Teach Practice Reading & Speaking
Everything that you need to teach reading and writing to adults or children is contained in the Practice Reading & Speaking phonics course. This phonics course will help all students to become confident with reading and writing. As graded easy reading material was hard to find for adults, a graded phonic story book was written to accompany the course. See on this page how to teach reading and writing using Practice Reading & Speaking.
Before you begin to teach reading and writing to adults or children, you will need to discover what the student already knows and what can they do. Develop an understanding of how emotional intelligence is often defined by childhood experiences. Set the emotional scene for learning.
Teach Reading & Writing with the PRS Phonics Course
FIVE SIMPLE STEPS
Pronunciation Assessment – STEP ONE
Ask the student to repeat after you, the 21 words in the Pronunciation Assessment on page 154. (This is to check that they can physically pronounce all of the sounds heard in spoken English.) Make a note of any mistakes. They will likely need extra help with these sounds.
General Phoneme Assessment – STEP TWO
Next, set the ‘General Phoneme Assessment ‘ (page 158). There are two assessments depending on what the level of the student is. If they can read assessment A with ease, set assessment B. Ask them to attempt to read the words. Stop when they are unable to read a word. Ask them if they can read any of the other words in the group. Make a note of the number at the beginning or end of the line of words in which they made their first mistake (whichever is nearest to the mistake).
Module Phoneme Assessment – STEP THREE
Now set the phoneme assessment that relates to that number. (These start at page 160) The first one covers the alphabet and being able to blend two letters together. The second assessment covers CVC words, double letters etc. The assessments become progressively more difficult. These assessments will help you to define a starting point in the course where the student is most likely to come across unknown phonic principles.
Begin to Teach Reading & Writing – STEP FOUR
Show them the online video that demonstrates how to pronounce the exact sounds that you hear in English. (You will be given a link to this after purchasing the eBook). Give them the link so that they can listen and practice the sounds at home. Suggest that they buy the Student Guide so that they can practice their reading at home.
Prior to each lesson, read through the relevant teaching notes that relate to the Module you are about to teach. Look at the extra teaching points in the module. You will likely be able to use parts of the teaching notes directly with the student.
Turn to the module they will begin at. Show them the coloured heading and how it relates to what they will be learning. For example: RED means vowel sound, BLUE means long vowels (the alphabet name of the vowel). GREEN is for vowel digraphs like ”ar’ as in car. Next, point to the image. Show them that all the spellings in the left column say exactly the same sound represented by the image. You will be taking one spelling at a time and helping your student practice a variety of words containing the grapheme.
Syllable division instruction needs to be taught from Module 9. Spelling Rules need to be taught from Module 13. When the student begins to notice that some spellings can be pronounced in different ways, show them the index at the back of the book. For example: the spelling ‘ai’ is included in: said, rain, fairy, mountain, curtain, plaid and bonsai. However, it sounds is different in every word. (This index is only in the full phonics course – not in the student guide.)
If the student is having problems with the spelling of a sound or being able to read a single word use pages 148-152 to help them focus for longer on the problem spelling. Spending at least 5 minutes on what they find hard will help their understanding and assist their memory.
Teach Reading & Writing – Testing – STEP 5
Use the Module test that relates to the Module you are teaching, Do this before and after each lesson to check that progress is being made. (When testing, don’t tell the student what the word says as they may memorise the word but still be unable to read the phonemes to decode the word.)
When you re-test after teaching, show the student the cumulative totals. After teaching module 13 they will have learned 171 different phonic facts. They now have a way to define their progress. Additionally, date their Progress Record after completing each Module. In this way both you and they can keep a track of what they have learned so far and what is yet left to learn.
Teach Reading & Writing – The Easy Method
Practice Reading and Speaking is packed with all the resources that you need to teach reading and writing to any age group. However, you may prefer to just make a start and deal with what crops up along the way. Even if you use none of the resources but just help the student learn to read the words in Modules 1-70, their reading ability will develop in leaps and bounds. When you teach writing too, set the writing challenge at the end of the Module. Either help them with the writing tasks (initially) or at least help them correct their own mistakes. Tell them that journalists do this all the time. In some offices, they proof-read each others work to make sure their writing is mistake-free. Help them write text that means something to them. A diary, a letter, a text message, a letter of complaint, a recipe, an application form or holiday blog etc.
Start teaching reading and writing by listening to the student read from the beginning of the course. They can pretend they’re rapping if they like. They could read the list of words in a rhythm. (This will help with being able to read at speed.)
If they can read a group of words, move on to the next group. Give extra attention to the words they struggle with. Print out the Segment focus page and write the spelling of each sound in its own box. The student will then be able to see how to separate the sounds. If they can read a word can they spell it? Can they use the word in a sentence? The more senses the student uses to learn, the greater the chance is that they will make a memory of what you have taught. Hearing, seeing, verbalising, writing, creating a spider diagram, making notes, it all helps. Ask the student to look closely at what they need to remember most. Take a mental photograph of a word that represents the spelling. (Usually, the first word in the group.) Write it down in a way that helps them remember. Maybe using colour for the spelling. Even, recording it on their phone could help their memory.
Print out the Self Correction Bookmark on page 147. Teach them that the group of letters in the word that they’re stuck on has limited options. If they get used to going through the options in their head, they will hit on the right pronunciation much sooner and not get frustrated. Usually consonants aren’t a problem for struggling readers. It’s likely to be the vowel sound, vowel name or vowel digraph that they are having problems with.
Try and read everything on the page yourself, so that you can decide whether your student would be able to absorb the information at this stage. When you start listening to the adult or child read, if you are unsure of anything don’t give an explanation unless you can explain it clearly and succinctly. Get it clear in your head first, before trying to explain it. Use the teaching notes that start at page 92, or the other reference pages in the eBook to make your job easier. You will be surprised at how quickly a determined adult will move through the course.
When the student has learned to read the top 100 high frequency words used in English, (highlighted words on pages 75/76 of the website) they will be able to read at least 50% of everyday text. The top 200 words in English are all covered by module 39.
Teach Reading & Writing – Write Well and Speak Clearly
At the end of each Module is a scan reading or writing challenge. The writing challenge progresses from writing a short sentence to writing paragraphs. Eventually the student will be asked to write a story. Pages 124-131 help you teach the student how to improve their own writing. Pages 112 & 113 give extra ideas for writing assignments.
Teaching punctuation and sentence structure can be taught as the student’s ability to write sentences develops. Use the guide to basic English to teach these principles. (You can use these directly with the student, as they present the facts in an easy to follow way.)
As the student progresses, you can teach them about public speaking. There are hints and tips on page 132 on how to write and give a speech. Being able to speak fluently and choose the right words to convey meaning is important too, especially at work.
For students whose first language is NOT English, there are pronunciation hints and tips at the bottom of some of the pages. This course will help them refine their pronunciation.
Teach Reading & Writing – Adults
Ask an adult student what kind of assistance they are looking for and what they would like to achieve. Learn a little about them. Be a good listener. Demonstrate that you care about the struggles that they have gone through to reach the point where they now want to resolve their issues with reading and writing. Be respectful and don’t make assumptions. Listen MORE than you talk. Show empathy. You are there to support not lecture.
Tell the student a little about the method you use to teach reading and writing – Practice Reading & Speaking. This eBook makes it easy for you to teach reading and writing and easy for them to learn. (If they expect to find it easy, it is more likely that they WILL find it easy.) It’s your job to lower their stress when you teach reading and writing. Don’t teach too much in one go. Concentration wavers when you find something tiring or stressful. Depending on the student, they may need lots of breaks. Before you begin to teach reading and writing, show the student the easy words at the beginning of the course then the difficult words at the end of the course. Show them the Progress Record (page 175). There is a light at the end of the tunnel. You will be teaching them all of the facts they need in order of difficulty . Show them Module 39 in the chart. Tell them, by the time they reach this module, they will be able to read most of what they see in writing. Following module 39, they may even know and understand enough about phonics to teach themselves the rest of the course. They could end up a phonics expert.
Before you start, give a brief explanation about what phonics is. They hear sounds in their everyday world and can differentiate between what a car and a lorry sounds like. They can tell the difference between the voices of their family and friends. They hear a sound and create an image in their head of what or who is making the sound. Reading and listening go hand in hand. Reading is about learning to relate what you hear, to the spelling of words, so that you can read them. Learning to write the words in sentences comes next. Mention that there are less than 50 sounds that we hear in spoken English. No matter how gibberish the sound is, it can be written. Ask them to make up a word that makes no sense at all. Write down the sounds they just spoke and repeat it back to them.
What you would like to do, is help them learn the facts that they need in order to improve their reading and writing. When you teach reading and writing you will do your best to make it easy for them to learn. Remember to praise, praise, praise. It boosts confidence and develops a CAN DO attitude.
Tell them that before you begin to teach them to read and write, you would like to find out what they already know. You need to work out a starting point in the phonics course for them.
First, something easy. You would like them to say exactly what you say. Turn to the pronunciation assessment on page 154.
Phonic Stories – for Adults
When you are sure that the adult student can read the words in the module, ask them to read the story in the Phonic Story book that relates to the module. There is a story for each of the modules that teach the reading of three or more letter words (Modules 10-39) They will be practising what they have learned in real text.
Stories for Children
When you teach reading and writing to children you will be aware that there is an abundance of phonic, graded story books available. Help them enjoy reading stories at their level. Look for books with at least two or three words per page that they can’t read.
BUY PRACTICE READING & SPEAKING
BUY PRS STUDENT GUIDE (Just the course without the resources and teaching notes.)
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