Learn By Doing: Literacy Drills

A key component of our Structured Literacy Workshop is hands-on experience. Attendees observe Chartwell teachers in action and practice the same literacy drills. This combination of practice and observation provides a strong foundation for successful drill implementation in their own classrooms. Watch the videos below to see Jodi demonstrate the drill and Chartwell teacher Dan Rhoads bring it to life in the classroom.

Jodi is demonstrating to participants how to practice the visual drill with phonemes for review. When done in the classroom, students would repeat back as a group or individually. The letter name, keyword, and sound are all stated while the student is skywriting for a multisensory approach. Watch here. 

Dan works with his structured literacy class on the daily visual drill. While the teacher holds each letter card, students say the letter name, the keyword that begins with that letter sound, and the sound of the letter. Students incorporate skywriting for a multi-sensory approach. This process aids in the brain orthographically mapping each letter to its corresponding sound. For the red word drill, Dan holds up a card containing a high-frequency word. Students briefly see the spelling of the word, say the word, and either individually or chorally spell out the word while skywriting each letter in the air. Watch here.