Hi, and welcome to the smarter literacy podcast from Ascend's smarter intervention, where our mission is to simplify effective literacy instruction to make teaching literacy easier and more accessible for everyone.
We are your host, Lindsey.
And Corey, and in today's quick tip episode, we're gonna be sharing one of our favorite word recognition strategies that will spice up your life.
Well, your word recognition instruction more specifically.
In our last episode, we discussed the importance of word recognition or that decoding instruction across the grade level.
So recognizing this doesn't just end after 2nd grade, we wanna make sure that we're continuing to support that as part of that literacy intervention process.
And so today, we wanted to share a quick tip to help you incorporate more of that word recognition instruction in a fun and engaging way for your students.
So by the end of this episode, we hope that you're gonna be willing to try out a spicy sound drill with your students.
So, um, Corey, what is a spicy sound drill? Or maybe let's start off with what a normal sound drill is.
Yes.
Okay.
So a sound drill is a quick activity that we incorporate in all of our lessons that is designed to help students tie the visual letters or letter patterns to the sounds that they make.
This is important because it builds fluency and automaticity for students reading.
So typically what you would do is you would use flashcards or slides with different letters or letter patterns.
So things like O I, ZK, AR, some of those patterns that would stick together that students have previously learned, and each time you show the students a letter or a letter pattern, they will tell you the sound or the sounds that pattern makes.
So, for example, if you had taught, oh, you, they might say, oh, and ah, because it makes both of those sounds, and they're doing that as quickly as possible.
In our lessons, that sound drill usually takes about 1 to 2 minutes, a quick warm up drill.
It's not something that we spend a ton of time with, but it is a way that we start activating and warming up the brain, if you will, to activate that literacy processing triangle.
Awesome.
So what makes a spicy sound drill? Yes.
So great question.
So in order to make a spicy sound drill, you can take that normal sound drill activity where you are pairing a letter, a visual letter to the sound, and you can add rules to it.
So when you're adding rules, you could say something like if you see a vowel, I want you to stand up.
If you see a digraph, so two letters that make one sound, I want you to hold up the number 2.
If you see a letter b, I want you to pat your belly or rub your belly as it can be Right? It really doesn't matter.
It's almost like Simon says Yeah.
A little bit.
Absolutely.
And so then what they're doing is they're waiting for those specific patterns to pop up to be able to do that particular act activity.
And so the beautiful thing here, the benefit here is 2 things.
1, it makes it a little bit more fun.
It sort of turns it into a game.
Yeah.
So instead of it just being this boring drill that we have to do, it feels more game like.
But also it's building executive functioning skills.
Yes.
So what you're requiring students do is you are really building their working memory because they're having to hold on to a rule Mhmm.
Or maybe more than one rule and they're holding on to that rule while also trying to provide the sound.
So they're looking at that visual pattern.
They are producing the sound.
They're trying to do that as quickly as possible while also trying to focus on what the rule was that you gave them.
And so it's a great executive functioning task to add in.
So again, as we think of, you know, the research and the active view of literacy processing where we wanna make sure we're pulling in that executive functioning strategy use, this is a really great opportunity to do that.
I love everything about that.
I mean, again, it does just kind of spice up that that warm up period, right, because we generally all do start with a warm up.
And I know for me, a lot of times, it was just kinda doing the same thing every single day.
But being able to use a strategy like this can make it more fun for my students, make it more fun for me, even as the teacher.
And just like what you said, like, it's just helping them hold on to more information and, like, paying attention to those rules.
I absolutely love this.
And I think, you know, you can definitely differentiate this too.
Oh, yeah.
Right? So you could start by just having one rule and perhaps you write that one rule down on the whiteboard or you write it down in front of you so that can remember what the rule is as they're going through.
And then the way that you would start to make that more difficult is that you don't have the rule and they have to hold on to it in their memory.
And so that would be a way that you can differentiate that.
And then you can also start, like I said, adding on more rules.
So, okay.
If you see a vowel, I want you to stand up when you see the first vowel, when you see another, I want you to sit down.
You can start to stack it, or you can use more than one roll.
You can say, okay.
Great.
Every time you see a vowel, I want you to do this.
Do you see a digraph? I want you to do this.
If you see a specific role that would have a spelling pattern attached to it like a CK or a loss pattern, I want you to do this.
And you can change it up.
And in fact, you can even have your kids tell you, you know, or pick some of the things that they could do so that they feel more engaged.
Yeah.
People feel silly.
They love being a part of that whole thing.
So I could see this obviously working with littles, um, like our younger students, but even our older students, middle scores, and even high schoolers would have so much fun with this just because they they could do something kind of fun and silly and different, and it's not just them sitting in a sea doing the same thing over and over again.
And then it's almost like especially with secondary or your high school students, for sure, middle school and high school.
You can even just make, you know, they're almost like making fun of you a little bit.
Like, hey, guys.
Just honestly humor me, please Yes.
And just do this for me, and they will actually secretly love it.
And always do.
They always do.
They always do.
And then you can also say, you know, you can add rules around it to where, okay.
If somebody makes a mistake, then, um, you know, then we're out or, you know, something like that so that it's just adds a little bit of, you know, fun fun pressure to it.
Yeah.
Maybe maybe, like, it kind of like Simon says, like, whoever's the last one in, maybe wins a little a little candy or something like that.
You know, just to do a little extra transcend.
Anything we can do? Anything we can do to spice up our instruction, especially for those really boring parts of the instruction, which I have to be honest, the sound drill is when if those necessary evils, if you will, it is gonna build that automaticity, that fluency so important, but any way that you can spice it up, it's gonna be really awesome.
Awesome.
Well, again, we hope this quick tip strategy helps and let us know how it goes.
Again, you can use flashcards or slides with different letters and letter patterns as a part of a morning work or, like, that warm up to your lesson, then just mix up those rules to make it spicy and fun if and when you and your students are ready for it.
If you do need a sound drill flashcard deck, we will put a link in our show notes to ours, but just know that you can use whatever you have to get started.
This doesn't have to be complicated at all.
In our upcoming episodes, we will be sharing more about the different parts of the literacy processing triangle and how we can be supporting our students with activities design to develop each of those different neural processors in fun and engaging ways.
So please stay tuned.
Oh, yes.
I cannot wait.
We're gonna be talking more about that semantics processor up next.
So it's gonna be super exciting.
Definitely.
Stay tuned.
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Until next time.
Happy teaching
