ELD instruction dedicates a lot of time to phonics in grades K-3 since students are building foundational literacy skills. When newcomers arrive during the secondary years, however, it can be challenging to know where and how to begin phonics instruction so students can sound out new words, build fluency, and increase vocabulary.
Where do we begin? Start by building phonemic awareness and providing explicit phonics instruction. Be sure to give context and meaning to phonics lessons and follow a phonics sequence that supports positive language transfer. Let’s dive deeper into each category.
Why Build Phonemic Awareness?
Some older multilingual learners (MLs) are literate in their home language, but some are not. MLs are learning to read in English by matching symbols to sounds. This means that it is important for students to notice and work with individual sounds in spoken words before moving on to written words. Activate relevant background knowledge to support students.
What is Explicit Phonics Instruction?
Help MLs learn to read by teaching them the relationships between sounds and letters in English. We must help them learn to use the alphabetic principle (the predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds). Vista’s Boost program can lead the way.
How Can We Provide Phonics Instruction with Context and Meaning?
Phonics instruction for young learners can sometimes involve approaches like using word families (bat, cat, sat), but that is not as effective for older MLs since it lacks context. Provide MLs with language rooted in unit themes and an academic context, presented in Get Ready!.
Which Phonics Sequence Should Be Followed?
Many languages share the same consonant sounds. Leverage this to build a phonics sequence based on positive language transfer. Positive language transfer refers to similarities between a learner’s home language (L1) and the target language (L2) that facilitate the learning process. Other forms of positive language transfer might be similar grammatical structures (e.g., word order or subject/verb agreement) and cognates (“actor” in English and Spanish). You will find a helpful sound transfer guide here or in the front matter of the Get Ready! Teacher’s Edition.
Six Strategies to Try Now:
- Begin lessons with consonant sounds shared across your students’ home languages, then progress to short vowel sounds, consonant blends, clusters, and other advanced elements.
- Make use of audio to reinforce sound-symbol associations.
- Create phonics flashcards.
- Play bingo games using sounds and phonetic patterns.
- Have students notice phonetic patterns and verbalize them during activities. Use charts as visuals.
- Collect activities from phonics lessons and use that formative data to tailor instruction.
At the end of the day, we all want the same thing for our older newcomers. We want to boost their confidence and help them become independent learners. This means providing them with meaningful phonics instruction so that they become proficient English speakers and fluent readers/writers. Let’s support them along the way, from recognizing beginning consonant sounds to understanding prefixes/suffixes, and everything in between.
By Katalyn Vidal Loveless, Ed.M.
References:
Trujillo, J. L., & Raducanu, A. L. (2021). Get Ready! Language, Literacy, Content Grades 9-12 Teacher’s Edition. Vista Higher Learning.
- Explore our Get Ready! 6-8 and Get Ready! 9-12 curriculum to support older newcomers as they build initial language skills in all four domains. Add Boost for individualized, interactive online phonics learning.
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