Where does phonics instruction fit within a comprehensive literacy program? When and how would you teach phonics?
I think phonics is an important part of reading and should be incorporated into a comprehensive reading program. Phonics helps teach students how to quickly sound out unfamiliar words. It teaches decoding skills and mainly teaches spelling skills. Students are able to recognize blends, consonants and vowels patterns, and diagraphs. When students are working on their writing assignments, they draw upon those phonics techniques to help them sound out how to spell a word that they are stuck on. I do not think that phonics teaches reading comprehension. However, many phonics activities can be incorporated in other learning activities and are not taught just in isolation. For this reason, phonics should be taught with other reading strategies and activities that help build comprehension and teach students to use the context to help identify unfamiliar words. I would teach phonics in mini lessons, guided reading, read alouds, or shared reading. Phonics can even be worked on during individual conferences. It can also be embedded into a writing and reading workshop, as part of the whole reading concept. As students are exposed to more and more texts, they become familiar and show a better understanding in phonics.
I also think that having the phonics knowledge will be very beneficial for students during writing workshop to help them sound out the words they want to spell. I had students that would concentrate on spelling the words correctly, they would spend a lot of time stretching out the words to write all the sounds they hear down.This was helpful for them when they revisit a previous piece of writing that they wanted to read again. They were able to easily identify words that they had written.
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