Why it works
The National Reading Panel and decades of research identify phonemic awareness (hearing and manipulating individual sounds) and systematic, explicit phonics (teaching letter-sound relationships in a planned order) as essential, effective components of early reading. Taught explicitly, they build the decoding that fluent reading depends on.
The research: National Reading Panel on phonemic awareness and phonics; Ehri on word reading.
The run-of-show
Choose your slot. The agenda, timings, and length update to match.
The core activity: plan explicit, systematic practice
Teachers leave with an explicit phonemic awareness activity and the next phonics lesson in sequence.
- Identify where your students are in the decoding sequence.
- Plan a short, explicit phonemic awareness activity: hearing and manipulating sounds.
- Plan an explicit phonics lesson for the next skill in sequence.
- Plan quick decodable practice so students apply the skill in connected text.
Facilitator notes
- Keep it explicit, brief, and daily.
- Follow a scope and sequence.
- Use decodable text for application, and assess to place students.
Adapt it
- <b>Elementary:</b> the core work, daily and systematic.
- <b>Secondary:</b> explicit decoding for struggling readers, with age-respectful materials.
- <b>Multilingual learners:</b> attend to sounds that differ from the first language.
Participant handout
One page for every teacher. Print it, or save it as a PDF.
Phonics: explicit, systematic, applied
<b>Build decoding:</b> hear the sounds, map them to letters, in sequence, applied in decodable text.
- Where my students are in the sequence:
- My phonemic awareness activity:
- My next explicit phonics skill:
- My decodable application:
- How I assess placement:
Make it stick
Daily, explicit, in sequence:
- Teach explicitly and in sequence, every day.
- Apply the skill in decodable text.
- Bring a decoding win to the next PLC.