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Deedee Wills - Mrs. Wills Kindergarten

Daily Phonics Lesson Length – How Much Time Should a Phonics Lesson Take?

How Much Time Should a Phonics Lesson Take? Deedee and Adam discuss an article by Tim Shanahan where he answers the question about the length of a phonics lesson and best practices.  Deedee and Adam talk about phonics instruction AND application in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms through the lens of the Science of Reading.
High leverage routines will have students actively apply phonics skills while practicing blending and segmenting. By making your lessons more concise and explicit, you can shorten the time spent doing low-yielding activities.  A few tweaks to your routines will result in amazing results.
 
 
Learn more about the daily routines of a Science of Reading Lesson Plan by clicking:

How Much Time Should a Phonics Lesson Take?

Based on the research conducted, the most common consensus is 30 minutes daily in primary classrooms.  This includes instruction and application of the skills.  You will want your instruction to be focused and explicit.  High yielding activities should be used to keep all students engaged in their learning.  

Here is the transcript from this week’s podcast.

Adam Peterson  0:03 

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Classroom Collaborative Podcast. Two weeks in a row looking at Miss Deedee Wills right here. How are you?

 

Deedee Wills  0:09 

I am good. How are you? I know, it’s like, it’s almost a habit, but not quite.

 

Adam Peterson  0:30 

Let’s get to it…  I’ve had some good conversations with teachers about sound walls after we talked about that. I’m so looking forward to discussing more that we’re kind of staying on the literacy pathway. This week, Deedee found another amazing article called How Much Phonics Should I Teach? And I love that. It the question was posed to the writer of this article from a second-grade teacher, right, like a lot with kindergarten. We both talked about that quite a bit. But the question that was posted this blog was, I keep hearing about the science of reading and that I need to teach phonics. I’m a second-grade teacher. I’m okay with that. But there is a lot to teach in reading. I love how she worded that there’s a lot to teach reading. How much of the time should I spend teaching phonics? So Deedee pretend I’m that second-grade teacher and you are in this Shanahan on Literacy? Is that how you say that?

 

Deedee Wills  1:26 

Yes, Its Tim Shanahan.

 

Adam Peterson  1:28 

Shanahan on iteracy is where we found this? What would your response be? Miss Deedee Wills? How much time?

 

Deedee Wills  1:35 

Well, I mean, my response.

 

Adam Peterson  1:38 

That’s not even the right question, how much?

 

Deedee Wills  1:40 

How much time? I guess it depends on what we call phonics. You know, he observed something that I have also observed from time to time. I see a lot of things out there where phonics instruction is a little teacher instruction, handing out a worksheet students fill it out and hand in it back in, that’s really just a phonics assessment. That’s not really phonics instruction. And so it depends on what you’re calling phonics instruction. The science of reading wants instruction to be very explicit. And it’s really active learning, not assigning working, kind of stuff, right? It’s not assigning phonics, it’s actually working with phonics. And so his response, I thought was pretty well said, of course, it is because it’s Tim Shanahan, but it was well researched. He said, he looked at 38 different studies,  and they range anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes a day, which is a huge difference. But he says, it depends on what you’re calling it, and how much overlap you have with other things that you’re doing at the same time. He said he likes to go with averages. He said 30 minutes a day were the mean or mode or the median? What’s the word?

 

Adam Peterson  3:19 

Maybe… see how much math we use?

 

Deedee Wills  3:21 

Anyhow, the mode and the median was 30. And so yeah, so kind of one to look at what’s actually involved in that. And, and does every student need 30? You’ll have some students who catch on very quickly, they might do fine with the 15-minute range of things. But you’re going to have some students who are going to need a lot more of that. We’ve talked a little bit about the students you have in your classroom, you have a whole population, and statistically, 20% of those students are going to have a language-based learning issue. So probably 30 minutes is not going to serve that group of students. But that’s the beauty of small group instruction, you can always bring that group n for that.

 

Adam Peterson  4:15 

I was gonna say, that’s why you know, you and I preach on that all the time, the success of small groups and right. That’s me preaching on that from not being in the public classroom right now. So I get that things are tough, but you know, one of the things I’ve been running into when I’m out on the road and teachers you know that we get into that conversation about time and how to make it because I’m doing a lot of work on small groups right now in  my Teach, Play, Learn workshops. And the question of time does come up just like this, but how do I make it work I keep going back to the fact that when you strategically place the bulk of your lesson, but the pieces of your lessons into those centers, like when you strategically place learning skills into the center and then you don’t have to worry so much about the time because they’re constantly practicing. And I love that you said they need that explicit, you know, practice with it. And that’s what I tried to get teachers saying, like everything that we’re doing through Teach, Play,Learn whatever type of style you’re running is, your kids are, yes, playing games and doing activities. But there’s also some very, very strategic instruction.

 

Deedee Wills  5:19 

A lot of fluency practice and a lot of education being used there.

 

Adam Peterson  5:23 

I will preach in small groups all day. And I love that they brought that up in here, especially when the question was posed, does that mean every child should be getting it? And he says, not necessarily. Right. And I have to think that way.

 

Deedee Wills  5:35 

Yeah. He talks a lot about what are those activities that are really what should count as instruction, right, what really should count as instruction. So phonics instruction should teach kids to hear the sounds to recognize the letters of the spelling patterns, and then connect the sounds to letters and spelling. And the bulk of the time should be spent in decoding and spelling words. That’s what the bulk of the time should be spent on. It’s the application. So instruction and application, are being done together. That’s based all of the research I’ve done into our scientific reading program.

 

It really did come down to that explicit application of blending and segmenting, you know, we can spend a whole lot of time on phonemic awareness skills, taught in isolation, as something separate, or we can bring it in and do it with our actual daily instruction. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but totally if we’re, if we’re doing phonemic awareness, blending, and segmenting as a separate time of your day, why not bring it in and make it part of your phonics instruction? We’re always talking about how we don’t have enough time, why don’t we double-duty things, we don’t have enough time, a double duty it brings that in so that you can do that whole group as part of your phonics instruction.

 

And practice it on a daily basis where they’re hearing the sounds telling you the letters, you’re telling them the letters, they’re telling you the sounds. They’re hearing the sounds writing the letter, right. So those are, that’s really the whole, that’s the juice, you know, when you squeeze the orange, that’s the juice, that’s what you want to get out of it. And so we should be spending most of our time with that type of instruction. That’s very supportive. That’s very, I wouldn’t say cyclical, but that’s not the word. I’m spiral so that they are not only learning what they learned this week, but they’re also reviewing what they learned six weeks ago, six to eight weeks is what we need to keep that in that review cycle. I love that his answer was really validating. But yeah, we can spend a whole lot of time in our classroom doing low leverage type of work. And that’s those worksheet activities. Right

 

Adam Peterson  8:11 

So what are you? I mean, can I put you on the spot? Like, I know, you’ve been going into the classroom quite a bit with this, this teacher, and where you’re at? What are you seeing as a trend is the right word, but like, with that style right now, so teachers that are listening and going okay, but I still, what does that look like in my classroom? Do you have any advice? What are you seeing? And I should just keep saying that teacher, whoever you’re working with whatever?

 

Deedee Wills  8:33 

Teacher exhibit A

 

Adam Peterson  8:36 

Teacher exhibit A, what do you what are you noticing that’s working there for phonemic?

 

Deedee Wills  8:40 

She is in a school that some of the teachers have been taught and sent to training through the science of reading, and some have not she’s in the school. She’s in the camp of some have not she has not received any training yet. Formal training through an outside program.

 

Adam Peterson  8:56 

She’s getting it from you, right?

 

Deedee Wills  8:57 

Yeah. Right. So she’s, she’s getting it from me. She has some components. She has the components because it’s been given to her, but she does not have a training. Does that make sense? So she has the program book, but she doesn’t quite have the hours of training. And the problem is when you have the program book, but you haven’t received the training, you don’t know really, what’s most important, like what really needs to be emphasized because it’s so much they include everything. And some of those things are like, Oh, I can do that for like a minute. But these I need to spend five minutes on even though they might have some guidelines for those.

 

But when we were looking for those high-yielding activities, those are the ones you want to make sure that you don’t skip every day. You know, there’s some activity here. Sometimes you’re like, “oh, I got started a little late. We’re going to skip that right now.” And so but these are the things you don’t want to skip and so I’ll just run them through for everybody what I have seen huge result, , We start off our kind of review with looking at slideshows slide, it’s a slide deck, it’s a PowerPoint slide deck. Students see letters, and they just do the path of motion,  “B says, T says,”… so they have maybe 10-15 letters and they’re going to give you the sound. Now, the point of this is, yes, if I asked my little Cherub in first grade, what is that letter, they’re going to be able to come up with it. But they might do some searching, you know, by searching, they’ll look at it, they’ll kind of search in their head, we want this automatic, like super fast.

 

Adam Peterson  10:36 

Or they look at the letter line, and they’re doing an ABCD Right?

 

Deedee Wills  10:40 

Speed matters. We’re doing this in first-grade so speed matters. After that, there’s a section of that slide deck that has blending practice based on whatever phonics skills they’ve learned thus far For these students are doing things with Silent E and without, so they’re saying words with and without real words, nonsense words, we’re going to be moving into using diagraphs with all of those phonics skills. So as weeks go by, it continues to grow in complexity, but they’re going to go ahead and do maybe 10, or 15, slides of that, and then sight words that they’ve learned so far, they could be words of this week, and they can go all the way back to six weeks. So just those reviews, when they see the word, they’re gonna say, “SAID spell said,” and they’ll go on to the next one.

 

The students are going to be doing lots of activity. It’s not flashcards, were some, you know, here, we have some students who are like leading the class, and everybody’s doing it, you can see their arms are moving, they’re tapping it out. It’s multisensory, right? After that, there’s a couple of other things we can do, I can give them a sound, and they’re just going to, I’ll say /m/, and they say, “M says /m/” and they’re going to write it on their desk with their finger. Just doing that, again, with the correct path of motion.

 

A lot of times we hear, teachers  say that the handwriting is so bad, everybody’s starting at the bottom. This is a great opportunity to refresh, that handwriting aspect and instruction, even if it’s first grade, we need to because I can tell you, this whole class was all starting their letters at the bottom.The reason we’re doing that is we know that the research that’s been done, especially over the last couple of years, that when we incorporate the path of motion, the ability to retain that letter and sound increases.

 

We want to make sure we’re including that in the instruction, we do some will do some orthographic mapping of words. That’s a whole other day that will you and I can talk about orthographic mapping, I think we did kind of talk about on the sound wall, but anyhow, then we go into dictation. And the way that that looks is they’re just writing essentially, on a whiteboard, I have a form that they’re using. Students can practice their handwriting at the same time. But I’m going to give them a sound. They write the letter that makes that sound and then I show them the letter and then they write it again. Students hear it, write it, and then see it and then they write it again. Does that make sense?

 

Deedee Wills  13:08 

Yep

 

Deedee Wills  13:08 

We do six letters. And if it’s if there’s two letters, that makes the sound, they write both letters. And like, you know, the sound, they put the C and the K, that’s they can put the S and the C. They’ll do letter dictation, they’ll do the decoding. Based again, on the phonics they’ve learned so far, these are all decodable words, they’re not going to be any trick words. For kindergarten, you’d be doing things like a “nap”. And, you know, “tip” and, of course, You have a list of words you can use. Then you have a sentence that you write. The students will write it once so you can see it, and then write it again.  Then you’ll show the word to the class.  They write a CVC word, or silent E word, adding blends and diagraphs in there as time goes on. And then the sentence is going to incorporate some decodable words with some phonics and sight words that they’ve already learned.

 

The student is applying, applying, applying, and the whole time, we’re thinking about conventions, as well. As they write the sentence, does it starts with a capital letter? We are marking the capital letter and marking the period. And it’s funny, because, in first grade, I said, Now, you know, I say, “make sure that you start with it with a capital letter.” The first time I did it, I gave them that reminder. The second time I did the lesson with them. I had them use the checklist to make sure that they had it. I had a student check off that he had it. And then I went over and I said, “you know, honey, is that a capital letter? Or is that a lowercase letter?” And he looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about. Like, no idea. And this is first grade!!!   It’s so funny how we, as teachers, assume that they know what I’m talking about

 

Adam Peterson  14:57 

Every little basic thing. Yeah.

 

Deedee Wills  14:59 

Every little thing and he’s searching for the answer. I say, “Well, how would you tell if it’s a capital? How could you check that?” And he’s looking at me like no flipping clue lady. And I said, “Well, let’s look.”  We looked at the alphabet chart and we can see the capitals and the lowercase letters. And you know, is it a difference of I call it capital? His teacher calls it uppercase?

 

Adam Peterson  15:18 

Right?

 

Deedee Wills  15:19 

I don’t think so. Because I think that when I ask everybody else, “How do we start a sentence?”  You know, they are like, “Oh, I know what this is about.”  He had no clue what I was talking about. But you know what? The next day we did it, no problem. He had it. And the next day, no problem, he had it. We get frustrated with these low leverage activities that we do in our classroom that take up a lot of time, when we have these high leverage activities that we can just turn it around right then. Right? Look at how you spend your time that they’re all 30 minutes are not created equal? How are you using those 30 minutes can make a huge difference in how students apply the skills.

 

Adam Peterson  15:59 

So that’s why we’re just gonna say that, everything you just mentioned, you’re doing within a 30-minute block every single, strategically same, I mean, roughly same time in the morning, it’s gonna be thinking about like morning routine, you know,

 

Deedee Wills  16:10 

Yes

 

Adam Peterson  16:11 

We spend our time on our calendar or spend the morning message. Now we’re just reading this, and I’m so happy. And I know, this is one of those things that every teacher does, they’re doing it, but to really have it like laid out and say, but look, you’re covering writing, you’re covering phonics, you’re covering reading, you’re covering something, you know, that you’re covering so many things, just by just adding it all together.

 

Deedee Wills  16:32 

Adding it all together. And it’s fast, you want it to be fast, you don’t want it to drag on, nobody likes that, right? And you’re watching your pacing is based on 60% of your class. If you’re going and 60% of your classes with you, you’re at the right pace. If 10% is with you, you’re going too fast, if 80% are with you, you’re going too slow. You’re not waiting for every single student to get it before you give them the next word. For an example, I have a couple of students in there who were really struggling, I’m pulling them for small groups as well. But I said my goal for you is… I want you to put that first sound down. And if you can hear the ending sound put that down, too. So as I’m saying things, I want them you know, they’re not going to make me feel stressed to get the vowel wrong. And the word you know that or whatever, I’m wanting them to hear those two sounds.

 

Adam Peterson  17:21 

That speaks wonders to the idea of small groups too because we are both very much in the same idea that when you’re doing that whole group, everybody together and I believe you should be teaching to the top, you’re pushing your kids and pushing your kids and you’re teaching so that your highest fliers are soaking all in and they’re running.

 

Deedee Wills  17:41 

Yeah.

 

Adam Peterson  17:41 

And even though you’re gonna have to go back and reteach some things during small groups with maybe your ones that are struggling, at least they’re being exposed to it, right. Like they’re getting exposure over and over and over again. And I, I think this is such an important thing to remember with, with not only, your ELA block or your science of reading block, whatever you call it, but everything I know I, I remember when I finally realized oh my gosh, how many math skills can we teach during our calendar time that take five minutes, right? Like we can work on greater than less than we can work on numbers in order, we can work on a missing number we can, we can work on, you know, counting backward counting, there’s so many things that you can do throughout your day, in every single subject that can tie together, all of your subjects, I think there’s no more just saying this is specifically phonics time, right? Like, doing so much during that time, same time, while you’re explicitly teaching phonics, I get it. But yeah, you’re right, you had mentioned their writing on their hand, they’re talking about uppercase, lowercase, they’re putting the sentence together.

 

Deedee Wills  18:36 

So much!  You don’t want to go too wide that all of a sudden, now you know, you’ve gone too wide. But you do have opportunities to make those little tiny adjustments as students who had that little miss understanding of what we were talking about. They have it, I was gonna say something else I was gonna say, you know, in the days of old, you know, there was the

 

Adam Peterson  18:37 

How old are you?

 

Deedee Wills  18:42 

In the days of old… Here’s our spelling words. And then here’s our spelling test on Friday, right? And we’ll have some sight words in there. And here’s what happens. Anxiety. Well, if you were Deedee Wills you wouldn’t look at it until Thursday. Right? Thursday, you would cram for Friday, you would squeak by and Monday you would have forgotten.

 

Adam Peterson  19:26 

A lot of, with a lot of things.

 

Deedee Wills  19:29 

Right. What it tells the teacher is who crammed and who didn’t, you know, it doesn’t tell you who knows, and who doesn’t know, it tells you who can memorize. And we know when we memorize things, they don’t stay with us, and knowing stays, memorizing doesn’t. When you teach in this way, you know like I just talked about where you’re you’re walking around and you’re seeing by the end of the week, I mean, I was brand new to this class, but you know, I knew by the end of the week. I knew who needed what. I had my groups made based on what I was watching right there, right? And if I have students who aren’t getting it, it’s not because they need to do something different. It’s because I need to practice more.  Right?

 

When students don’t get it, it’s not because they are the problem. It’s because I need to do something different. I change that instruction, we don’t change the student, we change the instruction. There were letter confusions B’s and D’s, God help us. I mean, we were all over the place. And this is first grade. I put a real quick tool we put on a front in front of them, they were good to go after that. I could see them using it. They were good to go. But in January, right, can you imagine that this was the instruction that they had access to? or an ongoing basis, right?

 

Adam Peterson  19:36 

You said something there that I was oh when you talked about you know, it’s not always the students sometimes it’s so what we need to change. That’s something I’ve been, I have a quote in my quinoa that I’ve been doing with schools that I cannot remember the name, it’s Ignacio gave her the last name, but it’s a quote that’s out there. And you know, it is the one that says if a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn, right?

 

Deedee Wills  21:25 

Right, right

 

Adam Peterson  21:26 

And I keep telling teachers, I get it, that’s a tough pill to swallow sometimes, right? Like for us to step back and admit that it’s, it’s not the kid it’s us, right. But yeah, when you can finally admit that the learning takes such a powerful turn, right. And I’m not saying you’re doing it, like you have to admit that you’re doing something wrong, it’s just, it’s not always the right situation, or the right environment, or the right type of lesson for every single learner. And I think that can come back to what you said about I, I love your, you know, their writing on their hand or the right of their desk so that they’re all starting from the same spot. And as to the bottom.

 

The best thing about something like that is you’re leveling the learning playing field. That’s something Kim and I talked about a lot in our book that’s going to level the learning the learning playing field, because every single child has a chance to participate, right? It’s no longer sit and get what you’re saying, Who can tell me the sound that M makes, right? Because you’re gonna have your wants to do it every single time that shout it out first, and then no one else has a chance to think about it. I mean, have you ones that sit raise their hand properly, that know it, but they don’t get the chance because someone else shouts it out, they’re gonna have your ones that just don’t even participate because they don’t know.

 

Deedee Wills  22:27 

Or they raise your hand, and then you call on them. And they’re like, {blink, blink}

 

Adam Peterson  22:31 

I went to the store yesterday with my grandma.

 

Deedee Wills  22:34 

My uncle has an…

 

Adam Peterson  22:36 

 So I love, I love that you’re, you know, the inclusion of every single kid and that there’s that purposeful, doing, you know, you hear me talk about all the time and your kids learn best when they are doing and they’re actively learning.

 

Deedee Wills  22:49 

And, you know, for me, when I was first thinking about these lessons, like way back before I started using them, I thought yawn like that doesn’t sound fun at all, but they like, eat it up with like a spoon and fork. They love it. They are very engaged. It’s very quick. Teachers, if you’re listening to this, I want to say two things. One, you can just use handwriting paper that you’ve laminated so that they have a front of backup lots of room so that you’re not spending a lot of time erasing in between lessons, we just move on. Then when it’s all done, we erase it all at one time. And keep that in I had them in their seat sat sacks, so that it’s right there. We were not passing anything out. That was one thing. The other thing I wanted to say when I said that if a student isn’t learning, you need to change. And I want to say something, I want to make sure that I am not pointing the finger at teachers, for students’ failures. That’s not what I intend to do.

 

Adam Peterson  23:51 

And I hope no one else did.

 

Deedee Wills  23:54 

Yeah, I hope not. I hope not. Here’s what I know, I know everybody’s out there working really, really hard. And I’m getting tearful, just thinking about how hard it is. But sometimes, we can work really hard. But if we don’t know a better way, we don’t get anywhere. And so that is not the teacher’s fault, that’s really more of a leadership issue if you have not been trained in a way that allows you to have a bag of tricks that you can pull out to use. That it’s kind of a leadership issue. This should be something that’s happening in your district, it should be happening in your building as should be happening in your grade level teams where you are continuing to master your craft, right? And you know, failure to have that have an opportunity for you is a failure of the system. However, you know, now when we know better, we know that we can do better. So hopefully some of these suggestions that I gave could be something that you pull into your bag of tricks.

 

Adam Peterson  24:55 

I love it, you know, and I don’t think anyone would have taken it that way because we’ve all had that kid, right that we’ve just struggled to reach we all have. And it is like I said, it’s a tough pill to swallow, you have to admit that, hey, it’s something I need to change and not pointing fingers at any of you because we’ve both been there. You know, I told teachers that when I was presenting last time, I said, I’m not saying any of you are doing this, but I’m going to wholeheartedly admit that I’ve done it right, like, and they all you can see them all just start nodding their heads, like they were like, Yeah, we need to admit it sometimes. Right? Sometimes we just have to step up and say, Yeah, we gotta fix something because of the student. Right? And, and honestly, I think if you can admit that, then just think that makes you a better teacher, right? Like, if you can get that you’re doing everything in your power, which again, all of you teachers already are, we know that this year 2022, you’re doing everything in your power, let’s, let’s not get that wrong. But I think that makes you an even better educator because it proves that you are trying to reach every single student at their level of ability.

 

Deedee Wills  25:52 

I think back to my last full classroom experience, I’m gonna call her Missy. Missy was one of those students who worked really, really hard. And I worked really, really hard. And we got to the end of the year. And I know that I failed her. Like, I know, I failed her she did not have the skills necessary to be wholly successful in first grade. Right? Not to the point where she needs to be retained. But you know, she was hanging by her fingernails with the knowledge, right? And knowing what I know, now, I realized the problem was my instruction. Right? Right. And I just don’t want to have I don’t want other teachers to have yours like that. It’s not It’s a horrible, horrible feeling. And so finding, finding the answer is, how do we turn into how much phonics do we need into finding the answer?

 

Adam Peterson  26:48 

Because it’s all it’s all ties together, it all ties together.

 

Deedee Wills  26:51 

I guess, how much phonics you need? Is it depends on how explicit it is. If it’s explicit, you can get through 30 minutes, and you’ll be good to go.

 

Adam Peterson  27:03  

Yep. So you mentioned these lessons, I just want to TPT type and into Deedee Wills science of reading and there are millions of hits 78 results to be exact. So where are you pointing? Teachers? When you say you keep saying these lessons? Maybe it’s something that already has?

 

Deedee Wills  27:19 

A lot of people it’s not your mother’s it’ll have Not Your Mother’s site where it’s on there? I don’t even remember what I haven’t called. Now. Isn’t that sad?

 

Adam Peterson  27:26 

I see. Not Your Mother’s science of reading, any decodable readers bundle science?

 

Deedee Wills  27:30 

Not that one.

 

Adam Peterson  27:31 

You see books. Basic site-based? Science Reading base sight word instruction? Yeah. That’s an instruction in kindergarten, first grade.

 

Deedee Wills  27:41 

Yep. That’s it.

 

Adam Peterson  27:42 

So I know to speak from experience. I’ve used not your mother sight words before you added the science of reading. You’ve had it out for a while before this?

 

Deedee Wills  27:52 

It’s been out for two years. Actually.

 

Adam Peterson  27:54 

It’s been awesome with my students, the little ones I work with my tutoring program, we’ve we you know, we do a daily review of our letter sound so and it’s easy, it’s easy to implement because you’re already doing it. So yeah, check those out. Maybe you can put links to specific things you recommend Deedee? Not that I’m trying to have you sell your own products here. But if somebody doesn’t have something like you said, that teacher you came into, she hadn’t had the training.

 

Deedee Wills  28:17 

Right

 

Adam Peterson  28:18 

Now, I’m not saying that you know, the latest greatest product is going to train you but it helps it helped me a ton. Do you know when I got not your mother sight words, it helped me a ton because it gave me not that I didn’t know how to do it already. But it almost made me make sure I was doing it right. Because of the checklist.

 

Deedee Wills  28:35 

I think to lot of people this one thing. It’s probably not one thing, but I just want to say this thing. Like three things. I just got before we hopped on this, I had an email from somebody that I’m gonna go do some work for her district.  But anyhow, she said she watched the last webinar that I did. And she said, “What I loved was, it was just little tiny tweaks I needed to do, it wasn’t something new. There was little tiny things that I needed to do in order to make it more effective.” It isn’t like adding something else. It was just a little tiny tweak that I needed to do. And so hopefully, if you have a program that you’re using, and you’re like, “oh my gosh, I can’t think of bringing that another one in.”  Don’t think about that. All I would suggest is to do that application part where they’re writing it, they’re hearing it and writing it. That’s what I would think and seeing it and reading it and hearing it and writing it. So encoding and decoding. Include that drill part of your daily practice. And you know, make sure you bring in that review part of it. That right there is like a 10-minute little add on but it’s high-yielding results. Right?

 

Adam Peterson  29:48 

That’s it Yeah, just doing it every day making the shirts it’s routine. It really is it becomes a part of your routine.

 

Deedee Wills  29:53 

Yeah.

 

Adam Peterson  29:54 

And I love that how you worded that there that it might be more time at the beginning of might not towards the end because once it gets Get in the routine of it you just kind of you go with the flow just like teachers do. Anyway, so awesome great ideas. Mrs. Wills.

 

Deedee Wills  30:07 

All right

 

Adam Peterson  30:08 

All right look at us say that was two weeks in a row and we’re gonna be back we’re gonna do it we’re gonna be back for you guys keep up the awesome work teachers do the best that we know you all are working your butts off we know that times are tough in the world of education is maybe not the happiest world to be in but

 

Deedee Wills  30:26 

We know that you’re not always supported. What we support you.

 

Adam Peterson  30:30 

Remembering your why can you remember?

 

Deedee Wills  30:32 

All right, take care, guys.

 

Adam Peterson  30:33 

See you.

 

Deedee Wills  30:34 

All right, bye.

About the Podcast

The Classroom Collaborative Podcast is a show about teaching, classroom, and education. We tackle new classroom tips and tricks in every episode.

About Your Hosts

Deedee Wills is an early childhood educator, instructional coach, and international educational consultant. She is also the author of the award-winning blog, Mrs. Wills Kindergarten.

Adam Peterson is a kindergarten teacher, nationally recognized speaker, and educational consultant. He also the creator of the popular YouTube channel, TeachersLearn2.com.

I hope you enjoyed this episode! See you on the next one!

Deedee & Adam

How Much Time Should a Phonics Lesson Take? Deedee and Adam discuss an article by Tim Shanahan where he answers the question about phonics lesson length and best practices. Deedee and Adam talk about phonics instruction AND application in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms through the lens of the Science of Reading.

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How Much Time Should a Phonics Lesson Take? Deedee and Adam discuss an article by Tim Shanahan where he answers the question about phonics lesson length and best practices. Deedee and Adam talk about phonics instruction AND application in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms through the lens of the Science of Reading.

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