How can Discover Intensive Phonics be integrated into a core reading program?
My name is Joan Parrish, and I taught 1st grade for 13 years. For the past 11 years, I have been teaching Discover Intensive Phonics in my classroom along with the school district’s adopted reading program. As you know, about every five-to-six years, school districts adopt new reading programs for the elementary schools to use. Since the NCLB Act, the most popular programs are Open Court and Houghton-Mifflin. For the past two years, I had to use the Open Court series and all of the materials it incorporates into the reading/language program. When I taught the phonics workbook, I taught the students how to mark the sounds according to the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself method and prove the words. When there was more than one spelling for a particular phonic sound (i.e. long U = U; ue; ew; oo; ui), I taught one spelling and used the decodable book with it. Then I spent a bit of extra time reinforcing that skill before introducing another spelling and decodable book. I incorporat
