phonics programs for intermediate students

Are the kids reading on grade level or not? That might effect the answer. At least the answer I would give.

—des

Personally I use a set of classic traditional workbooks which cover the ground thoroughly. One very strong warning is that phonics concerns *sounds* so silent seatwork is counterproductive and may actually set a kid back. Second warning is that if you buy a sequential program you are more likely to get some benefit out of it if you use it sequentially — start at the beginning and work through all the exercises to the end, not hopping around picking and choosing activities. Given that you genuinely teach the material, discuss it orally, and work through the whole book or books, the ones I have good success with are the Check and Double check series from Scholar’s Choice, available at scholarschoice.ca (note .ca, NOT .com). They mail quickly to US and Canada. The books are not specific to grade level, although they are sequential. Book 1 concerns single consonants and short vowels; often Grade 3 students can stand a review of this one, but many can start in with Book 2; check how firm their knowledge base is, and consider reviewing all or part of Book 1 quickly as needed. Book 2 concerns digraphs, blends, and common vowel combinations; almost everyone needs to do this one, even adult students. Books 3 and 4 get into multisyllables and variations in the code; they are useful but quite advanced.
I’m not saying this is the only series, just a good standard and complete outline that I’ve had good results with.
It takes daily or at least three times a week work, and going through each and every sound pattern many times, but it does seem to stick.

Amen. What she said.

<<Does anyone know of any phonics programs to use with 3rd grade students? I’m looking for something stuctured with day by day type activities>>

The best group program I know about is SRA’s Corrective Reading: Decoding Strategies. It’s a Direct Instruction program which means that it is scripted, but don’t let that scare you. My school uses Direct Instruction, and I can honestly tell you that it works quite well for what I call whole language refugees, mildly LD kids, ESL students and mildly cognifively impaired students. Usually, a child who has difficulty with this program is a good candidate for Special Education services. It is this child who needs a more intensive multisensory reading/spelling program such as Lindamood-Bell or Orton-Gillingham or Orton-Gillingham based program. I taught all levels of this program to combined groups of regular/Sp. Ed. students before becoming completely involved with multisensory reading programs.

This program has four levels. A child would be expected to complete two levels in a school year. A third grader would probably only need the first two levels before entering the regular 4th grade reading program at the beginning of the next school year (assuming that decoding is his/her only problem).

Marilyn

Kinda weird — I had similar experiences :) I used Corrective REading with solid success in public school LD setting; then went on to private school setting to learn intensive, multisensory; went back to public school for a year and used SRA again.
I’d agree that an awful lot of labeled-but-not-severely-disabled students really get what they need from Corrective Reading (I love the way it targets the guessing!). And I’m not a script-type person — so in a way, using a scripted, totally structured program for one particular skill works really well and balances the usually more spontaneous teaching.

Hi, I have been using a direct, multisensory, concrete, pencil-and-paper method that works with any text, any level. It is complicated to describe, but I will send you info about it if you will email me at [email protected] Anita

Another good program is Project Read (by Language Circle). It too is explicit, multisensory, structured, and sequencial.

You might also take a look at The Spel-Lang Tree at http://www.spellangtree.org. The first level program is very structured but is sequenced in the order that children learn developmentally. If children have had some phonics training, you might consider the second level program — much more inductive in nature but children learn the basic spelling patterns and discover which words don’t fit pronunciation patterns (i.e., cat, hat, mat, rat, sat, tat, — what) and these become true sight words. The first level program requires only the teacher’s manual and manuscript paper. The second level program can require some copying of blackline masters for the total word list and for a spelling notebook if you choose to use that. A spelling notebook can also be developed using children’s notebook paper and that saves the copying.

Grace

Just want to suggest Deal A Word again. This game has some wonderful applications for teaching both spelling and phonics (resembling the Orton-Gillingham approach). Info at www.dealaword.com.