SPEED DRILL PRACTICE

The Reading Rope depicts critical foundational skills and their relationship to reading growth, and Tolman's Hourglass figure specifies in greater detail each aspect of phonology and orthography that must be learned to the point of automaticity.

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)

The subskills in the Hourglass figure, including recognition of speech sounds, letters, letter-sound correspondences, rime chunks syllable patterns, morphemes, and whole words, are gradually automatised with practice. In addition, the more quickly the student associates a meaning to a printed word, the more rapidly the word will be recognised. Thus, vocabulary and language comprehension will also affect reading fluency. If a student hesitates about which sound a grapheme represents, or can't recognise the meaning of an intended word, his or her reading will be slowed.

The following examples of speed drills and practice routines illustrate simple supplementary tasks that can be integrated into the General Phonics Lesson Plan.

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)  

Alphabetic Prosody:

Alphabetic prosody is an activity that can help students learn to pay attention to punctuation marks and understand what they represent, rapidly and automatically. The activity outlined below was developed by Judith Dodson in her book 50 Nifty Activities for 5 Components and 3 Tiers of Reading Instruction (2008). Once students have mastered the meaning of the punctuation marks, they can transfer that automatic knowledge to sentences and connected text quite easily.

Alphabetic Prosody: Whole Class Instruction

Materials: Cardstock printed with single letters of the alphabet, plastic sheet protectors.

1. Before the activity, place the letters on the cardstock with punctuation marks that have been previously taught (e.g. A!, A?, A.). Place the letters in a plastic sheet protector and arrange in alphabetical order.

2. Set the purpose by saying,'Paying attention to punctuation marks will help you read with expression. When you read with expression, it is a sign that you understand what you are reading. This activity will give you practice reading punctuation marks.

3. Remind students what an exclamation mark means and how to read it when they encounter one.

4. Read the letters A!, B!, and C! to the class with a lot of excitement.

5. Ask students to say the next letters with you: 'D!, E!, F!, and G!'

6. Ask students to read the next letters in unison without you: 'H!, I!, J!, K!'

7. Repeat this activity with other graphemes and add other punctuation marks (like question marks and periods) that have been taught.

8. Return to the purpose by saying, 'You've been practicing paying attention to punctuation marks. Punctuation marks will help you read with expression. When you read with expression, it is a sign that you understand what you are reading.   

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)  

Alphabetic Prosody: Small-Group Instruction:

Materials: Student whiteboards, dry erase markers, erasers.

1. Say a sound and ask students to write the letter(s) (graphemes) for that sound on their whiteboards.

2. Repeat the sound in an excited way and ask students to add the punctuation mark after the letter(s) that makes the reader know it needs to be read in an excited manner.

3. Have students say the sound with expression as they write it and then again when they are finished writing the exclamation mark.

4. Say several sounds with excitement and ask students to write the letter(s) and use the correct punctuation mark. For instance, say '/sh/!' and have students write sh!.

5. Repeat this process with other punctuation marks that students have been taught.

6. Give students a simple sentence to copy onto their whiteboards (e.g., 'The dog barked.')

7. Have students read the sentence as a simple declarative sentence with a full stop at the end: 'The dog barked.'

8. Ask students to change the period to a question mark and read the sentence again: 'The dog barked?'

9. Have students change the question mark to an exclamation mark and read the sentence in an excited manner: 'The dog barked!'

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)  

Alphabetic Prosody: Independent Practice

Materials: Student whiteboards, dry erase markers, erasers

1. Have each partner write out the first eight letters of the alphabet on their whiteboards and put punctuation marks between the letters (e.g. A, B?, C, D. E! F! G? H).

2. Ask partners to take turns reading each other's alphabet. If time allows, have students repeat this step with another set of alphabet letters or with the entire alphabet.

3. Tell partners to work together to choose simple words and phrases with different punctuation marks and to write them on their whiteboards.

4. When they finish writing, have them read the words and phrases aloud together: 'Dog! Dog? Dog.'

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman) 

Developing Speed Drills

Speed drills play a role in increasing fluency and automatic recognition. They can include word parts, words, high-frequency words, irregular words, phrases, or sentences. The following example drills focus on the sounds of letter c. Such drills often include a few examples of unfamiliar words, such as cede and cyst, in order to help students expand their vocabularies. It is important during speed drill practice to talk about the meanings of any words that students may not know. Also, consider using complex sentence structure purposefully in sentence-level speed drills. In this way, students become familiar with these types of sentences before they receive direct instruction in complex sentence structures.

• At the partial word level (Have students read the sound that the letter c makes in each combination.)

ci ce co cu ca cu

ca ci cy co ce ca

co cy cu ci ce co

ce cy ca ci cu co

• At the word level.

cite cent cart cups camp cyst

cost city cans cell calf cede

• At the sentence level.

When the boy from the city went to summer camp, he had a great time.

The cyst on his wrist was gone after he went to see the doctor. 

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)