The Deal

The Deal

Students never have to know anything that you haven’t learned together.

If they haven’t encountered th then they aren’t expected to know the word the.  But they almost always do know that word and they constantly exceed your expectations and their own.

The flip-side is that they are expected to know what you have done together.  By building level on level, this is manageable and the phonics lesson becomes a place where success is always achievable.  I once sat in a meeting where a prospective trainee asked a TRT volunteer if ThatReadingThing is fun.  The answer was, “No, it’s really hard work, but it’s so satisfying that they always want more.”

This goes along with the idea of Decodability.