Teaching short u. System and pace in introducing correspondences. The short u correspondence is taught in Theme 4, p. T138. Vowel correspondences continue to be taught weekly, a moderate pace. Consonant clusters are used with each vowel to extend the concept with blending and spelling challenges rather than as separate phonics units, a valuable economy in teaching essential correspondences. Phoneme awareness review.
Little effort is made to teach or review phoneme awareness.
Components of phonics lesson. Blending is sequential, even with 5-phoneme words, which places undue memory demands on young children. Students read and spell the words gum and bump. Later they spell other short u words from a spelling list and brainstorm rhymes for a word wall. Decodability of practice texts.