Phonics They Use: Words for Reading and Writing

by Patricia Marr Cunningham

The long-standing, bestselling classic of strategies and hands-on activities for teaching phonics. In the new edition of this popular book, author and scholar Patricia Cunningham seamlessly weaves together the complex and varied strategic approaches needed to help students develop reading and writing skills. With its focus on how students use phonics to read and write, not just how much phonics a student knows, Phonics They Use includes numerous developmentally appropriate activities for helping students with fluency, rhyme-based decoding, spelling, and more. Updated throughout, this new edition devotes increased attention to morphology as the key to decoding, spelling, and building meaning for big words; includes a new set of lessons, Compound Combos, designed to help teachers introduce morphology to students; introduces a list of 50 key words, the Nifty Thrifty Fifty, which contain a common example for all the common prefixes, suffixes, and spelling changes; includes a new chapter presenting a series of lessons on how to gradually teach these 50 words and how manipulating the parts of these 50 words can help decode, spell, and unlock the meaning of over 300 other words; and presents a new chapter on phonics and spelling interventions for older struggling readers.

Genres: Education, Teaching, School, Professional Development, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Chandler Wilson]

I don't typically review a "textbook" but this is a must read for any K-3 teacher of literacy, and any 4-8 teacher looking to help their struggling readers. So many great strategies!

[Hannah Schweiter]

This book was a valuable read as a future teacher because it gave the reader different activities to use, talked about assessment, and included a list-of-high-fluency-words. The book also discussed phonics, poetry, and spelling. Overall though, this is not a book I would keep. Many other textbooks say the same things. There is nothing to terribly unique about this book that would make it a must-buy for me. However, this book is informative and a good textbook to learn from while still studying Elementary Education.

[Jennifer]

I thought this was a great resource with many helpful ideas. If you are an upper grade teacher do not be put off by the title. I thought some of the later chapters speak to the upper grades as well.

[Tammy]

This book was actually pretty helpful. It covers phonics in a clear way and gives practical examples for reading and writing, making it a useful resource for teachers—even if not everything translates perfectly to every classroom

[Tabitha]

Read this as a grad student and reread it for a PD. I'd forgotten how many great ideas there are in this book! Definitely great for planning reader's workshop or guided reading word work. A little light on the theories and explanations of the developmental levels, but then again I'm a theory girl.

[Sarah]

Helpful for those instructing beginning readers. The only thing that lowered my rating is its textbook-like read.

[Amy]

good prep for foundations of reading MTEL

[Anna]

Very useful for primary teachers. Insightful for middle and secondary teachers.

[Erica]

EDR 622

[Judy Lefeber]

Good practical information.

[Dan]

A must read for any K-3 educator who wants to help students become better readers and writers.

[Lisa]

Every teacher needs this book on their shelf! It's a great resource to go back to often. I got so many ideas to help my students, both the ones on level and my strugglers.

[Kelsey Curley]

Professors: Please pick a better text than this for your students. The writing is poor and terribly boring. There are far better texts out there to pick from!

[Jedelyn codillo]

good

[Suzi]

To me, Patricia Cunningham is the queen of all things Language arts. I have read many of her books and use them as a resource in my classroom. This is one that I will continue to refer to.