Phonics They Use: Words for Reading and Writing - Softcover

Patricia M. Cunningham

Phonics They Use, 5/e

From highly respected scholar Pat Cunningham, this enduring best seller offers a coherent collection of practical activities that provide a framework for teaching phonics.

The fifth edition of this esteemed book seamlessly weaves together the complex, varied strategic approaches needed to help students develop reading and spelling skills.  Pat’s balanced reading program incorporates a broad spectrum of methods for meeting the needs of individual students.  New activities and strategies emphasize that what matters is not how much phonics students know but what they actually use for decoding a new word, for reading and spelling, and for writing.

“This text is an excellent teaching and learning tool for all teachers in the field. [Pat] is obviously aware of the problems facing classroom teachers [and] thoroughly understands students and their reading development.”  –Christine Frazer, teacher, Henry P. Fieler Elementary, Merrillville, IN

“No matter what age or level you teach, you will know all of the activities to make successful readers and writers!”–Christine Eaton, founder, Little Learners Early Childhood Center, Olathe, KS

Patricia M. Cunningham is the author of Beyond Retelling, Classrooms That Work, Schools That Work, and the Making Words series, all published by Allyn & Bacon, as well as a professor of education at Wake Forest University. She has over 30 years of experience in various elementary grades and with remedial reading and has served as a curriculum coordinator and director of reading.  Pat promotes literacy for all children through her Four Blocks® workshops and staff development sessions with educators.

Patricia M. Cunningham

The day I entered first grade, I decided I wanted to teach first grade. In 1965, I graduated from the University of Rhode Island and began my teaching career teaching first grade in Key West, Florida. For the next several years, I taught a variety of grades and worked as a curriculum coordinator and special reading teacher in Florida and Indiana.

From the very beginning, I worried about children who struggled learning to read and devised a variety of alternative strategies to teach them to read. In 1974, I received my Ph. D. in Reading Education from the University of Georgia. I developed the Making Words activity while working with Title One teachers in North Carolina where I was the Director of Reading for Alamance County Schools. I have been the Director of Elementary Education at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina since 1980 and have worked with numerous teachers to develop hands-on engaging ways to teach phonics and spelling. In 1991, I published Phonics they Use: Words for Reading and Writing, which is currently available in its fourth edition. Along with Richard Allington, I published Classrooms that Work and Schools that Work.

Dottie Hall and I have worked together on many projects. In 1989, we began developing the Four Blocks Framework, a comprehensive approach to literacy which is used in many schools in the United States and Canada. Dottie Hall and I have  worked together to produce many books, including the first Making Words books and the Month by Month Phonics Books. These Making Words by Grade Level books are in response to requests by teachers across the years to have making words lessons with a scope and sequence tailored to their grade level. We hope you and your students will enjoy these making words lessons and we would love to hear your comments and suggestions.