Phonics progressions and phonemic awareness: Q&A webinar questions

Overview

This Q&A webinar answers questions from teachers and school leaders about using a phonics progression and developing phonemic awareness.

View the transcript.

Resources mentioned in this video

Phonics professional learning: Getting started with a phonics progression [3:06]

Quick Phonological Awareness Screening (QPAS) [4:28]

Phonemic awareness overview [4:48]

Five from Five website [5:06]

Literacy Hub phonics progression [14:26]

Questions covered in this video

Where do I start? There's lots of information about phonics out there and it feels a bit overwhelming. [0:07]

What are the best phonological awareness screeners for classroom teachers or intervention teachers to use? [4:15]

When you've taught a phase of sounds, should you wait for all students in the class to know the sounds before moving to the next stage? So, if you've taught s, a, t, p, I, n, do we wait for all students to know that or do we keep moving? [5:33]

Do blends need to be taught explicitly? [10:17]

Should blending and segmenting begin as soon as s a t p i n, that first phase of sounds, is taught, or after all 26 single graphemes are taught? [12:05]

How do you go about teaching a word you want students to know that they don't have the code for yet? [14:14]

How do we select a phonics program that corresponds with the Version 9 Australian Curriculum? [16:36]

Is it worth working on phonological awareness–only activities at any point on school entry, and how much time should be dedicated to phonological awareness in Foundation? [19:02]

Who is this video for?

Foundation to Year 2 teachers; school leaders

What will you learn?

Where to begin with implementing phonics in your classroom

What phonemic awareness screeners are used for

How to pace your phonics instruction

Why blending, both orally and when decoding words, is important

How to teach irregular words

How to know a phonics progression is aligned to the Australian Curriculum

Presenters

Elaine Stanley and Rebecca McEwan are experienced teachers, school leaders and literacy coaches. They have had extensive experience implementing systematic synthetic phonics in primary school classrooms, and have recently coached disadvantaged schools around Australia.

Related content

Introduction to SSP video series 

View the five videos in this series, which outline the evidence base and key features of a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) approach. 

Phonics professional learning: Getting started with a phonics progression

The Literacy Hub provides free, online professional learning to support schools through each step of building a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) approach for reading and spelling. This first topic in the series addresses phonics progressions and phonological awareness.