Development of phonics teaching guideline for Thai elementary school students: lesson learned from best practice teachers

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to 1) develop the phonics teaching guideline to teach phonics and 2) evaluate the quality of the developed phonics teaching guideline to teach phonics. The questionnaires, observations and interviews were used as main collecting procedures. The research instruments consisted of 1) Phonics teaching questionnaire, 2) fieldnotes and interview questions, and 3) Phonic teaching guideline quality evaluation questionnaire. The participants were 5 best practice phonics teachers who were currently working in a school context at the time which were selected by the research instrument Phonics teaching questionnaire. The data were analysed by statistical percentage, qualitative data analysis and content analysis.

The findings of the study were as follows: 1) The developed phonics teaching guideline composed of (1) learning outcomes and lesson preparation that are put into a sequence of teaching in a structured order, (2) contents which are the relationship between sounds and letters together and should be sequenced from simple to complex, (3) learning activities that are activity-based and allow students to use their phonics knowledge in an effective way, (4) materials that are easy to prepare and use in a classroom, and (5) assessment and evaluation which enable teachers to check on students learning progress during the lesson and at the end of the course. 2) The results of the evaluation of the quality of the phonics teaching guideline by experts are useful, appropriate, and practical to use in a Thai context.