A Look into Teaching -ck

Today, we want to walk through some of the components we want to pull in when running through a structured literacy intervention session with our students. We will be using the ‘ck’ phonogram as our example. Whenever we are working with a student, we like to take the SMARTER approach.

We know that by using all of these components (explained in more detail below), our students will have a greater chance of learning and mastering the material we are teaching them.

So, how do we teach ‘ck’ using the SMARTER acronym? Great question! Let’s take a look:

Systematic

First of all, we want our lesson to be systematic. This means that we’re starting with the most basic concepts and slowly working our way to the more advanced concepts. We teach -ck very early on in our time with students.

This means that it is one of the more basic concepts within the sequence (a good scope and sequence should be sequential and cumulative building from easier to more difficult concepts). You can grab our scope & sequence in our free training, 7-Steps to Reading Intervention that Works, here!

Multi-sensory

Teaching ‘ck’ in a multi-sensory way doesn’t mean we need playdough or sand in our lesson (though these can be great engagement factors when you are able to use them!). It means we want to try to engage more than one sense at a time while teaching the content. To add in a multi-sensory aspect while teaching ‘ck,’ I have my students write ‘ck’ while saying “c, k, says /ck/” three times out loud. This is engaging three senses at once since they are writing it (kinesthetic), seeing it (visual), and hearing themselves saying it (auditory).

If you wanted to take it a step further, you could have your student write and say “c, k, says /ck/” on glitter paper or textured paper, but just know that you don’t need these extra components to make it multi-sensory. If you’re interested in learning more about multi-sensory reading, check out this blog!

Applied

While it is important for a student to show mastery of a concept in isolation, it is even more important for a student to be able to apply that concept in more than just a word list. In each of our lessons, we should be taking students from the sound level, to the word level, to the sentence/phrase level, and then to the paragraph/passage level. We need to show them explicitly how to apply the knowledge of letter/phonogram sounds & rules in text so that they can better generalize this.

A great way for a student to do this outside of your lessons is to highlight words with ‘ck’ (or whatever phonogram/rule you are working on that week) in a book they are reading. I like to tell my students’ parents what concept we worked on that day so that the parents can bring up that new phonogram in natural settings, like this: “Look, Chick-fil-a has a ‘ck’ in it! How cool!” By doing this, parents are showing their child that what we’re working on doesn’t just apply at school or during intervention, but that it is going to show up in multiple settings!

Research-Based

That’s right, you’re going to want to use a method that is supported by data and research, and that your program is research-based! We want to make sure that data supports the type of results we are expecting to see from our students! Research supports explicit teaching methods, which means you’re going to want to clearly state whatever rule or pattern you’re working on so that it leaves no room for guessing (more on this with the letter “e” in SMARTER.)

It also supports targeting all 5 Core Components of Literacy in EVERY lesson. That means in our -CK lesson we are targeting phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension (and targeting each of those through a writing lens). We are doing our OWN research in every lesson as well, to make sure what we are doing with our students is working! You can read more about doing your own research in your lessons here.

Targeted

Whenever possible, we want to make sure we’re pulling in specific activities for our students’ specific needs. Within a research-based framework, we want to target specific areas of weakness for each of our students.

That means that when we are working through -ck sentence-level reading, we may ask Johnny to circle any words with a -ck to target orthography while asking Sarah to define certain words (targeting vocabulary).

By using a research-based framework and differentiating within it to target students’ specific holes and gaps, it allows us to get students bigger results in a shorter amount of time.

Explicit

As noted earlier, students really benefit from being taught explicitly. This means you state the rule or phonogram pattern to them exactly as it is. This leaves no room for guessing, and you’re not teaching incidentally either. When teaching ‘ck,’ we explicitly tell our students, “ck says /k/ at the end of a single syllable word when it follows a short vowel.” We also make sure to review what syllables are (so they understand what single-syllable means) as well as short vowels. This rule applies to all closed syllables. If you want more information on closed syllable rules, you can find them here!

Realistic

Lastly, we need to be realistic in our intervention lessons. Yes, this means that we need to be realistic with our students, but it also means being realistic with OURSELVES. Not every lesson is going to go perfectly. Let me say that again - not every lesson is going to go perfectly and that is okay.

We need to be okay making mistakes in our intervention and working through them. This is what we ask our students to do, so why not use our mistakes as an opportunity to model how we can positively respond to challenges instead of stressing about them?!

Next Steps - Applying the SMARTER Framework

We know that this was a lot of information, so we’d love the opportunity to go through it in more depth. You can learn more about how we apply the SMARTER framework in our systematic program, Delivering SMARTER Intervention (DSI). To learn more about DSI, use the button below.