Three Strategies To Strengthen Your Small-Group Phonics Instruction
Amie Burkholder is a literacy coach, national speaker, and author of Literacy Unlocked: How to Implement the Science of Reading with Young Learners. With more than 15 years of experience in education, Burkholder helps teachers implement research-based reading instruction with practical, doable routines. She’s the creator of the Route2Reading Membership and founder of Literacy Edventures, where she supports thousands of educators through coaching, curriculum, and professional development.
Visit her at literacyedventures.com.
The National Reading Panel (2000) made it clear: Systematic, explicit phonics instruction significantly improves reading outcomes, and small-group delivery can be one of the most effective ways to make that happen. Small groups allow you to target the precise skills students need, respond in real time to their progress, and accelerate growth.
But in real classrooms, small-group phonics can also be the most challenging part of the literacy block.
Multiple groups. Multiple skill levels. Limited minutes.
The good news? With a clear, repeatable framework, you can streamline your planning, make the most of every second at the table, and ensure students walk away having truly learned something new.
During my webinar, “Powerful Phonics Instruction: Strategies for Success in Any Setting,” I’ll walk you through a simple three-part structure packed with routines that make phonics stick while keeping planning manageable. Here are just three examples of the many strategies we’ll explore together.
Targeted Phonemic Awareness Warm-Up
A brief phonemic awareness warm-up at the start of each lesson primes students’ brains for reading and writing. Research from Linnea Ehri shows that phonemic awareness accelerates the development of word reading and spelling by strengthening the connections between sounds (phonemes) and letters (graphemes). Wiley Blevins calls it “the foundation on which phonics instruction is built.”
The warm-up should be directly tied to the phonics skill you’re teaching and should also revisit previously taught patterns. Linking it to blending and segmenting skills “switches on” the exact mental processes students will need moments later when decoding and spelling.
Example: If today’s skill is sh, orally blend: /sh/…/i/…/p/ → ship. Then, have students segment ship back into its three sounds. Repeat with four to five quick examples, mixing in one or two review skills from past lessons to strengthen cumulative mastery.
Word Chaining To Bridge Old and New
Once students are warmed up, introduce the new phonics skill explicitly—and then reinforce it through word chaining, which requires students to change just one sound (and letter) at a time to make a new word. This high-yield strategy, supported by phonics experts and the research on orthographic mapping, strengthens decoding, encoding, and pattern recognition all at once.
Because it builds directly on phonemic awareness skills like segmenting and substituting sounds, it creates a seamless link between the warm-up and skill application.
Example: Start with ship:
- Change /sh/ to /ch/ → chip
- Change /i/ to /o/ → chop
- Change /ch/ to /sh/ → shop
Students can use letter tiles, magnetic letters, or white boards. With each change, have them read the new word aloud to reinforce both decoding and the concept that one small change alters the whole word.
Application in Decodable Texts
The final step is application—because a skill isn’t mastered until students can use it in connected reading and writing. Decodable texts provide this bridge by offering controlled practice with the target phonics pattern alongside a small set of previously taught patterns and high-frequency words.
Research shows that repeated, accurate practice in connected text helps students store words in long-term memory and improves reading fluency. Blevins emphasizes that these texts should align tightly to your Scope and Sequence to maximize the transfer of skills.
Example: After teaching the digraph sh, give students a short decodable that targets that skill. The connection from phonics knowledge to real reading can feel challenging at first—remember, that’s a productive struggle. It’s in working through those moments that students truly begin to apply and internalize what they’ve learned.
Why You’ll Want To Register for the Webinar
Small-group phonics instruction doesn’t have to feel overwhelming—whether you’re teaching in the classroom, managing reading teachers, or tutoring one-on-one. During my webinar, you’ll discover a simple, repeatable three-part framework that streamlines your planning and maximizes your impact.
Join me to learn how to:
- Build in cumulative review so students master and retain key skills with confidence
- Teach new phonics skills explicitly and systematically for stronger, faster learning
- Guide students to apply their skills in real reading and writing experiences
You’ll walk away with ready-to-use examples, weekly planning tips, and practical ways to make your routines more efficient—so you can spend less time prepping and more time teaching, while giving your students exactly what they need to succeed.
Join me for “Powerful Phonics Instruction: Strategies for Success in Any Setting.”
Walk away with a ready-to-use, small-group phonics plan you can implement the very next day.
References
- National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Findings on systematic phonics instruction. Retrieved from sparkedliteracy.com
- Sparked Literacy. Key takeaways from the NRP report. Retrieved from sparkedliteracy.com
- Ehri, L. C., et al. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Retrieved from library.ecu.edu
- Bottari, E. (2020). Wiley Blevins on phonemic awareness as the foundation of reading. Heggerty. Retrieved from coursehero.com
- Edutopia. Word chaining reinforces phonemic awareness and encoding. Retrieved from edutopia.org
- Burkholder, A. Word chaining as a high-impact strategy. Voyager Sopris Blog. Retrieved from voyagersopris.com
- Burkholder, A. Using decodable texts for practice and review. Voyager Sopris Blog. Retrieved from voyagersopris.com
- Five from Five. Importance of decodable text exposure for orthographic mapping. Retrieved from fivefromfive.com.au
- Reading Rockets. Ehri’s orthographic mapping: The “glue” of letter-sound bonds. Retrieved from readingrockets.org
- Literacy Edventures. Small-group framework and benefits (featuring a Wiley Blevins quote). Retrieved from literacyedventures.com