MFEA-78 TG - Book - Page 9
experience. Cromwell (1997) put forth that “a carefully designed reading program
which takes into account each pupil’s learning style and demonstrated strengths and
weaknesses” is one that succeeds.
Units 7 and 8 of My First English Adventure work on advanced phonics, including
consonant clusters and blends, digraphs, diphthongs, and long and short vowels. The words
are presented and taught in context of the new stories and reviewed throughout the units.
Alongside the reading of phonetic words, many stories and topics are taught. The
pupils acquire a plethora of language and many of these words and expressions are
taught as global reading words or as sight words to enable a further expansion of
reading ability. These words become part of the repertoire of the pupils, and enables
automaticity on their way to becoming fluent readers.
The combination of the two approaches enables a well-rounded reading program that
ensures success for all. It develops slowly, with plenty of review and reinforcement,
thus enabling each pupil in a heterogeneous class to progress at his or her own pace.
An additional advantage of basing reading instruction on familiar vocabulary is that
pupils are able to make use of their knowledge of the meaning of the word, in order
to “guess” how to read some words within a context, even when those words contain
certain letters or letter combinations that have not yet been taught formally. At times
pupils will be required to read whole “familiar” words that contain some letter sounds
or letter combinations that have not yet been taught formally, still because they know
the meaning of the word, they should be able to guess the sounds of the letters they
have not learned yet and read the whole word, e.g. in Practice Pages unit 7 Exercise
16, pupils are required to read the words “sleeping” and “reading” even though the
vowel combinations “ee” and “ea” are taught formally in unit 8.
Remember! Reading is a cognitive process which involves constant guessing.
By the time pupils reach the last unit of the program, they will be familiar with a variety
of vowel combinations, digraphs, and blends which are taught in the Activity Books and
practiced within the exercises in the Practice Pages books. The order of introduction of
all letters and letter combinations, as well as the designated units within which they are
taught, appear in a table in the following spread.
Extensive reading practice is provided in the Practice Pages Books which include
exercises that supplement Pupil’s Activity Books Units 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. These exercises
can be done in class or assigned as homework. The purpose of these exercises is to
provide additional practice for reading, writing and listening as well as to reinforce the
vocabulary that has been taught.
The following table presents the order in which the letters are introduced and the
picture stickers that are used to illustrate the sound of each letter in initial, middle or
end position.
* Notice! The sounds the letters make are presented between slashes, e.g. /k/, /m/, /r/.
Vowels in capital letters are used to present the long vowel sounds, e.g. /I/, /A/ etc.
c
