Strategic phonics: research-based phonics strategies bolster your reading program.

Wisely, teachers know that keen observation, common sense, and good judgment are their most reliable tools for helping students learn to read. That's why you must draw on your own good judgment when deriding how to incorporate phonics into your reading instruction.

Clarifying Phonics

What is phonics - and what isn't it? Phonics is not the same as phonetics. Phonetics is an area of linguistics that involves the study of sounds in speech, not print. Phonics, on the other hand, focuses on the relationship between sounds in speech (phonological patterns) and spelling patterns (orthographic patterns).

Phonics, by definition, stresses the sounds of spelling patterns rather than individual letters. This is because the sounds of letters - particularly vowels-depend upon their position in the word (we versus wet), adjacent letters (coat versus coop), or the presence of "markers" (mad versus made).

Phonics instruction must be systematic and thorough enough to enable students to become independent and fluent readers, yet still efficient and streamlined. It should not overshadow an abundance of engaging whole language reading experiences.

Figuring Out Words

It's generally acknowledged that students can use three types of cues when reading unknown words: semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic. Semantic and syntactic cues involve using meaning and grammatical structure to predict what a word may be - in other words, using context. Graphophonic cues entail the use of the sounds of spelling patterns - using phonics.

Although researchers agree that students use all three types of cues when decoding words, teachers differ substantially in how much they emphasize each. Growing evidence shows that teachers should give phonics at least equal weight in beginning reading instruction.

Eye-movement studies indicate that skilled readers do not primarily use context to decode words. Instead, they quickly process virtually all the letters in a word. In fact, it's the poorer readers who depend heavily on context as a decoding strategy. Furthermore, studies of beginning reading support three stages of reading acquisition:

* A selective-cue stage, in which beginning readers pay much more attention to context than to graphic information.

* A spelling-sound stage, in which students use spelling-sound strategies to decode words.

* An automatic stage, where students essentially become fluent readers.

Because phonics is an essential strategy for figuring out unknown words, it plays a crucial role in allowing students to pass through the spelling-sound stage.

Phonics Instruction and the Developmental Continuum

Enthusiastic proponents of phonics tend to teach more phonics than necessary - both in content and instructional time. Teachers less committed to phonics tend to cover too little. To find the right balance, keep in mind the developmental continuum that begins with rhyming in kindergarten and ends with syllabication in third grade.

The development of knowledge of spellingsound relationships starts in kindergarten - and for many children, even earlier - when students begin to learn consonant sounds and develop phonemic awareness through nursery rhymes and word play.

By the end of second grade, students should be familiar with the common relationships that apply to single-syllable words, as well as to some two- and three-syllable words. Formal phonics instruction for most students should be over by the end of third grade, if not earlier.

For students having difficulty, interventions should differ across grade levels. In first grade, teachers should focus on short vowels, common consonants and consonant digraphs, and blending for single-syllable words. In second grade, emphasize vowel patterns and generalizations, again for single-syllable words. In third grade, syllabication and structural analysis are usually the problem areas.

Phonics Instruction Strategies

This continuum helps us take a commonsense approach to phonics instruction. Teachers should consider four areas: high-utility spelling-sound relationships; teaching vowels as well as consonants; blending; and strategies for reading polysyllabic words - areas that are frequently ignored.

High-utility spelling-sound relationships

A recent study examined the vowel patterns found in the 1,000 one-syllable words most frequently used in print. The short vowels and the final e generalization - the socalled "silent e" - accounted for more than 50 percent of the one-syllable words in the study. Such information makes it possible to streamline phonics instruction by concentrating on the most useful content.

When selecting spelling-sound relationships, avoid patterns that are relatively rare (such as ey in they or eigh in eight), are inconsistent (such as ie in pie, field, and friend), and are simply not true a majority of the time (such as "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking" - but not in boy, moon, and out).

Teaching vowels along with consonants

Some approaches to phonics instruction emphasize consonants more than vowels because consonants are more consistent and supposedly more important. Evidence to support this contention is lacking.

One reason students with decoding difficulties are more likely to have problems with vowel patterns may well be that vowels typically receive less attention. There are two major advantages to introducing some vowels along with consonants: blending can be modeled and applied when students know all the sounds in a word; and students arc encouraged to go beyond a first-(and sometimes last-) consonant-plus-context strategy, which is more characteristic of the selective-cue stage than the spelling-sound stage.

Blending

Blending should not be confused with blends, which refers to consonant clusters such as cr, str, and fl. Blending involves combining all the sounds in a word - vowels as well as consonants - in order to recognize the word.

Blending is a critical component of both phonemic awareness and phonics, and needs to be explicitly taught to students who have difficulty developing it on their own. Teachers can model it by holding, or prolonging, continuous sounds - such as/m/,/s/, and /f/ - but not/t/,/p/, and /c/, which are "stop" sounds. The teacher then moves on to the next sound without pausing. For example, fish would be "ffffffiiiiiishshshshshsh."

Syllabication

A frequently ignored area of phonics instruction involves students ability to read words with more than one syllable. Skilled readers effortlessly read polysyllabic words by focusing on syllables. But students who are successful readers of single-syllable words are not necessarily good at reading polysyllabic words. There is demonstrated value in teaching students to decode or recognize common syllabic units, as well as spelling patterns in which a vowel is or is not at the end of a syllable - for example, ob versus bo.

A Systematic Approach

Research indicates that it's not enough to give students a smattering of phonics, but that a systematic approach is necessary to promote success for beginning readers. Characteristics of systematic phonics instruction vary, but tend to include:

* Short but frequent teacher-led lessons.

* The introduction, review, and application of an initially limited but growing set of spellingsound relationships (rather than working on the entire alphabet at once).

* Instruction in blending.

* Correlated work in spelling (students read what they can spell and spell what they can read).

Research indicates that it's not enough to give students a smattering of phonics, but that a systematic approach is necessary to promote success for beginning readers.

Emphasizing Connected Reading and Meaning

Successful beginning reading programs have children do a lot of reading for meaning. Students read a substantial amount of connected text - such as stories - which they're expected to comprehend. Instead of the traditional debate between "phonics first" and "meaning first," this and the previous finding argue for a more balanced "both first" approach to beginning reading instruction.

There are at least two ways of attending to both meaning and phonics: have students start off reading meaningful, predictable books at the same time that they receive systematic phonics instruction; and offer reading materials that enable students to apply the phonics strategies they're learning.

Also, students benefit from word play, which allows them to experiment with spelling patterns by changing various parts and noting similarities and differences.

A reasonable approach to teaching skills in context is to begin the skills in the context of a story, poem, or rhyme; then proceed to word play in which blending can also be practiced; and, finally, apply the skill in the context of a new text selection.

The Commonsense Approach

Advocates of phonics instruction must judge phonics programs critically - and not simply embrace anything labeled as phonics. Critics of phonics must move beyond a narrow view of stacks of phonics worksheets and recognize that some forms of phonics instruction are effective and necessary.

Luckily, many classroom teachers are highly skilled at choosing and using the varied strategies their students need to achieve reading fluency.

Dr. John Shefelbine is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education, California State University, Sacramento, where he teaches courses in language and literacy, beginning reading, and children's literature. "Strategic Phonics" is an adapted from Scholastic Literacy Research Paper Volume 10: Learning and Using Phonics in Beginning Reading. [C] 1995 by Scholastic Inc.