January 25, 2025 • 13 mins
Has something in this episode resonated with you? Get in touch!
For more information about today's episode, visit www.jocelynseamereducation.com
Quick Links
Jocelyn Seamer Education Homepage
The Resource Room
Youtube channel
Facebook Page
#jocelynseamereducation #literacy #bestpractice #earlyprimaryyears #primaryschool #primaryschools #primaryschoolteacher #earlyyearseducation #earlyyearseducator #structuredliteracy #scienceofreading #classroom #learning #learningisfun #studentsuccess #studentsupport #teacherlife #theresourceroom #theevergreenteacher #upperprimary #upperprimaryteacher #thestructuredliteracypodcast #phoneme #grapheme #phonics #syntheticphonics
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jocelyn (00:00):
Welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast.
My name is Jocelyn.
I'm so pleased to welcome youto this episode recorded here in
Tasmania, the lands of thePalawa people.
We all know that it's importantto choose phonics content that
is targeted to student need, buthow can you do this at the
start of the year without takingweeks to gather data?
(00:21):
Many schools have adopted aphonics program and are using
the phonics assessment thatcomes with that.
They use the assessment at thebeginning of the year, the end
of the year and hopefully, atmany points in between to
evaluate the impact ofinstruction.
Even if your school is in thisposition and you enter the new
school year with a spreadsheetof data about where students are
(00:43):
up to at the end of theprevious year, you may still
want to spend a little timedoing some simple check-in
assessment.
After all, the most effectiveway to get a handle on where
your class is sitting is to dosome assessment yourself.
Nothing beats watching studentsrespond in real time.
(01:03):
The other thing to consider isthat data might indicate what
lessons covered right at the endof the previous school year,
rather than what students haveconsolidated into their
long-term memory.
It's entirely possible forstudents to have been introduced
to new phoneme-graphemecorrespondences in weeks six,
seven or eight of term four ofthe previous year, but not have
(01:27):
consolidated that new learning.
Launching straight into newcontent risks creating a gap in
the student's learning.
So, whether you haveestablished phonics data for
your class or not, it's worthtaking some time to conduct a
simple check-in about phonicsknowledge with your class at the
start of the year, regardlessof the grade you're teaching.
(01:49):
This all sounds good, but I canpractically hear you saying but
Jocelyn, where am I supposed tofind time for all that
assessment?
The good news is that for asimple check-in, you don't have
to sit every child down one byone and assess them.
Today I'm sharing a simplemethod of getting a roundabout
(02:10):
sense of where your class issitting in their phonics
knowledge.
From there you can do furtherinvestigation to find out
precisely what differentchildren need.
Let's dive into the steps thatyou can follow and some of the
considerations around this.
Number one make sure that youhave enough whiteboards and
(02:31):
working markers for each child,along with something for them to
rub their board off with.
If that's a tissue or a papertowel, then great.
If you don't have enoughwhiteboards, really good quality
plastic sleeves with a piece ofpaper inside them on a
clipboard work well too.
You'll also need the scope andsequence document for your
school's phonics program.
If you're a Resource Roommember or you use Reading
(02:53):
Success in Action as yourphonics program, you can find
that information on the ResourceRoom site or in your decoding
books.
But every systematic syntheticphonics program has this
information so grab what yourschool is already using and get
ready to check in.
Number two determine the phonicsknowledge that your students
(03:15):
should have learned in the yearbefore they reached your
classroom.
If you're teaching Year One,that's the basic code.
If you are teaching Year Two,that's the complex code.
If you are teaching UpperPrimary, Year Three to Six,
that's the whole code, includingmultiple spellings of various
phonemes or sounds.
Your starting point forinstruction and this check-in
(03:39):
will depend on your student'sage and what you know about them
.
So just decide on the startingpoint that makes sense to you
and have an educated guess.
If after the first fewquestions, most students know
all of it, well, you can moveahead.
If most students are weak inthe knowledge, you can go back.
Don't try to test the wholecode at once, though.
(04:01):
Break up what you want to knowinto small sections and check in
on them in manageable chunks,say five graphemes or phonemes
per day.
This ensures that you don'ttire your students out and it
allows you to make the analysisof what you find much more
manageable.
(04:21):
It's so much easier to check inon five bits of information for
your class than it is to beoverwhelmed with 30 or 40.
To conduct the check-in, sit allof your students either at
desks or on the mat, or acombination of these, but place
them far enough away from eachother that they can't copy.
The other ways you can limitcopying is to sit students who
(04:45):
you know need extra supportclosest to you and keep the pace
of the expected response snappy.
So if you give the children 20seconds between each question,
then they're going to rub thingsout and second guess themselves
and look at what everyone elseis doing.
So make the assessment, or thecheck-in, go quite quickly.
If you are checking in on thebasic code, say the phonemes one
(05:09):
at a time, the sounds, and havestudents write the grapheme.
So you'll say write down /b/.
do not review grapheme cardsbefore you do this check-in, you
You want to know what thestudents have embedded into
their long-term memory.
This is very much a cold task,because if they know it, they
(05:29):
know it.
No amount of school holidays orbeing a bit distracted is going
to prevent them from knowing it.
Have the students write acrossthe board and then show you
their boards, so they'll havefive graphemes, hopefully,
written on their board.
It's a really good idea, justfor your own knowledge, to take
a video of this check-in andwatch it back later so that you
(05:52):
can see who is and isn't tryingto copy from their peers.
Kids are terrific at fudgingthese sorts of assessments.
Now, when you take the video,have the camera next to you so
that you can capture the classfrom the front rather than from
the back.
Just prop an iPad up at thefront and the students won't
know.
(06:12):
.
don't Don't have the screen sothat they can see themselves,.
they They will be highlydistracted, but put it so that
the screen's facing away fromthem and all will be well.
ou they have written theirgraphemes, have the students
show you their board and take aphoto of the entire class.
You can then see in onesnapshot who does and doesn't
have the code.
(06:33):
To record this information,simply create a table and tick
the box if the student has it,or leave it blank if they don't.
Resource Room members haveaccess to a spreadsheet where
you can enter a one or a zeroand the results will be colour-
coded for you.
Next, if you are checking inbeyond the basic code, things
are a little different.
(06:54):
Rather than saying write /b/,you will say write down all of
the ways you know how to spellthe sound /ay/.
This is much more open-endedand gives you a really good idea
of what students know.
Some students will write onegrapheme, others will write five
, some will write five correctgraphemes and others will write
(07:16):
two and the other three are kindof just made up.
If you say "write down A as inplay, there's a good chance that
the student will have memorizedthat common word and then
analyze it to get the rightanswer.
While analogy is a validspelling strategy, it's not what
we want for this.
For this, we want to know aboutthe student's phonics knowledge
(07:38):
.
The reason I'm suggesting thatyou focus on recall rather than
recognition is that if thestudent can recall and write,
they really know the content.
If they can't, then theirknowledge is incomplete.
It's not enough for thestudents just to recognise the
grapheme and say the correctphoneme.
(07:59):
In order for them to spell,they need to be able to recall
this information to use it.
This is also an opportunity tocheck in on handwriting and
stroke order, which must beautomatic for strong writing to
occur.
Once you've determined who canand cannot recall graphemes,
you'll then decide on whichstudents need a check-in for
(08:21):
recognising.
If you're a teacher in an upperprimary classroom, this will
likely be a small number ofchildren who are at significant
risk of difficulty.
But be prepared that you'llneed to do the recognition or
reading part with any studentwho has significant difficulties
with the recall task.
In the early years, it's anyonewho didn't know what you would
(08:44):
expect them to know by thatpoint in their schooling.
The reason you want to do thisis that it will help you better
understand which correspondenceshave to be re-taught from
scratch and whichcorrespondences can just be
focused on in the daily reviewto consolidate them.
As a rough guide, if thestudents can automatically and
(09:06):
confidently recognise thegrapheme but they're wobbly on
the recall, you don't need toreteach that grapheme.
Just pay special attention tothose correspondences in daily
review and make sure that youfocus on recall rather than
recognition.
They can already recognise, wewant them thinking about the
phoneme, thinking about thegrapheme and writing it down
(09:29):
automatically.
If they can't recognise orrecall confidently, the
graphemes will need to be taughtagain, with appropriate
follow-up for consolidation.
This whole process of checkingin for phonics will likely take
you about two weeks all up.
A week to do the recallcheck-in with just a few
(09:49):
graphemes a day, and a week todo further assessment with
students who needed it.
For some students they willneed the whole thing assessed
for reading.
Others will need only a fewphonemes or graphemes checked in
on.
However, don't wait for weekthree before you begin to do
some consolidation on contentthe students should have known
(10:11):
but didn't.
From the first day of therecall task with whiteboards,
you can start reviewing andrehearsing with the graphemes
students didn't know.
This will mean that you won'twaste the first two weeks of
school, but also, you'll be ableto see which students are able
to quickly get back on trackwith their phonics learning with
(10:32):
just a bit of reminding, andwhich students will need higher
intensity instruction.
All of this impacts and informsyour approach to phonics
instruction.
This episode isn't about how topace and organise phonics
instruction in your mainteaching.
For that you can have a listento Season 3, Episode 15, Four
(10:53):
Points to Consider when PacingPhonics Instruction.
You might also like to searchmy website,
jocelynseamereducation.
com for the term "phonics.
There are a range of blog postsand podcasts with useful
information about early readinginstruction, but also in
catch-up for the three to sixspace.
And if you are listening tothis at the time of recording,
(11:15):
you might like to join me forthe Reading Success in the Early
Primary Years Teach Along thatbegins in February.
This 12-week course will equipyou and your team with lots of
practical know-how about readinginstruction in the first three
years of school.
It's designed to be generalenough in nature so that you can
get oodles of value regardlessof the phonics program you use
(11:38):
in your school, but it'sspecific enough to enable you to
take real action to get everychild reading.
If you're interested inlearning more about this course,
visit jocelynseamereducation.
com/ reading success.
As you prepare for the newschool year, remember, the best
instruction focuses on studentneed, not what a program says
(12:02):
you should be focusing on eachweek.
Yes, we want to work with ourphonics programs with fidelity,
but that doesn't have to come atthe expense of targeted
instruction that meets studentsat precisely the point they need
for strong learning.
We know that this gets you thebest outcomes.
(12:22):
That's all from me this week.
Until next time, happy teachingeveryone.
Bye.
Welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast.
My name is Jocelyn.
I'm so pleased to welcome youto this episode recorded here in
Tasmania, the lands of thePalawa people.
We all know that it's importantto choose phonics content that
is targeted to student need, buthow can you do this at the
start of the year without takingweeks to gather data?
(00:21):
Many schools have adopted aphonics program and are using
the phonics assessment thatcomes with that.
They use the assessment at thebeginning of the year, the end
of the year and hopefully, atmany points in between to
evaluate the impact ofinstruction.
Even if your school is in thisposition and you enter the new
school year with a spreadsheetof data about where students are
(00:43):
up to at the end of theprevious year, you may still
want to spend a little timedoing some simple check-in
assessment.
After all, the most effectiveway to get a handle on where
your class is sitting is to dosome assessment yourself.
Nothing beats watching studentsrespond in real time.
(01:03):
The other thing to consider isthat data might indicate what
lessons covered right at the endof the previous school year,
rather than what students haveconsolidated into their
long-term memory.
It's entirely possible forstudents to have been introduced
to new phoneme-graphemecorrespondences in weeks six,
seven or eight of term four ofthe previous year, but not have
(01:27):
consolidated that new learning.
Launching straight into newcontent risks creating a gap in
the student's learning.
So, whether you haveestablished phonics data for
your class or not, it's worthtaking some time to conduct a
simple check-in about phonicsknowledge with your class at the
start of the year, regardlessof the grade you're teaching.
(01:49):
This all sounds good, but I canpractically hear you saying but
Jocelyn, where am I supposed tofind time for all that
assessment?
The good news is that for asimple check-in, you don't have
to sit every child down one byone and assess them.
Today I'm sharing a simplemethod of getting a roundabout
(02:10):
sense of where your class issitting in their phonics
knowledge.
From there you can do furtherinvestigation to find out
precisely what differentchildren need.
Let's dive into the steps thatyou can follow and some of the
considerations around this.
Number one make sure that youhave enough whiteboards and
(02:31):
working markers for each child,along with something for them to
rub their board off with.
If that's a tissue or a papertowel, then great.
If you don't have enoughwhiteboards, really good quality
plastic sleeves with a piece ofpaper inside them on a
clipboard work well too.
You'll also need the scope andsequence document for your
school's phonics program.
If you're a Resource Roommember or you use Reading
(02:53):
Success in Action as yourphonics program, you can find
that information on the ResourceRoom site or in your decoding
books.
But every systematic syntheticphonics program has this
information so grab what yourschool is already using and get
ready to check in.
Number two determine the phonicsknowledge that your students
(03:15):
should have learned in the yearbefore they reached your
classroom.
If you're teaching Year One,that's the basic code.
If you are teaching Year Two,that's the complex code.
If you are teaching UpperPrimary, Year Three to Six,
that's the whole code, includingmultiple spellings of various
phonemes or sounds.
Your starting point forinstruction and this check-in
(03:39):
will depend on your student'sage and what you know about them
.
So just decide on the startingpoint that makes sense to you
and have an educated guess.
If after the first fewquestions, most students know
all of it, well, you can moveahead.
If most students are weak inthe knowledge, you can go back.
Don't try to test the wholecode at once, though.
(04:01):
Break up what you want to knowinto small sections and check in
on them in manageable chunks,say five graphemes or phonemes
per day.
This ensures that you don'ttire your students out and it
allows you to make the analysisof what you find much more
manageable.
(04:21):
It's so much easier to check inon five bits of information for
your class than it is to beoverwhelmed with 30 or 40.
To conduct the check-in, sit allof your students either at
desks or on the mat, or acombination of these, but place
them far enough away from eachother that they can't copy.
The other ways you can limitcopying is to sit students who
(04:45):
you know need extra supportclosest to you and keep the pace
of the expected response snappy.
So if you give the children 20seconds between each question,
then they're going to rub thingsout and second guess themselves
and look at what everyone elseis doing.
So make the assessment, or thecheck-in, go quite quickly.
If you are checking in on thebasic code, say the phonemes one
(05:09):
at a time, the sounds, and havestudents write the grapheme.
So you'll say write down /b/.
do not review grapheme cardsbefore you do this check-in, you
You want to know what thestudents have embedded into
their long-term memory.
This is very much a cold task,because if they know it, they
(05:29):
know it.
No amount of school holidays orbeing a bit distracted is going
to prevent them from knowing it.
Have the students write acrossthe board and then show you
their boards, so they'll havefive graphemes, hopefully,
written on their board.
It's a really good idea, justfor your own knowledge, to take
a video of this check-in andwatch it back later so that you
(05:52):
can see who is and isn't tryingto copy from their peers.
Kids are terrific at fudgingthese sorts of assessments.
Now, when you take the video,have the camera next to you so
that you can capture the classfrom the front rather than from
the back.
Just prop an iPad up at thefront and the students won't
know.
(06:12):
.
don't Don't have the screen sothat they can see themselves,.
they They will be highlydistracted, but put it so that
the screen's facing away fromthem and all will be well.
ou they have written theirgraphemes, have the students
show you their board and take aphoto of the entire class.
You can then see in onesnapshot who does and doesn't
have the code.
(06:33):
To record this information,simply create a table and tick
the box if the student has it,or leave it blank if they don't.
Resource Room members haveaccess to a spreadsheet where
you can enter a one or a zeroand the results will be colour-
coded for you.
Next, if you are checking inbeyond the basic code, things
are a little different.
(06:54):
Rather than saying write /b/,you will say write down all of
the ways you know how to spellthe sound /ay/.
This is much more open-endedand gives you a really good idea
of what students know.
Some students will write onegrapheme, others will write five
, some will write five correctgraphemes and others will write
(07:16):
two and the other three are kindof just made up.
If you say "write down A as inplay, there's a good chance that
the student will have memorizedthat common word and then
analyze it to get the rightanswer.
While analogy is a validspelling strategy, it's not what
we want for this.
For this, we want to know aboutthe student's phonics knowledge
(07:38):
.
The reason I'm suggesting thatyou focus on recall rather than
recognition is that if thestudent can recall and write,
they really know the content.
If they can't, then theirknowledge is incomplete.
It's not enough for thestudents just to recognise the
grapheme and say the correctphoneme.
(07:59):
In order for them to spell,they need to be able to recall
this information to use it.
This is also an opportunity tocheck in on handwriting and
stroke order, which must beautomatic for strong writing to
occur.
Once you've determined who canand cannot recall graphemes,
you'll then decide on whichstudents need a check-in for
(08:21):
recognising.
If you're a teacher in an upperprimary classroom, this will
likely be a small number ofchildren who are at significant
risk of difficulty.
But be prepared that you'llneed to do the recognition or
reading part with any studentwho has significant difficulties
with the recall task.
In the early years, it's anyonewho didn't know what you would
(08:44):
expect them to know by thatpoint in their schooling.
The reason you want to do thisis that it will help you better
understand which correspondenceshave to be re-taught from
scratch and whichcorrespondences can just be
focused on in the daily reviewto consolidate them.
As a rough guide, if thestudents can automatically and
(09:06):
confidently recognise thegrapheme but they're wobbly on
the recall, you don't need toreteach that grapheme.
Just pay special attention tothose correspondences in daily
review and make sure that youfocus on recall rather than
recognition.
They can already recognise, wewant them thinking about the
phoneme, thinking about thegrapheme and writing it down
(09:29):
automatically.
If they can't recognise orrecall confidently, the
graphemes will need to be taughtagain, with appropriate
follow-up for consolidation.
This whole process of checkingin for phonics will likely take
you about two weeks all up.
A week to do the recallcheck-in with just a few
(09:49):
graphemes a day, and a week todo further assessment with
students who needed it.
For some students they willneed the whole thing assessed
for reading.
Others will need only a fewphonemes or graphemes checked in
on.
However, don't wait for weekthree before you begin to do
some consolidation on contentthe students should have known
(10:11):
but didn't.
From the first day of therecall task with whiteboards,
you can start reviewing andrehearsing with the graphemes
students didn't know.
This will mean that you won'twaste the first two weeks of
school, but also, you'll be ableto see which students are able
to quickly get back on trackwith their phonics learning with
(10:32):
just a bit of reminding, andwhich students will need higher
intensity instruction.
All of this impacts and informsyour approach to phonics
instruction.
This episode isn't about how topace and organise phonics
instruction in your mainteaching.
For that you can have a listento Season 3, Episode 15, Four
(10:53):
Points to Consider when PacingPhonics Instruction.
You might also like to searchmy website,
jocelynseamereducation.
com for the term "phonics.
There are a range of blog postsand podcasts with useful
information about early readinginstruction, but also in
catch-up for the three to sixspace.
And if you are listening tothis at the time of recording,
(11:15):
you might like to join me forthe Reading Success in the Early
Primary Years Teach Along thatbegins in February.
This 12-week course will equipyou and your team with lots of
practical know-how about readinginstruction in the first three
years of school.
It's designed to be generalenough in nature so that you can
get oodles of value regardlessof the phonics program you use
(11:38):
in your school, but it'sspecific enough to enable you to
take real action to get everychild reading.
If you're interested inlearning more about this course,
visit jocelynseamereducation.
com/ reading success.
As you prepare for the newschool year, remember, the best
instruction focuses on studentneed, not what a program says
(12:02):
you should be focusing on eachweek.
Yes, we want to work with ourphonics programs with fidelity,
but that doesn't have to come atthe expense of targeted
instruction that meets studentsat precisely the point they need
for strong learning.
We know that this gets you thebest outcomes.
(12:22):
That's all from me this week.
Until next time, happy teachingeveryone.
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.