Cycle 10

This task introduces onset-rime exercises.

In these Rhyming tasks, never pause between the initial sound and the rest of the word.  One of the purposes of these tasks is to prepare students for reading words that begin with stop sounds, but that will be undermined if the instructor pauses after the onset.

In the first couple of Rhyming tasks, a single word carries over from one page of the script to another.  For example, you will begin saying Sam on one page and finish saying it on the other, allowing the content on the student pane to change while you say the word.  So, you will hold the initial /sss/ sound as you advance to the next page, then, without pausing, you’ll finish saying the word Sam.

When the onset (the initial sound) is a continuous sound, you’ll hold it for two seconds, but you should never say the rime (the rest of the word after the onset) slowly.  Always say the rime “the fast way.”

As always, read the example sentences after each word in Rhyming tasks.

The routines of these exercises can take students some time to get used to, so, at the end of the task, make sure to repeat the steps for any words that required correction.

This task introduces Word Finding exercises in which instructors ask students to point out particular words from a passage they have read.  These exercises require a basic form of encoding because the student will need to hear the sounds of the word they are looking for, recall the symbols associated with those sounds, and then identify those symbols on the screen.

This task also introduces the routine of the instructor modeling how to read story text fluently.  Make sure to do so with prosody and expression, and make sure that you model touching beneath the text even when you read it the fast way.

This task is also the first time that the instructor will use the term “cycles” with the student.

You may have some students who are ready to skip the tracing and connecting-dots steps and go straight to writing letters on their own. To show that they are ready to skip those steps, it is NOT necessary that their lines are perfectly smooth and straight. It IS necessary that their strokes are in the correct order and direction and that the students are not picking up their writing utensil between strokes that are connected. (For example, they should pick up their writing utensil exactly once when writing a and zero times when writing m.)