How Much Phonics Should I Teach?

decoding phonics
05 February, 2022
50 Comments

Teacher: I keep hearing about the science of reading and that I need to teach phonics (I’m a second-grade teacher). I’m okay with that but there is a lot to teach in reading. How much of the time should I spend teaching phonics?

Shanahan’s response:

Man was I surprised. I’d already spoken to the principal about the school curriculum. He’d given me an overview and assured me that what his teachers needed was training in academic language and how to ask high level comprehension questions. The speaker at a professional conference had stressed the importance of those in high poverty schools and the principal was convinced that was the road to higher test scores.

I’d asked about how much reading instruction his students were receiving in phonics and fluency, and he assured me those were already addressed. “No, the problem is those higher-level thinking skills that our students lack.”

I told him that I thought I could help but that I wanted to be sure. “Could I visit some classrooms before I decide?”

What I saw wouldn’t surprise me now, but at that time I was gob smacked.

The teachers’ lesson plans showed a lot of reading instruction. My classroom observations showed something else. Much of the instructional time wasn’t used for instruction at all. The teachers spent a big chunk of time on “sustained silent reading” and they read to the children quite a bit, too. All the classrooms had multiple reading groups. That meant that the boys and girls did a lot of worksheets to keep them quiet while the others were reading with the teacher.

The small group teaching entailed little more than reading a story together out of a textbook, with quite a bit of round robin reading. I guess that was the fluency work.

Oh, and the phonics instruction?

There was some but that was pretty thin gruel, too.

The teachers would hand out a couple of phonics worksheets from the textbook program. She’d read the directions to the class and have the kids fill out the pages and then she’d score them and hand them back. Phonics assignments more than phonics instruction. I don’t know what the publisher had in mind, probably not what the students were getting.

I didn’t keep track at the time. In retrospect I’d guess those kids got about 5 minutes a day of phonics (and as for quality of instruction, please don’t get me started). The same point could be made about the “fluency work.” Round robin reading rarely gives kids more than a minute or so of practice. Across a school year, that would amount to less than 3 hours of oral reading practice if done daily!

In other words, these children weren’t getting much phonics or fluency teaching.

These boys and girls needed to learn how to read. Nevertheless, no one was teaching them very much.

Students could practice but practicing what you don’t know how to do is not especially effective.

The principal was right. They weren’t getting much help with academic language or higher order thinking. But that wasn’t their problem.

You asked, “how much phonics should you teach?” Certainly, more than these kids were getting.

The National Reading Panel concluded that students benefited from explicit phonics instruction. It didn’t determine how much phonics might be beneficial (it did say that phonics from kindergarten through second grade was a good idea).

In response to your letter, I took another look at those 38 studies. Eighteen of them gave information about dosage. They all were successful. That is, the kids who got those amounts of phonics outperformed the ones who weren’t getting that instruction.

These daily amounts ranged from 15 to 60 minutes per day.

Since the phonics instruction in all these studies was beneficial, you could say 15 minutes per day is enough, and maybe it is. But I’d lean towards the averages. There are different ways to calculate averages. In this case, they all came out to around 30 minutes per day (the mean was 34.4 minutes, and the mode and median were both 30).

Does that mean every child needs 30 minutes of explicit phonics teaching every day?

Not necessarily. Carol Connor found she could divide first-graders based on their decoding proficiency. Those who could decode well already, did better working on more advanced reading and writing activities. Those not so proficient did best with explicit phonics teaching. Her study gives lie to the notion that there is no cost to teaching phonics to kids who can already decode well. What that means is that some kids would get more phonics and some would get less.

Also, even with 30 minutes of decoding instruction each day there are sure to be kids who need even more (decoding is a bigger challenge for some). Those kids might receive in-class or pull-out interventions added to the daily classroom phonics instruction.

I required 30-45 minutes of such instruction when I was director of reading in the Chicago Public Schools. We aimed for 2-3 hours per day of reading and writing teaching, so we devoted a quarter of the whole to making sure kids could read the words. Obviously, there is more to teaching reading than that, but 25% is a considerable commitment. Over three years (from kindergarten to grade 2), that would mean roughly 270 hours of decoding instruction would be available to all students (with some kids getting less due to their burgeoning proficiency and some others getting more –beyond the classroom -- due to their particular needs). In the long run, that’s more time than any of the studies have provided and certainly more than I often see in the classrooms that I visit.

What counts as decoding instruction?

That will vary a bit from grade level to grade level. Kindergartners need to be taught the letters (lower case and capitals, names, most common sounds, how to write them).

Kids must perceive the sounds within words if they’re going to link them with letters, and phonemic awareness instruction aims to accomplish that. I would definitely make that part of my decoding instruction, too.

As the kids progress up the grades, spelling patterns and their pronunciations become an issue.

Phonics instruction should teach kids to hear the sounds, to recognize the letters or spelling patterns, and then to connect the sounds and the letters/spellings. They need a lot of practice with those elements within words and some reading practice with them, too (that’s where decodable texts come in handy – as part of the phonics instruction).

Instruction should emphasize using this knowledge of letters and sounds to decode words and to write or spell them, too (reading and spelling are closely connected). Decoding words and spelling words should take up a big part of the phonics instruction real estate.

Finally, good phonics instruction must nurture a sense of flexibility. Kids who come to see these letter and sound relations as “rules” don’t do as well as those who see them as possibilities or alternatives.

Thirty minutes per day on that kind of learning in Grades K through 2 is a wise investment.

Perhaps you’ve heard of those 10-minute phonics programs? Given the evidence, they don’t seem like such a good idea to me. – more like a patch on deficient reading program than a serious effort to meet kids’ learning needs. Thirty minutes a day makes sense to me, I hope it does to you.

Comments

See what others have to say about this topic.

M Feb 04, 2022 05:02 AM

Thank you! Do you see that amount of time changing in response to the pandemic? About half of my third grade class is reading at a kindergarten/ first grade level, yet I’m expected to structure my “workshops” as you described above/ go full speed ahead with the same curriculum from before covid, as if remote learning never happened. The heavy focus is on comp, when many kids haven’t even developed decoding/ fluency. I’m just at a loss post pandemic and doing the best I can. I don’t use guided reading for small groups, thanks to your articles, and am heavily focused on more phonics instruction, at the appropriate level. We aren’t allowed to shuffle kids in classes during phonics like we used to be able to, so I’m teaching third grade Fundations to the whole class, even when half of them aren’t there yet. I know I went off on a tangent and you might not have an answer, but how can we adjust reading instruction in response to covid? Also, what do you recommend for teachers who are knowledgeable in the science of reading but are expected to use curriculums that have time and time again been proven ineffective and even harmful to literacy development?

Timothy Shanahan Feb 04, 2022 02:02 PM

M--
There is no question that COVID shutdowns, etc. have thrown the learning calendar off in many communities. Kids who would have sufficiently mastered decoding by the end of Grade 2 in the past, very well might need to continue working on that beyond the normal ending point. Schools that have been monitoring kids' progress regularly should see that and adjust their instruction accordingly. Those schools that haven't been monitoring learning closely should start that now as part of an effort to intensify their efforts to reverse the COVID losses. Finally, many districts have monitored kids' learning in grades K-2 and they might want to push that into early Grade 3 as well until things get straightened out.

tim

Mark Bench Feb 05, 2022 05:51 PM

What about vocabulary?

Sam Bommarito Feb 05, 2022 06:02 PM

I'm running out of room on my office walls for posts of best ideas from you. However I'm definitely making room for the part of your your current post under the heading: "Does that mean every child needs 30 minutes...." I am very glad to see your take on what to do for the children children who don't need as much phonics instruction. Once again I don't always agree with everything you say (and you do sometimes return the favor) BUT I have learned a lot from you over the past 4 years, and several of my outakes from you blog are in front of me daily as I teach. This one is going up for sure! Thanks. Sam (@doctorsam7, from St. Louis).

Emma Feb 05, 2022 09:11 PM

Our reception kids get 30 minutes daily, and they all do the same activities but at their 'Code Level'; this is our 'Phase 2. Phase 1 ensures we know which come to school with good phonemic awareness, and we teach PA explicitly, mapping those phonemes to graphemes around the end of week 1. Phase 2 ends around the middle of year 1, with over 80% having already moved into the 'self-teaching' phase. They have moved through the 100 or so high frequency graphemes within 4 code levels - reading readers that only include those target graphemes, as well as mapped high frequency words.
At a specific stage of this 'learning to decode' journey they also move into 'transition' readers, so that they get experience of texts with repetitive and predictable words, while also moving through their 4 'code level' readers (there are over 500 in our guide) They therefore choose to decode but also use other cues when needed. If they figure out a word they couldn't decode then they work backwards - ok, if that is the word, what is the mapping? As they have good PA they only need 1 or 2 exposures to those new words, to store.
The 30 minute session incorporates 3 main activities - utilising 'spaced repetition'. It is fully differentiated - so children who need more time on a code level get it, and others aren't held back. There is no front of the class 'whole class' teaching. They are also mapping around 400 'high frequency words' in reception (7 duck levels) - understanding the phoneme to grapheme mapping - and exploring the 300 - 400 phoneme to grapheme maps using the Speech Sound Clouds. This 30 minute session is to ensure they recognise the high frequency graphemes and can blend them - so they read more and more texts with fluency, and there is less working memory used to figure out the sentences - so they can comprehend more.

The other activities within the literacy block address the other elements - and when they have completed phase 2 there is more time to read, read, read and write, write, write! So 80% - 90% are out of this 'explicit' phonics stage well before the end of year 1, and that 30 minute session stops. Around 5% will have already have been identified as having something else going on that is creating learning challenges, and they are getting specific help.
80 - 90% are off 'decodable readers' before the end of year 1 - and have been independently reading other texts ('transition readers - bridging the gap between phonics focused books and authentic texts - for some time as well, so these just continue. This means they are off 'book band' type books / reading levels before the end of year 2 (other than around 5%)
The kids basically get what they need, when they need it.

As you said, around 30 minutes a day while working through the initial 100 or so high frequency graphemes used within most programs, as a foundation (so they understand mapping) means they can more easily move towards orthographic mapping.
The easier they move through this phase (so it must be differentiated, challenging but achievable etc) the better.

Robert Femiano Feb 08, 2022 01:18 AM

After 30 years in K-2, my suggestions: teaching phonetic encoding is the key to teaching reading. Since students bring the ability to speak with them to the classroom, that is where I start. Only after students are phonemically able to isolate beginning, medial and end sounds in familiar 3-letter words are they're ready to learn how to write (encode) these individual sounds into words. Once this system of encoding speech into print via the alphabet is understood by the student (including conventions such as left to right, caps make same sound as lower case but have a purpose, etc.) then reversing the process (i.e., decoding or reading) follows easily.

Next, they need to be taught the consonants names and sounds. The major stumbling block is in the 'plosive' or 'stop' consonants--such as 'b' , 'd', 'p' 't' and such. These require a burst of air and cannot be spoken in isolation, unlike nasal consonants such as 'm' or 'n'. When taught, students are sometimes mistakenly told "b says /buh/" or "d says /duh" but in reality, these stop consonants are influenced by the phoneme that follows. B says /bah/ in bath, not /buh/ /ah/ /th/. It says /beh/ in bed, /bih/ in bit, /boh/ in box, and yes /buh/ as in bus, bug, and bubble. Adding the phoneme /uh/ to these polosive consonants can confuse children. It is hard for some to hear 'dad' when sounding out: /duh/ /ah/ /duh/. For this reason, I taught students that each consonant sounds make 5 sounds (using short vowel sounds in order). Thus "f" says /fah/ as in fast, /feh/ as in feather, /fih/ as in fish, /foh/ as in fox and /fuh/ as in fuss. Using movable sandpaper letters, students can physically see the ''f' being combined with the 'a' as in fact, fad, fat, fasten. They would be reminded that if we wanted to write the word "faster" we would start with 'fa' for the /fah/ sound but if we wanted to write 'fix', we would use the /ih/ sound by moving the letter 'i' next to the 'f' and "the word would be spelled with 'fi' at the beginning". Having students use movable letters and writing words on their own lap chalkboards (or whiteboards) greatly speeds up this learning so that "automaticity" (instant recall) sets in.

When students can encode 3-letter words, they're ready for spelling patterns focused on the vowel sounds. For example, given the initial letter 'c' and ending letter 'p', the only difference in word pronunciation and meaning is in the vowel: cap, cop, cup, cope, cape, coop, etc. Using spelling patterns (e.g., ai says /ay/) students can learn to encode (then read) words such as: aim, air, pail, wait, paid, paint, grain, etc. while perhaps being introduced to a few new vocabulary words such as faint or plain.
Allowing students to see/write/read, (even draw) these patterns reinforces the regularity of phonics spelling and gives confidence to decode unfamiliar words such as strainer, ingrained, explain, etc.

There are less than 70 such spelling patterns, most of which are regular. Patterns such as "ai", "ay", "ee", and such quite stable. Sure, "ea" is used to represent different sounds such as: eat, bread, great and early but when each is approached separately, students are able to learn the more common ('ea' says /ee/, each, meat, treat...) to a level of automaticity before moving on to the less frequent: "ea says /eh/ sound in breath, sweat, treasure; or the /ay/ sound in great, break, steak; and the /er/ phoneme as in earth, pearl and search.

In my experience, students find the organization of studying words according to vowel spelling patterns to be quite helpful to their memory. In addition to encoding these words with the spelling pattern of the day, I often end lessons by writing a "mystery" word or two on my lap board, (same vowel pattern of course) that they read silently and draw the picture. Lessons are followed up the next day with connected text: students copy then illustrate sentences using those words studied the previous day. In the above example of "ai" words, they might see "Tom sat on the stairs, waiting for the mail." or "She paid for her haircut in cash." Rereading these aloud at home to their parents was part of the nightly homework, after reading them to me in the classroom and checking their drawings matched the comprehension.