We are doing a project concerning the efficacy of using visual phonics as an adjunctive instructional technique for literacy instruction. Doing this with two school districts, about 50 elementary teachers.
We have found that teaching experience (Huberman categories) may be the determining factor in the ease with which teachers use visual phonics, and the resulting improvement in efficacy.
Jeff Knox
Dear Jeffrey,
I am afraid I will not answer a question today but ask a new one. While teacher experience is crucial to literacy instruction, teacher philosophies or coming to an agreement on why a school provides literacy instruction comes first. In other words, teaching and administration staff should ideally discuss and decide together why they teach their students to read and write. Teaching reading and writing for life, for instance, will give everyone a clear purpose and direction and will make this task more meaningful for all parties. Developing a school-wide literacy plan would help clarify this and other aspects within a school setting. I hope this helps.
Sandra H
You can also engage the students in exercises that would make reading fun for the students. Engaging the students in reading material based on their prior readings/experiences/ and local or societal issue, especially in medium that they like can help to make reading more meaningful for them. For example, using social media and topics they chat about (e.g., fashion, music, films, sports etc.) can be engaging. See attached conference paper as an example.
Best regards,
Debra
Conference Paper Social Media in Education: Bringing Your Classroom to Life -...
Jeffrey, I think teaching experience is a determining factor in the ease with which teachers use anything, especially if the teachers have been engaged in self-reflection about their practice and committed to levels of professional development that will allow them to use things like visual phonics or other learning systems successfully in their classrooms.
I agree with Marquis, and our preliminary data analysis seems to verify this. The improvement in self-efficacy seems to be greatest for teachers in the 5-8 year range of experience, with those with fewer and those with longer years of experience, not showing as much improvement.
Many years ago (late 1950's), I learned to read with phonics. It made me a great reader and able to sound out words. However, many students of my generation are terrible at spelling as a result. There are sometimes unintended consequences.
Gregg, I think many people learned to read with phonics, including me. We are trying to determine whether adding a gesture system to the auditory/visual input would make any difference in such skills as spelling.
Thanks, Jeff
My question would be how that would work with silent letters or words that sound alike but mean different things? English is an odd language in that: to, too and two all sound the same, but in reality mean different things.
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