Teaching Phonics

After reading this week's articles, I've learned about all the various ways of teaching students phonics instruction. I found the article about coaching instruction to be very interesting. Many people can say the phrase "sound it out," but there is so much more behind the phrase. The teachers in the coaching article were well qualified in the area of phonics and are well aware of each individual student in their reading and instructional histories. I think that is really important when it comes to coaching students how to read, not every child is the same. Besides coaching to teach students about phonetics, they used various activities, also. In the article by Yopp and Yopp they provide several activities to do with students to help them understand phonics. I really liked the activity "How many syllables are in a name?" I feel as if students would be more interested in figuring out how many syllables are in a word if it is their own name. Then have them share with the class how many syllables are in their name and sit in groups with students who also have the same number of syllables. Teaching students phonics and providing different practice reading and various activities will really help children develop better fluency so that their word recognition is automatic.