Topic outline

  • Integrating Language Instruction

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    • Phonological awareness instruction does not depend on letters or letter names. It does not engage the student with printed text. It's primary focus is working with oral language and understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds (phonemes). Common phonological awareness activities involve isolating, blending, segmenting, and manipulating (oral language). Phonemic awareness is a component of phonological awareness.


      Phonics is concerned with learning letter-sound relationships (phonograms). Students are taught letter or letter combinations that represent phonemes. Students match the phonograms to the sounds they hear or to letters and letter combinations they see in order to write (spell) or to read (decode) words.

      Phonological awareness and phonics have a reciprocal relationship. Therefore, we should not wait for mastery of phonological awareness to begin phonics instruction.  Students will use phonological awareness knowledge to segment, blend, and manipulate the phonemes connected to print. Just as phonological awareness supports phonics, so phonics work supports mastery of phonological awareness knowledge.

  • The JCSpell Way

    Phonemic Awareness
    Phonics
    The 70 Orton Phonograms
    Consonants/Vowels and Voiced/Voiceless

    • The JCSpell way of teaching word recognition has two stages -- isolated sound-letter relations and application in words.

      During the first stage, our instruction is primarily concerned with mapping relations between sounds and letters. Alice Nine often refers to these lessons as "front-loading lessons." Students become comfortable with alphabetic knowledge, including letter formation, phonemic awareness, and sound-symbol relations. Alice Nine often refers to this knowledge base as the code (phonograms and rules). The first stage lasts 25-30 lessons.

      During the second stage, the code is systematically and explicitly applied to a unique set of words each day.  Students take a single word from oral language to written form and back to oral language, developing the skill of sounding out words for both encoding (spelling and writing connections) and decoding (reading and word identification strategies). The second stage lasts the rest of the school year for 120 lessons.


    • Phonemic awareness


      Phonemic awareness is working with sound. No written form is involved.

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      Video 1. Phonemic Awareness with JCSpell URL

      Video Sketch: What is phonemic awareness? How does JCSpell provide practice in phonemic awareness? (02m 35s)

      Note: Phonemic awareness activities are embedded in Alice Nine's "Think to Spell" routine.

    • 2.  Phonics


      When Alice Nine speaks of phonics, she is referring to a system of instruction used to teach students the connection between letters and sounds (Snow et al., 1998).



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      Video 2. Choose Alphabet Displays that Do Not Confuse URL

      Video Sketch: How does some phonics instruction cause confusion? Why does JCSpell use plain cards for the phonograms? (06m 55s)s


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      Video 3. Using Pictures on Cards URL

      Video Sketch: When are pictures an appropriate learning tool? (04m 09s)

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      Video 4. Phonics URL

      Video Sketch: What is phonics? How does JCSpell provide phonics instruction? After front-loading the phonograms, JCSpell continues retrieval practices through flash card drills and dictation. JCSpell also provides applied practice through the "Think to Spell" routine. (02m 52s)

    • 3.  The 70 Orton Phonograms

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      Video 5. Practicing the Phonograms URL

      Alice models the "Flash Cards" routine with the first 54 phonograms. "Flash Cards" is a brisk, brief daily retrieval practice. (YouTube video)

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      Website: PhonogramPage.com URL

      See and hear all 70 common English phonograms taught in JCSpell. (Also includes 26 videos models for lower case letter formation.)

      PhonogramPage, a free user site, is an Alice Nine website.

    • 3.  Consonants/Vowels and Voiced/Voiceless

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      Video 6. Sounds of English URL

      Video Sketch: How do consonant sounds and vowel sounds differ? What are voiceless sounds? What are voiced sounds? How does knowing about these sound classifications affect spelling? (09m 50s)

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