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Practice Rapid-Accurate Naming.
Use strategies to stay at your student’s level of success.
Matching
Pointing
Naming
Adjust the Rapid-Accurate Naming drill
Turn a task inside-out for best learning.
Play ‘You Be the Teacher.’
Keep practicing Blending and Segmenting.
Master the stories in the Phonics program.
Demonstrate that some words are not Phonics-friendly.
Practice Rapid-Accurate Naming (RAN)
Once your student has learned a few Phonics sounds, and if your Phonics program does not include a Naming drill for the
letter-sounds it is teaching, it is a good idea to add one.
1. Make a flashcard for each letter-sound. Print neatly, in bold marker. I cut index cards in half for Phonics
letter-sounds, and cut off the top left corner to indicate which end is ‘up.’
2. Lay the flashcards out on a table in rows, and take turns naming the set. Or arrange them into a ‘road’ and
take turns ‘traveling’ down it (naming each card by its letter-sound)
"S-s-s, m-m-m, er-r-r-r . . . "
Find more about Rapid-Accurate Naming drills in STURDY WALLS: Rapid-Accurate Naming here at The Reading Treehouse.
For a detailed path through early Phonics Naming, use Ease Into Phonics here at The ReadingTreehouse.
Remember that Rapid-Accurate Naming is key to success in Phonics.
The Rapid part of RAN develops with experience--as long as the Accurate part is there.
For best results, students need to practice their Phonics letter-sounds at about 85% accuracy--better than 8 out of 10 correct responses.
Emphasize accuracy.
Spend as much time as needed on preliminary and warm-up tasks in order to keep your student at his level of
success (Matching, and Pointing, described below).
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Use Strategies to Stay at Your Student’s Level of Success.
These strategies allow you to adjust your Rapid-Accurate Naming rehearsal, so that your student is generally about 85%
successful--or better.
When students practice getting the ‘right answer,’ with whatever help, they develop
independence in knowing the ‘right answer.’
When students practice struggling in any way, struggle is what they are learning! So keep with success.
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Matching is the easist task.
In matching, you show the child a sample letter, and let her pick out another one just like it from a small group of
flashcards.
You use the opportunity to ‘feed in’ the sound of the letter she is looking for: “Here’s a
‘s-s-s’ . . . Let’s see . . . where’s that other ‘s-s-s’?”
In other words, let her hear the letter-sound over and over and over again, as she sees what it looks
like.
(Use this strategy for combinations, too: with ‘oa’ you can say “Here’s ‘Oh’ . . .
Hmmm . . . Do you see the other ‘Oh’?”)
If the child makes a mistake, just say “Look again.”
Keep it happy! Nervous or criticized children cannot learn well.
Pointing is the next-easiest task.
In pointing, you show a small group of letters and say the sound of one of them. “Show me ‘s-s-s.’” The child points to the one you say.
By pointing, he is demonstrating that he knows which letter goes with the sound, even if he could not think of the sound quickly on his own.
This is like being able to point to a slightly familiar person named at a party, even if you could not think of their name quickly on your own.
Pointing is a great warm-up for the next task . . .
Naming is the hardest task, and the reason for practicing the others.
In naming, the child sees a letter, or combination, and says its sound.
Naming can be aloud, or in the ‘Mind’s Ear’ when the child is reading silently.
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Adjust the Rapid-Accurate Naming Drill
The goal is to keep your student successful every day.
Practice with a small-enough set of letter sounds so that your student stays successful.
Add new sounds gradually as your student is ready for them.
If your student keeps stumbling or hesitating on some sounds, pull them out for extra warmup before rehearsing the student’s whole deck of flashcards.
Practice an easy-enough task so that your student stays successful.
Move up to harder tasks gradually as your student is ready for them.
Matching --> move up to Pointing --> move up to Naming
Use a task that your student has mastered, as a warm-up for a new task that he is learning.
Always focus on tasks in which your student is successful and accurate.
Trust in the process of accurate rehearsal to teach accurate performance.
Trust in the process of easy rehearsal to prepare your student for the next harder level.
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Turn a task inside-out for best learning.
For maximum power, it is always a good idea to learn something from all angles!
The child sees a tree and says the name, “Tree.”
Turned inside out:
The child hears the name ‘tree’ and thinks of a tree.
The child sees a letter M and says the sound “m-m-m.”
Turned inside out:
The child hears the sound ‘m-m-m’ and thinks of letter M.
So students should practice writing the sounds and words they are reading.
Writing is the inverse of reading.
A good way to practice from all angles is ‘You Be The Teacher.’
After a round of practice, say ‘You be the teacher.’ The student does your job, and you do his.
For example, after a round of ‘pointing’ practice, say “You be the teacher.” The child names a sound, and you point to it.
(If you make a mistake, he has to ‘catch’ you.)
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Keep practicing Blending and Segmenting.
Your student is already skilled in blending separate sounds into words, and familiar with pulling apart or segmenting words into pieces, from his Phonemic Awareness training.
Continue blending and segmenting games as you practice with phonetic words he is reading.
Master the stories in your Phonics program.
Help your student to read them again and again.
The goal is a happy sense of ease and capability for your child.
Don’t worry that your child is ‘just memorizing.’
As long as her eyes are looking at the word she is naming, your student is learning from the experience.
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Demonstrate that some words are not completely Phonics-friendly.
If you write Natural Language Stories with your student (see Connect to the Tree here at The Reading Treehouse), you will find examples of words that follow the common Phonics rules, and those that do not.
Listen:
bone, cone, lone, tone, zone . . . done, gone.
You might point out, “ ‘I come home’ . . . That looks like it should be ‘I c-ohhh-m home.’ ‘Come’ doesn’t follow the rules very well.”
Students should not attempt to ‘sound out’ every new word exactly.
Consonants are fairly reliable.
Vowels are often tricky.
Students can gain ‘vowel flexibility’ by using Phonics clues plus sentence clues together, to help them name an unfamiliar word.
When students think of sentence meaning along with Phonics, they are plugging in the language system.
This is a good thing, necessary for comprehending what they are reading.
Remember: All of the skills of reading work together as a system.
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More on this topic: The Reading Treehouse -> THE WALLS: Phonics
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