Direct Instruction Daily Instruction may be related to literary constructs, reading comprehension, grammar or any other language arts component. Direct instruction includes active and passive practice. This is teacher to student time, not seatwork, the teacher moves from child to child checking understanding and enriching or remediating as necessary. The phonics mini-lesson should last ten to fifteen minutes. Students need to understand and know how to use the alphabetic code including the exceptions.
Students can choose from book boxes that are placed at their tables or class library selections.
Guided Reading Daily Small group or individual reading with teacher supervision at the student's instructional level. Students apply and learn new decoding skills and may focus on one or two facets of reading, such as word families , phonomic similarities, rhyming, suffixes, etc. Small books with large illustrations and print such as Wright Group or Rigby are ideal. Guided and Independent Writing Daily Students write with the teacher or guided teacher selected subject and write on independent, self-selected topics each day. This is the program that we began implementing three years ago at Morrow Elementary .