A couple weeks ago, I posted about the first portion of what will be my phonics block this year: multi-sensory phonics and handwriting instruction. You can go read the post for the specifics, but in general I outlined a few ways to make phonics instruction a more rich and full experience for the students. Multi-sensory instructions allows students to tap into more of their brain to not only help store the new letter, sound information but also helps the brain more readily retrieve the information, too!
After we learn (review in the case of my first graders, I hope!) the new letter, as in a day or two after, we’ll practice using their new knowledge in context through dictation. First I’ll dictate CVC words that use the new sound while review previously learned letters/sounds. Then, they’ll practice writing words with the letter/sound in sentences. What is knowing a letter and its sound if it’s not being used in context?!?!
I have laid out all of the letters and the order I’ll be teaching them, including digraphs, as well as a word and sentence dictation sheet with teacher directions in my Letters, Words, and Sentences Workbook.
In order to incorporate more brain power, I plan to work through each dictated word and sentence using all three cuing systems: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Much of these strategies come from my training in the Orton-Gilligham method by IMSE, but I’ve put my own spin on it to make it work for me.
Kindergarten teachers: the strategies below seem like a lot for a little kinder kid to handle, and although I’ve not yet done this with kindergarteners there is so much research indicating that kindergarten students CAN BE and ARE successful in writing these dictated sentences, even in the first portion of the school year! Again, I’ve not seen it done in person, but I have seen the evidence and videos of real kindergarten students writing these sentences. Just think of how proud they’ll be when they write a sentence correctly in the first grading period of school!!!!! All I’m saying is don’t be afraid to try it.
Word Dictation:
Finger Tapping: If you use my Letters, Words, and Sentences Workbook, you’ll notice a 1, 2, and 3 above. Those numbers are used for finger tapping the sounds in each syllable of a word (in this case, all words are just 1-syllable long anyways). There’s no need for more than 3 spaces for tapping because any given syllable only has 3 sounds at most, considering blends to be one sound. Anyways, finger tapping is always done left to right with the opposite hand that you write with, that way the pencil doesn’t have to be put down. So, right handers will finger tap from left to right, or from pinky to ring finger to middle finger on their left hand. Left handed writers will use their right hand to finger tap, moving from thumb to pointer to middle finger. This does take some practice, but it works. The finger tapping adds movement (kinesthetic learning) to the auditory sounding out of each syllable. Finger tapping is done out loud. Students repeat the word (or syllable) to be spelling as they pound their finger-tapping fist, then they tap out each individual sound and tapping with their finger while making the segmented sound out loud, then they write each sound on the sound lines given in the workbook. See the video link below (scroll down to the end of the strategies) for clarification if you’re confused!
Sound Lines: To give a visual cue to each word, sound lines are given as students work out and segment each syllable with finger tapping. After the finger tapping, students write each sound on a sound line. Digraphs and blends will be written on one sound line with a different visual cue indicating digraph, blend, or ‘qu’ team (an extra visual cue). In my workbook, a squiggle indicated a digraph and a heart goes around the ‘qu’ blend. Traditional blends are not used in this first workbook; however they would be cued with a tiny dash for each letter in the blend. So, ‘sp’ would have 2 dashes under the sound line, but ‘spl’ would have 3. Students should make each sound out loud as they write the corresponding letter(s) in the sound line. Then, it’s on to really writing the word.
Rewrite the Word: Once the word has been decoded and segmented, students should write the word again, this time without any visual cues. After writing the word, students should read the written word while underlining it with their pencil or finger. Easy peasy.
Sentence Dictation:
Story and Sentence: To get more engagement and buy-in from students, it’s good to add some context to the sentence by telling a quick story that leads into the dictated sentence.
Fist Pounding: Before even thinking about diving into writing the sentence, students should repeat it (auditory) while also fist pounding each word (kinesthetic) in rhythm with their non-writing hand. That way they don’t have to put down their pencil. The rhythm is important as it helps students work through phrasing and avoid “robot reading” (see video in link below for an example).
Finger Pointing: After fist pounding the sentence, and again in rhythm, students should point to each word line with their non-writing hand/finger as they repeat the sentence yet again (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning going on here!).
Write! Finally students begin writing the sentence word-by-word on the given word lines. Visual cues come into play here to help students through COPS (Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation, Spelling). To remember to capitalize the beginning word, there is a mountain. To recognize that a word is a sight word and to use the word wall, the word line is doubled. There are spaces between each word line, and there is a box at the end of the sentence, cuing students to remember punctuation. If students are stuck on the spelling of a word (one that is not a sight word from the word wall), they can use the 1, 2, 3 at the top of the page to finger tap the word. Besides sight words that can be found on the word wall, the words in the sentence do not contain any sounds/letters that students haven’t learned yet. That means that many more students will be successful sentence writers!
COPS: This was mentioned above, and can be googled for some resources for teaching this explicitly, but after writing the sentence using the word lines, students should go through each letter in the acronym to double check and make sure they remembered the conventions required of a sentence. As students notice each convention is completed in their sentence, they cross off the letter and check the next one. That means students should be rereading the sentence 4 times (FLUENCY PRACTICE!).
Rewrite: Just like in the word dictation, students will rewrite the sentence without the visual cues of the first write. After rewriting the sentence, students should work through COPS again to ensure they remembered the conventions of a sentence.
Reread: Finally, students reread their sentence out loud, following along with their finger or pencil if that’s still necessary (below F&P level D in reading).
Click this link to view the quick video “how-to” of the above steps.
And that’s that! It seems like a lot, but as you can see in the video, each section (once the steps are learned) shouldn’t take too long. Without parts of the video sped up, it took 5 minutes and 58 seconds to go through the dictation page. Obviously it’ll take a bit longer for the kids to do it, but once they know the routine this should take just about ten minutes. There’s certainly a lot of brain power happening in that ten minute dictation, and a lot of reading and writing happening as well!
To get your hands on the Letters, Words, and Sentences Workbook that I’ve mentioned, head to my TPT store!
Please let me know what you think in the comments below, and share with anyone that may be interested!