Today, I have a great website to share with you, chock full of FREE Phonics Lessons. If you click on the image below, it will take you to the website.
During my reading specialist program, I was fortunate enough to work with a great teacher, mentor, etc. in the teaching world, her name was Dr. Carol Tolman (If you ever have the chance to take a professional development with her, jump on it). She worked with West Virgina's Department of Education to develop phonics lessons that were explicit, systematic, and that incorporated the 5 components of reading. The website houses all the lessons they created to support their teachers in teaching phonics. The website and lessons are FREE. Each Skill is divided into weeks (week 1, 2 and 3) and also divided into units within those skills. Each unit comes with...
5 Days Worth of Lessons
A list of target words that students will work with throughout the unit.
and...
Decodable Stories for the Week
All of that for FREE!! I immediately downloaded all of the lessons (Dr. Tolman recommended that we download them as soon as we could, so that we would have them available to us even if the website was taken down...I would recommend the same)! I LOVE these lessons. I still bring in materials or items I have been given from other programs, but I have seen so much success with these lessons that I could never use any other program.
I love all of the components, I love the fact that each unit comes decodable stories and I love that each skill is broken up in a way that students master each component before they are expected show mastery with the entire skill! Since I love the lessons so much, I knew that I had to share this with my readers!! I would love for you to take advantage of some amazing research based lessons, while you still have the chance.
Stay tuned because next week I will be sharing pictures of how I organize and manage all the materials and lessons. :-)
I hope you find these as useful as I have and I will leave you with one last thought...
What do you think of these lessons? Have you seen or used these before? Do you think they will work within your own classroom?
7 comments:
What a great site!
Your newest follower!
Jess
I have used these in the past, but I think they work better with younger grades. I used this series for about a week this year with my 5th grade MTSS group, and while I like the structure and explicit teaching. My kiddos felt it was babyish, so I've been tweaking, supplementing, and revamping, while trying to maintain a similar feel.
Christy
Teaching In Oz
Jess--Thank you for becoming a new follower (every follower means the world to me)!! I hope you find this site useful!
Caralee
Christy--I'm happy to hear that you have seen, as well as used this site/lessons. I teach 2nd/3rd grade and I think it fits both grades extremely well, but I can really see how it may feel babyish for the older kiddos. I would love to know more about how you use it in your classroom!
Caralee
I've been trying to blog about my schools RTI (MTSS is the acronym we use in Kansas), your welcome to bop over and search for RTI posts to hear a little more of what I do.
I student taught in 3rd/4th, and it was with third graders I had used this program with too. I love the structure and I think it works really well. Right now I'm using another program, and tweaking activities from West Virgina to try and get the right mix, but your right, it is a WONDERFUL resource!
Christy
Teaching In Oz
Hi! It looks like the website isn't active anymore. Is there any way I would be able to get a copy of them from you? Thanks!
How a 3 Year and 5 Year Old Learned to Read in 4 Months
I'd like to share with you an interesting case study of how 2 sisters (a 3 year old and a 5 year old) learned to read in just 4 months - both learned to read using the Children Learning Reading program. They attended the summer reading camp operated by the program's creator, Jim Yang.
Jim has been teaching kids - and teaching parents how to teach their kids - to read for quite some time. During the summer months, he runs a reading camp teaching many children to read. most of the the children he teaches are 4 to 7 years old, with the occasional 3 year old or 8 year olds who are having reading difficulties.
To complete both stages of the reading camp, it typically takes about 4 months - attending 3 times a week and each session is 1 hour long.
This case study is about 2 little girls (sisters) that attended the reading camp. When they started (June), the older sister P. S. was 5 years 4 months, and the younger sister A. S. was just 2 years 11 months old. Probably most reading teachers would not even consider working with a 2 year old - since when can a 2 year old learn to read!?!
Well, no problem for Jim, as he had taught all of his own children to read by age 3. So when their mom asked if she could bring her almost 3 year old, Jim said: "sure, why not? I'll have both of them reading for you in a few months." Certainly, she had a healthy degree of skepticism.
So by the end of 4 months, after completing the Children Learning Reading program, her older daughter was reading at a grade 2 level (reading age 7.3 years), and her younger daughter was reading at a grade 1 level (reading age 6.8 years). I can't embed videos in emails, so please head over to Jim's website, scroll down, and watch the short video posted under "Success Story #3". There, you see just how well her older daughter was reading by the end of 4 months, plus follow-up videos several months and one year later showing their amazing progress.
Click Here to Watch Video (See Success Story #3)
The Initial Reading Assessment
At the start of the reading camp, there is a quick reading assessment. The younger girl A. S. did not need an assessment as being just 2 year 11 months old, she did not know any letters or sounds, yet. The older sister P. S. knew most of the alphabet letter names and "sounds", but she was pronouncing some of the sounds incorrectly.
No surprises there, as almost every single child that attends the reading camp are taught many phonemes incorrectly (!!), either at preschool or in Kindergarten. Such is the state of our education system.
Learning to Read
Being 3 years apart, there's a big difference in how quickly the older sister will learn compared to her younger sister. They start off with the Children Learning Reading program as usual, except after a few lessons, adjustments were made to accommodate for the different learning paces of the older sister and the younger sister.
This system of teaching reading is a unique combination of synthetic phonics with phonemic awareness that produces amazing results in children of all ages. Obviously, one of the initial goals was to REALLY correct the incorrect sounds the older sister had learned in pre-school! She was starting kindergarten in September. After just the first week, the older sister P. S. caught on and was doing great with phonemic awareness activities such as blending and segmenting. Little A. S., being a lot younger, took about 2.5 weeks before she started catching on.
Thanks,
Parminder S.
>> Learn more about Jim's super simple, logical, sequential system of teaching reading, please click here to watch a short video explaining his methods.
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