This e-mail was received about how long to spend on each section:

Our literacy coach has been told that 1st grade should spend ONLY 30 minutes on the GREEN section of OCR and 45 minutes on the RED section. That is obviously wrong. However, I cannot find my notes from the summer trainings regarding the OCR schedule for 1st grade. I’ve searched the web but cannot find the info. Do you know where this can be obtained?
Thank you,
Ellen
First Grade Teacher, California

My response:

I don’t think your literacy coach is wrong as that’s about how long it took me when I was teaching first grade (though I think I spent less on the red depending on if there were workbook pages associated with it or not). However, I’ve never taught by counting minutes for each activity. I would start by blocking out a time for IWT/Workshop and for writing and then making sure that I got to those two things. If you’re not getting to them then you need to speed up the rest of it.

For example, I’m guessing from your question that you want to spend longer than 30 minutes on the green section. I don’t think you really need to. The green section is whole group directed instruction. The blending, for example, is a review for some and new information for others. You blend quickly with everyone and then you differentiate that instruction during IWT/Workshop later. The decodable provides practice with the day’s target sounds…you read it a couple of times together and then have students partner read it, look for target sounds, list target sounds, as a follow-up IWT activity. My point being you can spend time on phonics as follow-up independent or small group activities but I don’t think you want to prolong your direct instruction of the phonics piece as I think the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Most of your students will grasp the concepts in whole group instruction but the rest need slower paced, smaller group activity before they’re going to master it. -Mathew