Phonics:Whole Group, Small Group or Both?

The past school year, my teammates and I were told by a curriculum writer for our county that we should not be teaching whole group phonics but that phonics should be taught in small group only. We all looked at each other like, what? We do small groups at our literacy time and we have never heard that we were supposed to teach phonics differently that the guide we are using.

This got me to thinking, what do other teachers do? Do you only use whole group or only small group, or a combination of both? I went online to try and figure out how what others are doing, but I am still not sure. It looks to me like most are doing both and there are benefits to both types of group teaching. I read two other blogs from Reading Rockets that I want to share. I am not sure if the author concluded anything or not on the subject.

http://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/shanahan-literacy/do-we-teach-decoding-small-groups-or-whole-class

http://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/shanahan-on-literacy/group-or-not-group-question

This brought me to my next question. What do teachers do after a whole group phonics lesson? Do they place students in small groups to review the phonics or phonemic awareness skills of the recent lesson? Does the whole class do a worksheet or something paper and pencil based as independent learning and assessment? Do they do a whole group activity/game to reinforce concepts? How do other teachers structure this time?

What are your thoughts? How do you teach phonics in your classroom? Do you break into small groups after the phonics lesson or later on after a reading lesson? Please help start the conversation!