Summary of Chapter Seven

The teaching strategies in Chapter Six, which develop phonemic awareness, lead to the ability of children to decode phonetically. This is the reason for Chapter Seven, "Teaching Young Children to Decode Independently," where teachers will find out how to teach phonics skills. In this chapter, I explain the true purpose of teaching phonics, which is to provide readers with the skills they need to figure out unknown words. This is followed by descriptions of many strategies that teachers can use to teach phonics, all of which use children's literature and are based on the idea that readers must produce meaning as they decode.

Big Ideas for Chapter Seven

Why Teach Phonics?
Phonics Instruction
       Phonemic Awareness
       Sequence of Instruction
       Sound Charts
       Explicit Instruction
       Connections to Meaningful Text
       Mental Modeling
       Inductive Word Solving
       Generalizations
       Decoding by Analogy
       Invented Spelling

Summary: Phonics Instruction That Makes Sense