such as charm and car. “Look, you’ve seen this before. So what will this word be?”
• Phonics through spelling has children segment words into phonemes and make words by writing letters for these sounds. For example, the teacher says, “Cat. Let’s say the sounds in cat--/c/, /a/, /t/. Let’s spell the sounds in cat. Write the letter for the sound /c/. Write the letter for the sound /a/. Write the letter for the sound /t/.”
• Embedded phonics involves learning letter-sound relationships during the reading of connected text. For example, after reading a story about “Leo the Lion” that uses many l words, the children focus on the sound /l/. This approach is not considered to be systematic or explicit (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2006c ).
• Onset-rime phonics instruction has children identify onsets and rimes in one-syllable words. Recall from Chapter 1 that onsets arethe initial consonant(s) sound of a syllable—the onset of man is /m/; the onset of black is /bl/. Rimes are what follows from the vowel sound—the rime of man is /an/; the rime of black is /ack/.

 

The NRP (NICHD, 2000) noted that phonics instruction differs in several important ways. These include the following (adapted from a list that appears in chapter 2, p. 104):

• Number of letter-sound relationships taught; how letter-sounds are sequenced; whether phonics strategies are taught (e.g., when two vowels are side by side, such as the oa in boat, the first is usually said while the other is silent—thus, it sounds like /o/); and if special orthography is used (e.g., bars above long vowels, or “hooked” letters for sounds that would be produced as one sound such as /sh/)
• The size of the sound unit taught (e.g., individual phonemes and graphemes such as /b/, /l/, /a/, /c/, /k/ or larger segments such as onsets and rimes--/bl/ and /ack/)
• Whether sounds are produced in isolation (synthetic) or taught in the context of words (analytic)
• The amount and type of phonemic awareness that is taught (e.g., if children learn to say the sounds in mat--/m/, /a/, /t/ and then blend them together to form a word, mat)
• How instruction is sequenced—with prerequisite skills taught (perhaps to mastery) before more complex skills are taught, or whether multiple skills are introduced at the same time
• The pace of instruction
• Word reading operations taught (e.g., sounding out individual sounds and then blending them to form words or using larger subunits to read words by analogy to known words)
• Whether spelling is incorporated
• Learning activities such as oral drill-and-practice, worksheets, or recitation of phonics rules and procedures
• Control of vocabulary (this will be discussed in more detail shortly)
• Whether phonics is a part of literacy curriculum or an “add on”
• Teaching approach used (e.g., direct instruction or constructivist approach)
• Interest and motivation level for teachers and students

 

Thus, when teachers consider the potential adoption of a core or comprehensive reading program, they will need to bear in mind the aforementioned areas on how phonics instruction is actually conducted. Does this program do what we want (or expect) it to do in terms of instructional delivery and outcomes?

 

Top