Danielle shared an update on the past week’s instruction. She is following a consistent routine that begins and ends with a phonemic awareness (PA) focus. During the core portion of the lesson, students say a word, push tokens into sound boxes to segment the sounds, and then write the word underneath. She has primarily been using two-phoneme words, while intentionally incorporating a three-phoneme word and a nonsense word for additional challenge. She will progress to using words with more phonemes as the days go on and students show control of the sounds. On the final day of the cycle, she implements a shortened version of the routine and includes a dictation sentence using a sentence frame. Students segment the final word of the sentence, “mix and fix” it, read the sentence with a partner and independently, and then rewrite the entire sentence by copying the frame.
At this point, Danielle reports positive outcomes. The one-on-one time with students appears to be boosting their confidence. However, she noted that students are particularly challenged by nonsense words. We discussed this at length. Because these students are not yet fluent decoders of real words, they tend to feel apprehensive and unsure when encountering words that carry no meaning. Danielle wants to continue incorporating nonsense words since the FastBridge assessment includes this component.
She has been providing verbal prompts to support students when they are practicing nonsense words. We explored additional strategies beyond verbal cues, such as visual supports and color coding real and nonsense words to help them differentiate between the two. Danielle observed that more confident decoders at this grade level are at least willing to attempt nonsense words, whereas these students are often reluctant to even try.
I suggested incorporating a game-based strategy in which students are presented with three real words and one nonsense word. The goal would be to identify the word that is not real. This approach may help students anticipate that one word will not carry meaning and encourage them to attempt decoding it. Danielle responded positively to this idea and is considering how it might also be implemented with other students, perhaps as a literacy center activity.
We also discussed Ehri’s stages of word learning and how a student’s developmental phase may influence their confidence when decoding nonsense words. Additionally, we reflected on the sentence dictation portion of her routine and how it might gradually shift toward greater student independence. Moving toward true sentence dictation where students write all words independently which would provide more meaningful formative data about how students are applying their learning.
Danielle feels confident continuing with her plan, making adjustments as needed, and reaching out if questions arise. We plan to meet again in mid-April to discuss operationalizing her procedures and to reflect on the data she has collected.