ABSTRACT
The two previous chapters have considered two of the regular literacy teaching activities that took place in Tulip class: phonics and ReadWrite. Looking back at my discussion of these lessons, we can state that these two elements of the day most clearly centred on the direct instruction of reading and writing skills. By direct instruction here I mean planned, structured and teacher-led activities whose explicit purpose it is to help children learn to read and write. Phonics teaching in particular, as I have shown, privileges explicit and teacher-guided instruction in phonemes, graphemes and how they correspond to these two features. ReadWrite sessions too, albeit providing more space for extended and at times child-led reading and writing activities, were characterized by direct instruction in relation to words and expressions, spellings and punctuation rules. Phonics sessions were devoted to what we could call the mechanics or the technical side of reading. They focus on a confined set of skills, notably decoding and encoding.
