APS - Which Phonics Program did your school adopt?

[Anonymous]

Have we found a new head for Teaching & Learning yet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading Specialist here... at a Title 1 school

1. Lucy Calkins is not a program. She is a person who leads the literacy think tank at Teacher's College in NYC. There are hundreds of staff developers that write the Units of Study.

2. The UOS are not a scripted program. They are a transcript and a resource to teach reading, writing, and phonics. All teachers have the ability to make the lessons their own by editing parts of the mini lesson.

3. The PhUOS is not just something Lucy thought up. They consulted the best of the best in word work ( Patricia Cunningham and many, many others) to build a program that is engaging, research based and developmentally appropriate.

4. It is laughable that you think the UOS teach students to "guess at pictures". Have you seen every single lesson k-8? In the early developmental stages of reading, teachers teach students to use strategic actions to word solve and yes in very early readers, one thing students do is use pictures to help them cross check to make sure a word looks right, sounds right, and makes sense.

5. Yes, phonics instruction is vital to reading development AND it can not occur in isolation. In order to transfer to reading and writing- you need both- explicit phonics instruction AND authentic reading practice. This is why they developed the Phonics UOS. Teachers all across the country were noticing that they were teaching phonics and word work in isolation and there was no transfer to writing- same with spelling lists. Reading and writing should compliment each other.

So here is the thing- Inmost counties here, everyone uses the workshop model- why? Because students need to want to read and be given long stretches of time to read- centers and other previous ways of teaching reading look cute but don't always= reading growth. Workshop is all about responsive teaching. A short focus lesson and the rest of the block is for teachers meeting with kids one on one and in small groups.

In my title 1 school, the increase in reading engagement has been incredible using the workshop model and the UOS. To say this program is just for advanced readers is incorrect. Adding the phonics program last year was what really supported a lot of our lower readers who needed that foundational base. We have never seen more growth than we saw last year using all three UOS. Yes, only one year but we had not seen that level of growth before.

And no, I don't work for TC. But I will say that in my 19 years of teaching reading, it is the best proefssional development I have ever attended . How many of you have sat in your student's classroom during a UOS Phonics lesson? Before you crucify a resource, perhaps don't believe everything you hear on an annonymous message board.

Have a great day!

Thank you. I suspect the poster with the biggest bee in her bonnet over this is the same one, NOT a teacher, who posts things like this on AEM:

“If you are a teacher, in APS or anywhere, please read this so that you can understand why phonics is so important as a foundation for all readers and that strategies like 'guessing' or figuring out the word from pictures or context is NOT the way we want our kids to learn to read. So many resources on the market today have adopted the WRONG approach for teaching our kids to read. Please don't contribute to passing along strategies that aren't grounded in the science for how people learn to read.”

If I were a teacher it would REALLY rub me the wrong way to be lectured like this.

[Anonymous]

I think there are multiple parents posting on this thread; not one. My guess is that the teacher and you (with a normal reader) don't like thought challenges. That's fine. That, however, doesn't make you correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there are multiple parents posting on this thread; not one. My guess is that the teacher and you (with a normal reader) don't like thought challenges. That's fine. That, however, doesn't make you correct.

Give me a break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reading Specialist here... at a Title 1 school

1. Lucy Calkins is not a program. She is a person who leads the literacy think tank at Teacher's College in NYC. There are hundreds of staff developers that write the Units of Study.

2. The UOS are not a scripted program. They are a transcript and a resource to teach reading, writing, and phonics. All teachers have the ability to make the lessons their own by editing parts of the mini lesson.

3. The PhUOS is not just something Lucy thought up. They consulted the best of the best in word work ( Patricia Cunningham and many, many others) to build a program that is engaging, research based and developmentally appropriate.

4. It is laughable that you think the UOS teach students to "guess at pictures". Have you seen every single lesson k-8? In the early developmental stages of reading, teachers teach students to use strategic actions to word solve and yes in very early readers, one thing students do is use pictures to help them cross check to make sure a word looks right, sounds right, and makes sense.

5. Yes, phonics instruction is vital to reading development AND it can not occur in isolation. In order to transfer to reading and writing- you need both- explicit phonics instruction AND authentic reading practice. This is why they developed the Phonics UOS. Teachers all across the country were noticing that they were teaching phonics and word work in isolation and there was no transfer to writing- same with spelling lists. Reading and writing should compliment each other.

So here is the thing- Inmost counties here, everyone uses the workshop model- why? Because students need to want to read and be given long stretches of time to read- centers and other previous ways of teaching reading look cute but don't always= reading growth. Workshop is all about responsive teaching. A short focus lesson and the rest of the block is for teachers meeting with kids one on one and in small groups.

In my title 1 school, the increase in reading engagement has been incredible using the workshop model and the UOS. To say this program is just for advanced readers is incorrect. Adding the phonics program last year was what really supported a lot of our lower readers who needed that foundational base. We have never seen more growth than we saw last year using all three UOS. Yes, only one year but we had not seen that level of growth before.

And no, I don't work for TC. But I will say that in my 19 years of teaching reading, it is the best proefssional development I have ever attended . How many of you have sat in your student's classroom during a UOS Phonics lesson? Before you crucify a resource, perhaps don't believe everything you hear on an annonymous message board.

Have a great day!

Thank you. I suspect the poster with the biggest bee in her bonnet over this is the same one, NOT a teacher, who posts things like this on AEM:

“If you are a teacher, in APS or anywhere, please read this so that you can understand why phonics is so important as a foundation for all readers and that strategies like 'guessing' or figuring out the word from pictures or context is NOT the way we want our kids to learn to read. So many resources on the market today have adopted the WRONG approach for teaching our kids to read. Please don't contribute to passing along strategies that aren't grounded in the science for how people learn to read.”

If I were a teacher it would REALLY rub me the wrong way to be lectured like this.

DP. That would irk me too. So what?

If you're a teacher, just don't do that. Don't teach guessing. Not educated guessing, not wild guessing. Teach reading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lucy Calkins: "How to teach phonics to kids who already know how to read"

k


Just like Wit and Wisdom assumes kindergarten answer first grade students can already write. They just end up copying from various anchor charts around the room. It’s painful to watch.

[Anonymous]

I am so glad my child's teacher, who teaches at a school that is using LC, is supplementing with non-LC materials. That makes me feel a lot better, but who knows what next year's teacher will be doing!!

The head of APS curriculum and language arts should really start doing their jobs.

I am very concerned about the direction APS is headed, not just on language arts, but math instruction also.

[Anonymous]

Who makes these decisions in APS? I thought APS schools were supposed to be among the best. Who chooses the reading curriculum at each school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who makes these decisions in APS? I thought APS schools were supposed to be among the best. Who chooses the reading curriculum at each school?

It is usually by district, not school by school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who makes these decisions in APS? I thought APS schools were supposed to be among the best. Who chooses the reading curriculum at each school?

It is usually by district, not school by school.

In APS it's some of both. Principals have a lot of choice, that's why there's so many differences by school.

[Anonymous]

I think our school has Saxon phonics.

[Anonymous]

How do we advocate for best reading instruction practices for all kids in APS? Any suggestions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do we advocate for best reading instruction practices for all kids in APS? Any suggestions?

Private school

[Anonymous]

Thought y'all would be interested in this:

1. How the teacher describes phonics lessons: In a balanced literacy classroom, the teacher will describe phonics instruction as short lessons that are given as the opportunity arises, for example, when a child struggles with a word. A teacher who provides systematic explicit phonics instruction will have daily classroom lessons on the sounds, sound patterns and rules of phonics, and will teach them in a sequence to ensure that none are missed.

2. Look at the bulletin boards or classroom walls: A balanced literacy teacher will have an A to Z alphabet-based “word wall” with lists of words starting with the same letter. A teacher who teaches phonics explicitly and systematically will have a sound wall of sounds represented by letters, with words with common sounds listed under the sound, e.g., “chair” would be under “ch”, not under “c”.

3. Look at the little books your child brings home and reads in the classroom: A balanced literacy classroom uses little books (those 8 to 32 page books your child may bring home) that have pictures, repeat words or phrases, predictable sentences (“see the bird, see the horse, see the elephant”) and pictures. Children usually can “read” the words by figuring out the pattern once it has been read to them and using the pictures. The books will be organized by DRA or Fountas-Pinnell level, usually shown on the back of the book. A teacher who emphasizes phonics will try to use decodable books or stories that emphasize the sounds the child is working on(e.g., ”the fat cat sat on the mat”), although the APS-purchased curriculum materials do not include these, so teachers have to make an extra effort to find them.

4. Look for posters, bookmarks, or handouts with reading strategies: In a balanced literacy classroom, you will see posters, handouts or bookmarks with “reading strategies” for how to read a new word. They will say things like “look at the pictures, get your mouth ready to say the first sound, slide through the word, skip the word and read on, think about the story, reread the sentence to figure out the word, does it look right, does it sound right, does it make sense”. They won’t say “sound out the word”. A phonics classroom will have posters of sound patterns (e.g., long “a”) and phonics and spelling rules, like final “e”, and how to break words into syllables and parts. They will not suggest guessing.

5. Listen to how the teacher works one-on-one with children, or what they tell you about how to help your child. When a balanced literacy teacher works with a child one-on-one, the teacher will encourage the child to look at the picture and context clues to guess at an unfamiliar word. The teacher may describe their method as reading strategies that encourage children to look at “cues” or “three-cueing” – asking a child to look at semantic/meaning cues (what word might fit here given the subject of the text), syntactic/sentence structure cues (what word might fit here given the sentence structure), and graphophonic cues (the visual information such as the letters, word parts, or shape of a word). In contrast, a teacher who emphasizes phonics will prompt the child to sound out unfamiliar words using the phonics rules they know. The teacher will not encourage students to look at pictures or context clues to figure out what a word is, but once a child has read the word using phonics skills, the teacher will encourage the use of context or pictures to figure out what the word means.

from:
https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/phonics-vs-balanced-literacy-a-classroom-comparison.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=58951301&U=1830799&UUID=fb52d3b55bb50d6695adfe277e01e091