Johnny was one of my first 5 students. He was a 5th grader who was reading at the 3rd grade level. I worked with him for eight 45-minute lessons. Then, he was retested by his school and found to be reading at the 6th grade level. However, his school STILL would not consider switching to phonics for beginning reading or providing remedial phonics instruction to other struggling students even after documenting his progress with phonics using their own tests. His father moved out of this large city to a smaller rural town (adding 30 minutes to his commute) after talking with the schools there--they were more responsive to parents and used phonics and other direct instruction methods. 15 Jun 94
1st lesson with “Johnny.” His phonics knowledge is much greater than “Jane’s,” so he went through the lessons about 4 times as fast although Jane also was tested at the 3rd grade level. We worked on [short a], [short e], [m], n, s, t, x, d, r, [l], [w], h, p, b, c (k and s sound), f, v, g, j, k, y, z. He did not know the sounds of the bracketed letters. He knew both sounds of c, but not when to use each. I explained that c always has a k sound unless it is before an i, an e, or a y, when it has a s sound. I gave him homework on m, l, w, and both sounds of c. He finished them up quickly—he did them right there, the homework didn’t even make it home! 17 Jun 94
Worked on: short i. short o, short u, ph, qu. Played concentration game. Johnny can sound out most consonants with no problem (c with it’s “k” or “s” sounds gave him some trouble.) He often confused vowel sounds, however. He will often say the letter’s long vowel sound instead of its correct short sound. 19 Jun 94
Worked on: -nce, -nse, -dge, dw, pl, pr, sl, sm, sn, sp, spr, st, str, scr, sk, tw, sh, long e (ee, ea, ie, -y), long a (ai, ay, ei), a as “ah” (au, ou, aw). Johnny is still having troubles with vowels and c as “s” or “k” but is improving. 6 Jul 94
Worked on: long i (ie, y, uy), long o (oa, ow), oo (good and food), [ow, ou], [oy, oi], long u (ue, eu, ui, ew); er, ir, ear, ur, and or as “er.” Johnny is still confusing long and short vowel sounds but getting better. We will finish up phonics basics next time. I told Johnny to bring a book for next time. I also gave him 2 homework sheets to work on with all the vowel and consonant sounds. 8 Jul 94
Worked on silent letters: kn, gh, mb, gn, wr, -stle, -ft, h. Also worked on special combinations such as -tion, -cial, -ture. This concluded all the phonics lessons. Johnny forgot his book, so he read “one more frontier” out of June’s Airman Magazine. He’s still confusing long/short sounds of vowels but is correcting himself more often. 13 Jul 94
Worked on short/long vowel sounds: hat/hate, pet/Pete, bid/bide, etc. This helped a lot. Johnny said after doing the worksheet, “Oh, I get it now.” We read the first part of an article about D-Day, “An Operation Called Overlord.” Johnny did well. (It’s written at about the 6th grade level.) Short a occasionally gave him some problems—will review this next time. 7 Aug 94
Johnny read from “Who Shot the President.” He didn’t miss any words for 20 minutes so he read from a Scientific American magazine for the last few minutes of the lesson. The article was about black holes. He had a bit of trouble with ea words and sign and monster. Will work on this next time. 9 Aug 94
We worked on “c” words and words with “ea” and short o. Finished most of the black hole article. Johnny did very well. He was able to sound out many difficult words such as “astronomer,” “perpendicular,” and “circumstantial.” He had trouble with the c as s/k again and also with words with “ai” in them. Overall, however, his reading is greatly improved. | |
