24 hours in a day is not enough!

I did an observation today of another teacher on my kindergarten team.  I observed his phonics lesson from 9:30-9:40 am.  He teaches phonics directly following his morning meeting and handwriting.  It is taught whole class (21 students) on the carpet.  The students have assigned seats on the carpet.  When I walked in the class was already on the carpet and was just finishing up their handwriting.  My notes and analysis of the observation are below.

Observation Field Notes	Analysis
Class is sitting on the outside edge of the carpet in a square.  The two students sitting on each side of Mr. Ferlisi are ESOL students.	The class is situated so that everyone can see Mr. Ferlisi (who is also in the square, but in his rocking chair).  He has put thought into the seating arrangement so that the ESOL students can receive more support.
Mr. Ferlisi says “Put your slate behind you and your marker on the line, that’s how I know you’re ready for phonics.”	This is a well-practiced routine.  His students know what the expectation is.  Even so, he gave verbal reminders of what the directions are to get ready.
Written on Mr. Ferlisi’s board: ____ in He fills in the blank line with t. “What word did I just make?”	Model!  Mr. Ferlisi is doing exactly what the students will do in a minute.  He is modeling how to set up the board to be successful.  Then he models how to fill in a letter on the line.
Several students are called on with raised hands.  Then he says “Class, what word did I just make?”  The whole class reads the word.	Mr. Ferlisi also models how to read the words.  This should help students to be more successful later in the lesson when they have to read the words they’ve written independently.
Mr. Ferlisi repeats the process with ____ in written on his board.  This time he fills in “n.”  He asks Camilla what word he has written.  She does not answer.  He repeats.  Then he says what sound does n make?  No response.  He makes the n sound.  Then he repeats the question.  She answers “nin”	One example was a real word and one was a pretend word.  I like the mixture so that students aren’t worried about whether their idea is a real word or not. He does not give up on Camilla.  She is not allowed to opt out of answering, instead she is given support so that she feels comfortable answering.
“Alright now it’s your turn” Students write two words on their board.  Mr. Ferlisi supports the ESOL students on each side of him by giving them letter sounds for the letters they’ve written.  He has them practice saying their words.	Mr. Ferlisi is scaffolding the lesson to give more support where it is needed.  Because his seating arrangements were planned out, he can give support without having to move from his spot on the square.
Mr. Ferlis picked an equity stick.  He started with that student and went around the carpet.  Each student read their two words.	This shows that everyone’s thoughts are valid.  Each student has a turn to share the words they have written.

The observation got me thinking about phonics and how to teach it in my own classroom.  We talked last night about phonics instruction being authentic and not taught in isolation.  It seems to me that the teacher I observed has a great handle on phonics and taught an engaging lesson where everyone was able to participate.  However, how useful is that lesson if it has no context?

So far phonics in my room as been taught in isolation as well (although anytime we read a book we identify beginning or ending sounds of a picture or a title or other activities like that).  I was thinking about how I would adapt the lesson I observed if it was my classroom.  I would have liked to do an intro to the lesson where we read a book that has a lot of “__in” words in it.  Then I would probably have the book at a center the following week and have students draw and label “__in” words from the book.  The problem with this scenario being that there is never enough time in the day.  Which is really sad because it’s Kindergarten and there should be more time for read aloud stories.  I could maybe move my phonics instruction from the morning to the afternoon directly following the read aloud book that I do when we get back from recess.  Then I could pick books that focus on the phonics lesson for the day.  Hmmmm.  Too much to do in one day and not enough time!