An Essential Guide to Phonics Lesson Planning

Planning an explicit phonics lesson is an essential piece to the literacy puzzle when we are looking at how to get our students reading and writing. The science of reading is SO much more than just phonics, but they must have access to well developed and executed lessons if we want to get them reading. Phonics is essential to helping students learn to read.

Yet, planning an explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic phonics lesson can be a huge feat. Where do we start? How do we fit it all in? What does a structured literacy phonics lesson look like?

If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, you’re in the right place! In this blog post, we’ll go over the the tips and tricks to helping you plan and deliver an effective phonics lesson. We will cover all seven steps in a phonics lesson and what it would look like to plan a lesson focusing on our diphthongs oi/oy and ou/ow.

What’s First?

At the start of every lesson, we want to begin with our warm up drills. Our warm up drills (or sometimes called a Three Part Drill) are the portion of your lesson where you review previously taught sounds and letters in multiple ways to activate each area of the brain we need to fire in order to read and store words. The focus of each drill is the same while the delivery will change- review our skills and develop strong pathways between our phonological processor, orthographic processor, and our meaning processor. We break our warm up drills into five different skills: the visual drill, the blending drill, and the auditory drill, the vowel intensive, and word mapping practice.

I break apart the visual drills in-depth in a different blog post- if you want to know more click here.

Phonological Awareness

Once our review is compete, we move into phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is the umbrella term for being able to manipulate words and their parts. These skills include syllable splitting, counting the number of words in a sentence, or rhyming. Those these skills are important, but when we plan a phonics lesson it is more imperative to make sure our students are working on the phonemic awareness skills, skills that directly relate to our ability to read and write. Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness and deals with the smallest units of sound within a spoken word.

Examples of phonemic awareness activities include: phoneme isolation, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme addition, phoneme deletion, and phoneme substitution.

When I start a phonics lesson and am planning out my phonemic awareness drills, I like to focus on three main activities- isolation, blending, and segmenting. Blending and segmenting are the skills most directly related to a students success in literacy, so I oftentimes keep my focus there during our lesson time.

If you have assessed your students and know there is a skill they need more practice in, you would want to put your focus there when planning. Assessments should drive our instruction in each of these sections.

It is most beneficial to relate our phonemic awareness activates to the phonics pattern we are learning. When choosing words, we want to pick examples that contain the skill we are learning. When planning a lesson for diphthongs oi and oy you will get the most bang for your buck by using words with the /oi/ sound, and the same goes for a lesson on ou/ow.

This is also a great time to bring in review sounds from lesson you have previously taught. Mix the review with the new and you have a fantastic phonological awareness warm up!

Here are some examples of how you could structure your phonemic awareness activities :

Phonemic Awareness Example Activities with Diphthong words

Because we used words that contained the phonics sound we are focusing on for our lesson we can ease right into the lesson introduction.

Lesson Introduction

The lesson introduction portion of your phonics lesson is where you tell your students about the new skill they are learning. During this section, we want to be explicit and effective. Time is tight in the classroom, right? So let’s tell students what they need to know.

An introduction could look something like this:

We want to make a connection between the sound and the letter(s) that represent those sounds, and bonus points if we connect them visually and kinesthetically. This means we want to show students the letter(s) but also allow them to write or build the letter(s). You could have students trace the letters on handwriting lines, build the letters in play doh, trace the letters in sand, or build the letters using letter tiles/magnets. We want students to connect to the sound continually so a good practice is having students say the sound and the letter names as they build or write. This would sound like: oi spells /oi/ or oy spells /oi/.

Because these diphthongs have spelling rules that needs to be explained we would take time to do so during the lesson introduction.

Any other information, including mouth positioning or picture/item scaffolds will be discussed during the lesson introduction.

Guided Practice

After the focus skill has been introduced and your students have received all the information they need surrounding that skill, it is time for application. Because the skill is new, we do not want students jumping right into independent practice- we want to scaffold support. The lesson introduction was the “I Do” portion of a phonics lesson, as Anita Archer would say. Students watched while the teacher modeled the skill.

The step in between teacher modeling and student independence is the “we do” portion, or the guided practice step.

During this portion of the phonics lesson the teacher and students are going to work together to complete the tasks. I often integrate the “I do” and “we do” into this section by modeling a couple examples of the task at hand before asking students to jump in and help. Other than the scaffolds provided, this section of the lesson plan is open and completely customizable.

We want to work in this section until students show us they are ready to complete independent work. We want students to receive immediate feedback and support, allowing them to process the skill without using and implementing it incorrectly.

As Sarah Kay said “Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Repeat the same mistakes over and over, and you don’t get any closer to Carnegie Hall.”

Independent Practice

The independent practice activities are used to allow students time to process the new information and practice their new skills with very little help. This is the “you do” portion of the lesson where students are able to show what they have learned and you as the teacher are able to gauge how well students are comprehending the new skills. These activities can be used as a formative assessment to plan your upcoming lessons. If students have mastered the skill during independent practice time, then you can continue to your next skill. If students are showing difficulty completing the tasks independently you would need to plan a review lesson to allow students more time an instruction on this topic.

You do not, and I repeat DO NOT have to give up control and allow students to complete the independent practice activity each day. If the concept is tricky and your students are struggling to grasp the concept, you can continue with your guided practice activities. Slowly give students more and more control without turning them totally loose.

Again, we want them to get meaningful exposures to words and skills, and it will not be meaningful if they’re doing it wrong.

Types of Activities

Below is a list of activities that would work for guided practice time AND independent practice time:

• Blending practice
  • Continuous blending
  • Successive Blending
  • Backwards Blending
• Reading skill words and matching to pictures
• Dictation practice
  • phoneme dictation
  • word mapping
• Word Sorting
  • Sort by sounds
  • Sort by spellings
• Word Building Activities
• Word Chaining Activities
• Sentence level reading
  • Read and draw a picture
  • Read and match to picture
  • Read and answer questions

Because we are working with diphthongs oi/oy and ou/ow, below are some examples of activities you may choose to include once you have introduced these topics:

These activities can change from day to day and with each skill you introduce. If you’re tight on time, my biggest tip is to focus on applying the skill to reading and writing. Cut and paste activities, coloring pages, and games are a lot of fun and can be beneficial, BUT they are not a necessity when it comes to teaching phonics.

On the topic of games, they can be a lot of fun, but my caution to you is this- make sure when students are playing games they ALL get a chance to practice their new skills and make sure you can give the support you need to to EACH student when they need it. This may mean that during guided practice you play a whole group game and then during independent practice you split students up into smaller groups. We do not want students working independently or making mistakes during the guided practice portion of the lesson!

Dictation

Dictation is an activity where the teacher gives students a sound, word, or phrase and they write it down. It is different than a traditional spelling test because it happens throughout the week and throughout the course of introducing a phonics skills, rather than at the end of the week only. It’s goal is also different than that of a traditional test. Dictation’s purpose is to to give students time to apply their new phonics skill directly to writing, just as reading words, phrases, and text is application for seeing the letter focus on it’s own.

You could grade the dictation paper if needed, but ultimately the goal is to allow students time to process and think about applying their new skill while also getting corrective feedback and assistance if they need it.

There are a couple different ways you can use dictation in your lesson, and which way you choose will depend on the content of your lesson and the needs of your students (plus your preference as the teacher).

You can have students start by dictating their new sound(s), plus a couple review sounds. Simply give the sound to students and have them write the letter or letter(s) that represent the sound.

I, personally, do not like to complete sound dictation on paper. I complete this activity during our auditory drill at the beginning of the lesson, and I have students practice writing the new sound in their sand or on a whiteboard after I have introduced it.

We have fewer sounds than we do spellings, which means (something you probably already know) that we will have more than one way to represent a sound. I want students to recall all possible spellings when given a sound and that can be difficult for them to do on paper. On a sand tray, we split up the board and write each possible spelling. You can give students a sound for dictation on paper, if you choose and if that fits the needs of your students, but be mindful of multiple spellings.

Your next option is to have students write words. This process is similar to a traditional spelling test where the teacher gives the words orally and students write them down. These words, however, have not been sent home to practice and students must rely on their knowledge of sounds and letters to spell. When we dictate words in class, I give students the word and they repeat it back to me. Then, we all tap the sounds of the word. Students then have the opportunity to write.

I walk around and give help where needed, specifically prompting them by giving the sound again, having them check our sound wall, think about rules or generalizations for spelling, thinking about sound positioning in the word, and anything to foster allowing critical thinking and without giving them the answer.

Once single words have been spelled, we move on to sentence dictation. This is when the teacher gives a sentence and the students must write it down, making sure both foundational writing skills, like spacing between words and spelling, and written composition skills, like sentence formation and grammar usage, are present and used correctly.

The sentence focuses on the phonics skill and previously taught skills/high frequency words. This is where we really see the bridge from phonics skills to written expression. This skill takes more brain power than writing a word on their own, but is directly related to the skills students need to become great writers. We need the spelling and application of the phonics skill to be automatic, causing the cognitive load on the brain while writing to lessen, leaving space for other skills.

When we dictate a sentence, I repeat the sentence twice while students listen. Then, we pound or tap for each word in the sentence. Students begin to write while I repeat the sentence. It can be a helpful scaffold to have students write a line for each word they hear in the sentence so they can naturally self check as they write, seeing if they have included all the necessary words. Students then go back and read the sentence, checking for spelling errors, checking punctuation and capitalization, as well as other editing tasks. Again, this is a direct bridge to what we would typically see in a writing lesson or activity.

Text Reading

This is the portion of the lesson where we give students a chance to apply their new phonics skill and their decoding practice to make meaning from a passage. While students are still mastering the code, we want to make sure we control the text they are being exposed to. We want this practice to directly relate to their newly learned skill, as well as previously learned skills. We do not want students reading phonics patterns that haven’t been taught, nor do we want them exposed to high frequency words that haven’t been taught. Remember the goal: apply their learning. This would be impossible to do if the skills we were asking them to use hadn’t been taught yet.

Oftentimes when we think of decodable text we think of stories and books, which we can and should have students read; however, students can make progress toward that goal rather than jumping right into it. Students can continue reading words in isolation if they aren’t quite ready for a text. Students can read sentence fragments to practice linking multiple words together. Students can read decodable sentences to practicing reading to make meaning while keeping the word count down.

You know your students. You know what they need. Give it to them! There is no point in making them suffer through an entire decodable text when they’re having a hard time blending single word with fluency. The goal? Get them reading books for meaning. How we get there? It may look different for the different students you have in your class-and that’s okay!

This lesson time can look like choral reading, partner reading, whisper phone reading while the teacher walks around to listen. It may look like sentence fragment reading on day one, sentence fragment rereading and full sentence reading on day two, sentence rereading and highlighting the focus skill in a decodable book on day three, rereading the decodable text on day four, and finally reading a fresh copy of the decodable book on day 5. You may not make it to the decodable text by day three and need more time on sentence level reading. There is nothing wrong with that! Work towards the goal in a way that supports the students you have and give them the skills and confidence to reach a mastery level.

When Choosing Decodable Text…

It is not the label that makes a text decodable, but rather the link between the words on the page and the code you’ve taught your students. Not every “decodable” text will be the right fit for your students because there is not one set scope and sequence for structured literacy.

And there you have it! All the details on how to write an explicit, systematic, and cumulative phonics lesson for your students. My hope is that you will bookmark this blog post to reference when you need it. I also thought, what else could I give you to make lesson planning easier, less of a haste, while allowing you to feel more confident in your instructional decisions? The answer I came up with is a lesson planning template. And I want to give it to you for free. I’ve tried to include as many options for each section as possible, making it easy for you to choose your skills and activities while still making the lesson your own.

​Head to the big, pink box to snag the lesson planning template for F R E E!

Looking for lesson planning made even easier? Check out my phonics slides- everything you need to introduce a phonics lesson to your students, complete with introduction, blending, reading, spelling, sorting, and more!