While many phonics instruction books teach upper case letters first, lower case letters make up the vast majority of letters children are exposed to while reading or writing. By teaching children to read and understand the sound of lower case letters first, you can teach students to read letters they will have the most exposure to. Convert your worksheets to include lower case letters and work with your students to understand lower case sounds first, giving them the opportunity to become familiar with the letters they will most often read.
Systematic instruction includes a specific process of instruction, developing specific skills at each step in the process. These skills include decoding letters, decoding whole words, identifying words and decoding parts of the word, identifying similar sounds in different words, spelling exercises and finally decoding words in sentence context. The advantage of a systematic process is that it identifies specific phonics skills, allowing teachers to focus on each skill and identify when students have difficulties learning a particular skill. For instance, if a student has difficulties learning to identify similar letter sounds in different words, the teacher can help the student focus on that skill without falling too far behind the rest of the class.
The literature based phonics approach teaches phonics development through specific reading books. Such books highlight lesson goals, such as a children’s book highlighting the “c” sound or the “d” sound. Additionally, teachers can use, or create, stories using these sounds to develop these skills in students. The advantage of the literature based approach is that it combines phonics lessons with basic reading skills, transitioning from sentence to sentence, reading from left to right and identifying the story students are reading.
The mechanical process of writing involves learning the proper form of each letter, but it also involves an integral decoding process as students begin writing words. During this process, students use their phonics understanding to group letters by sound and form the words they wish to write. As a result of this use of phonics decoding, you can use the writing process to teach students to write, while you team them to develop their phonics skills.