Step 3: Building Words
"My advice: make sure you don't blame your high schoolers.
It's not their fault.
Reading is a basic skill that everyone needs and you've just got to find a way to teach them."
~10th grade Structured Literacy Class graduate
Step 3: Building Words
We begin the intervention with word chains created from our phonics program.
As students advance in skills, we use this time to immediately practice new skills with dry erase boards or Elkonin boxes.
In a 50 minute lesson, "Building Words" takes about 5 minutes. If we are practicing a new concept, we often "borrow" 5 extra minutes from the next steps, but always keep at least 20 minutes for reading connected text (Step 6).
Step 3 is a chance to immediately practice new concepts, or review "not yet mastered" concepts. We practice less with word chains or minimal pairs to review current phonics patterns once our phonics concepts are beyond single syllables. But we do keep returning to minimal pairs to focus in on sounds or symbols that students are challenged by.
Starting With Word Chains
The year begins with word chains focusing in on skills the students need to learn. As always, we keep up a brisk, professional pace.
If a student is having difficulty with /ng/, spend the week doing word chains like hug, hung, lung, lug, rug, rung, rang, ring, rings, sings, sing, sin. Deleting and adding /ng/ to words. Noticing how /ng/ is formed, and how it is spelled "n" within words and "ng" at the end of words.
This is not a "one and done" activity - with our most challenged readers we can spend many months with single syllable word chains. And then return to them regularly.
Student Work with Elkonin Boxes
This student's spelling and reading improved rapidly once he understood the sound/symbol connection.
At 13, he didn't appear to grasp the alphabetic principle - and he was challenged by the very first levels of our PA curriculum.
T: "Touch and say the sounds you say and hear in blunt." Ss repeat the word, touch each box and pronounce the phonemes in blunt. Then Ss spell by sound, then write the whole word. Ss then read the word, then read the whole list to each other when finished.
Elkonin boxes: various templates for use during Step 3: Building Words or Step 5: Dictation
These simple templates are "age-appropriate." We start with 3-sound words. The letter "x" goes between two boxes to illustrate that it represents two sounds. "Qu" uses two boxes as well. We write those letters very close together.