Secret Stories: A New and Fantastic Approach to Teaching Phonics

Phonics or the process of assigning sounds (phonemes) to letters and blending them together to "sound" out words is often a source of great controversy in teaching circles. While people have many different ideas about if and how it should be taught, everyone who loves kids want to see them becomes successful readers. My older girl is a great reader. She loves to read and is very fluent. However, spelling is not her favorite thing-she makes a lot of hurried, careless mistakes. My middle girl is learning to read this year. While I was talking to a good friend who happens to be a great mom and wonderful teacher working on her masters, she told me a "secret" about a new way to teach phonics that she discovered in one of her reading methods classes. I decided to give it a try this year. My hope was that it would slow down my oldest and give her some "buy in" to the idea of thinking about the sounds in a word as she spells it and help my younger girl get off to a great start in reading. We LOVE it. Here are some question and answers to help you decide if you want in on the secret!

What is It?  Secret Stories Cracking the Reading Code is a book by Katie Garner.  She present fun ways to use motions and a fun easy to remember story to remember the sounds the letters make.  It comes with a CD that has a "better" alphabet song that names the letters and all of the sounds they make to a catchy tune as well as other fun sound songs, and posters or card size picture cues of the letters and sounds.  This package forms a new way to approach teaching phonics.  You hook kids by telling them the letters have a secret.  You then tell the story and show them the actions so they have lots of ways to connect with and remember the sounds.

Why Use It?  It is a really fun and different approach.  The visual and auditory cues make learning letters and sounds a multi-sensory experience that is fun for kids.  There aren't workbook pages or formal lessons so the stress that can come with it is removed, it really is a fun and different approach!

How do you use it?  The only drawback I saw with this program is that it doesn't have a scope and sequence or any kind of sample lesson plan.  This really bothered the teacher in me!  I decided to come up with a way to use it so we'd have a consistent "secret story" (phonics) time built into our day.  I started with vowels but you could start with any of the secrets.  Here is what our "secret story" lesson looks like:

1.  CD:  My girls love the CD.  We start each day by listening to the CD.  Since we are early in the year and only working on vowels, we only listen to the first song "The Better Alphabet" song.  In the future, they'll get to choose which song or I'll choose based on the lesson.  The LOVE to sing along with the song and get in practice on all of the letters and sounds in the process.

2.  Story:  I tell the girls which "secret" they'll be learning today.  I show them the large picture cue that comes in the book and then tell the story.

3.  Actions:  We learn the action that goes with the story and practice it several times.  I then take a picture of the girls doing the actions to attach to the poster we make (see step 5).  I print mine on our home computer so I can have them by the next day and not always be running out for pictures.

4. Read it:  I let me girls choose a book, I let them pick any book they want and we haven't had trouble finding the "secret" in the book (if we did we'd just pick another book).  You could choose the book ahead of time if you want to.  I simply read the book and we "look" for words with the secret in them.  

5.  Write It:  As I read, I really stress the words with the "secret" in them so they can hear it and then we write the words on a list.  I just write the letter for the rule at the top of the page along with the small picture cue from the back of the Secret Stories book.  Then as we write the words we hear in the story on the list we underline the words that make that sound. (The next day we review the sound at some point in our day by adding the picture we took to our poster and re-reading the words.  The posters are currently on the wall, but as the year goes on and we get more of them we plan to put them on a book ring to use for review.)

6.  Hear It:  After the story, we use the word lists in the back of the Secret Stories book to do a dictation activity.  The girls use whiteboards and a dry erase marker to write the words as I saw them.  

The whole lesson usually take 15-20 minutes max.

An example lesson using the Secret for Super Hero "E":  (The secret is that E is a superhero and says his name E, the kids make big muscles when I say "Super Hero E" and then make the long E sound)

1.  Cd:  We listen to our cd together.

2. Story:  I say "today we'll learn a new secret, the secret of super hero E".  I then explain "sometimes E acts like a big strong superhero and says his name big and strong".  I then make the long E sound.

3.  Action:  I tell the kids "When E is making his super hero sound he looks like this" and I make big muscles with my arms.  I have the kids practice making big muscles and saying the long E sound and I take their picture.

4.  Read it:  We read this book with ours, but you can use whatever book you'd like.  Again, as we read I really stressed words with the long E sound in them and we stopped to say them again and have the girls say them.

5. Write It: I made our poster with paper and the picture cue for the super hero E as well as an E written at the top. As we read, we stopped to write the words we found down and underline the long E sound in them. We noticed that there were different ways it happened (another vowel beside it, another e at the end....) I didn't teach those lessons, we just noticed as we wrote and said the long E words. (some of our favorite long E words in this book were: enough, year, sleep, dream).

6. Hear It: The girls got out their whiteboard and markers and I read the words from the Long E list in the back of the book. My oldest did great with them. My little one needed a bit more help, but got great practice writing letters. I discovered that having a letter chart for her to look at really helped give her confidence to write this early in the year.

At the end of the lesson, I say "what's today's secret" they then say "super hero E" make the long E sound and do the action. I tell them to come back tomorrow for more reading secrets!

It has proven to be a great resources that is easy to use and provides a hands-on, real-life approach to teaching phonics that is helping both my weak speller and my new reader. I LOVE that!

Have you used this resource? What did you think?

Secret Stories

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