OnTrack Reading

College courses in phonics instruction in today’s schools of education are rare, plus many new teachers never had effective phonics instruction in elementary school. As a result, if you are a young teacher you are quite possibly struggling with your own understanding of the phonics of English.

Do you know how to teach a young child what a vowel sound is, or a consonant sound? For that matter, are you certain yourself what a vowel sound is? If not, can you be expected to properly teach the concept to a six-year-old? (For an effective way to explain the concept of vowel sounds to a young student, take a look at the page First Vowel Sounds in the phonics program section of this site.)

Phonemic Awareness was taught

Chances are that you received excellent information in your coursework about phonemic awareness because that particular topic has been popular in the reading research in recent years. You probably have a good understanding of both blending and segmenting, and why these are essential skills that good readers possess, and you might even have several resources to draw upon for teaching those skills.

But was phonics taught?

Chances are equally good that you never had a course covering phonics instruction, for two reasons, one good, one not so good. The good reason is that phonics curricula vary and it can be argued that it is your school’s job to train you to teach the particular curriculum chosen by your school’s administration. The not-so-good reason is that phonics instruction has been frowned upon by many schools of education for years now, so any sort of phonics exposure has vanished from many college education curricula.

If you are a young primary school teacher and don’t understand phonics, and how to teach it, after five years of college, I have a suggestion as to how you can remedy the situation, particularly if your present school doesn’t use a reading curriculum with a strong phonics component. Now, I’m not suggesting that you teach phonics “behind closed doors” so to speak, but you will be a better advocate for your students if you gain a solid understanding of English phonics and become familiar with at least one good approach to teaching it.

The Suggestion

You will learn a great deal about phonics generally if you download the free instructions for the OnTrack Reading Advanced Code Workbook here, and then go to lulu.com and order the workbook.

View the OnTrack Reading Advanced Code Workbook on lulu.com

Take the workbook and go over the instructions page by page, whether you use it with a student or not. You will learn a lot that you need to know if you are to help the weaker readers in your classes. Better yet, after familiarizing yourself with the materials, take the workbook and try it with one of your students after class. The student doesn’t even have to be struggling. He or she will still learn a lot about English phonics, and it’s likely that you will also. Doing this will help you to realize how easy it is to teach a child phonics and, equally important, how essential it is to do so.

Contact me with questions

If you order the workbook and have questions about the instructions or the lessons, feel free to email me. I will usually get back to you in a day or two and try to address your question or concern. My email address is everson.rodney@gmail.com

The next page explains in some detail the sort of results a teacher or parent should expect when using the workbook with a child, assuming the vision issues discussed at length elsewhere on this website have been suitably addressed first.

Next: Phonics Workbook Expectations, or return to the OnTrack Reading Home Page