Strategies for a Strong Start to Phonics Lessons

In teaching, time is of the essence. Even seasoned teachers feel pressured. In reading instruction, this can cause us to overlook, at the start of our phonics lessons, two critical practices: cumulative review (revisiting previous skills) and retrieval practice (students’ recalling information they’ve learned). 

These are essential skills for complex thinking, organization, transfer, and application of knowledge. As Wiley Blevins writes in Differentiating Phonics Instruction for Maximum Impact, “When a new skill is introduced, it should be reviewed systematically and purposefully for at least the next four to six weeks. The goal must be to teach to mastery rather than just exposure.” 

Cumulative review is necessary for moving students’ phonics skills from exposure to mastery; retrieval practice is equally key. When students retrieve information, they enhance their ability to recall it quickly and improve their understanding of how skills build upon one another. 

To move students toward mastery, we need to incorporate short activities that target both strategies. I accomplish this goal in the following ways.

BLENDING LINES

One strategy I use is blending lines. At the beginning of a lesson, students read from a sheet containing seven lines; words vary by skill type and comprise current, review, or challenge patterns as well as minimal pairs. 

The last lines include patterns within connected text, words strung together into one or more sentences. I scaffold up or down, adjusting how many lines students read or allowing them to read chorally, with a partner, or individually. This activity can be timed or untimed, sent home at the end of a lesson/week as additional practice, or used as formative assessment.

You can also use it across grade levels. K–1 students might work on new letter-sound correspondences and beginner consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. Students in third grade and up who’ve not mastered blending might work on multisyllabic words that have affixes, parts added to the roots of words. 

I adjust by varying the words in each line. I give students who struggle with specific letter reversals (b/d) a line of minimal pairs, where one letter in a word is contrasted (big/dig). I give students who need vowel team practice lines with team, leap, and keep. And I give students reading multisyllabic words options like action, reaction, and invitation. For more examples, check out A Fresh Look at Phonics, by Wiley Blevins.

TIMED WORD LISTS

I have students read timed word lists at the start of phonics lessons, typically giving them one minute per list. They can demonstrate accuracy and automaticity while I provide corrective feedback. This activity isn’t about speed but rather is about increasing repetition and developing fluency, lightening students’ cognitive load so they can take on comprehension work. It provides lots of repetition in a short amount of time. 

Lists can contain words related to one phonics skill or interleave old with new skills. Create your own or access ready-made resources. You might have students read lists two or three times for one minute. Or, turn this into a challenge, asking them to read more words (accurately) each round. Scaffold this activity by varying the method that students use to read words, the types of words included, and/or list length.

DICTATION

Dictation, the practice of orally sharing words for students to transcribe for encoding practice, is another useful warm-up activity. In primary grades, I have students review phonemes and graphemes by writing letters for sounds I say. As they progress, I do this for vowel combinations, asking students to recall the different ways to spell a vowel sound like long /a/. 

This activity requires students to recall from memory what they previously learned, which provides retrieval practice, and it allows you to address students’ misconceptions on the spot. As students become automatic in their ability to recall spellings for different sounds, you can add difficulty by having them spell words that include the sound they’re working on. 

With dictation, students have opportunities to consolidate their learning, and you gain valuable formative assessment data that can help you provide support and plan future phonics instruction.

WORD CHAINING

One last strategy I like to use for cumulative review practice is word chaining. I use word chaining to review phonics patterns by having students change one sound in a word. If you’re reviewing medial vowels, beginning consonants, and digraphs, I might give a list like this: get, got, shot, shut, shun, pun, pin, pan, plan. 

As I say each word, I ask students to listen for and write the new word. Only one sound should change in each word at a time. This strategy reinforces students’ phonemic awareness, asking them to segment and manipulate sounds; it also provides encoding practice. 

To scaffold this activity, you can provide sound boxes (boxes used to segment sounds) and consider which part of the word you’re asking students to manipulate. Make sure students repeat the word orally so they hear all sounds. I ask more advanced students to add suffixes to words, at times, to change the meaning or part of speech. This is a great way to show students how words can relate (e.g., sat, sit, sits, sitter, sitting). I often create my own word chaining lists, but there are also pre created lists available.

STUDENT RESPONSES

In all strategies, I may have K–2 students begin with letter/sound correspondences, then move systematically through phonics skills from simple to more complex patterns. In grades three and up, students’ responses usually include more complex vowel patterns and focus on prefixes and suffixes. But this progression is entirely dependent on the entry point of each student.

All four strategies fit into the start of any phonics lesson; support varying abilities; and help students gain exposure, repetition, and retrieval practice. When students at all levels achieve mastery of these skills, they have a better chance of becoming fluent, automatic readers, which is key as they work on more advanced reading and writing.