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W O R K SHO P INDEX NEX T L ESSO N ➡ Alphabetics Objective In the upcoming pages, we’ll examine basic ideas about phonological and phonemic awareness. We’ll review the basic terminology of the discipline (morphology, graphemes, orthography, etc.) and touch on some ideas about how to instruct stude...

W O R K SHO P INDEX NEX T L ESSO N ➡ Alphabetics Objective In the upcoming pages, we’ll examine basic ideas about phonological and phonemic awareness. We’ll review the basic terminology of the discipline (morphology, graphemes, orthography, etc.) and touch on some ideas about how to instruct students in phonics. Alphabetic Basics: Phonemic Awareness At the most basic level of alphabetic basics is the Alphabetic Principle—the idea that sounds can be represented by symbols. We’ll explore this root concept here, as well as how it applies to teaching young students to read with fluency and comprehension. Words About Words As a discipline, phonology may have more than its fair share of jargon. Let’s review some of the key words. Phonological Terms Term Definition Example Recognition of the distinct segments of Phonological spoken sound: words, syllables, and Let’s take the word kitty. Students should be able to recognize that the word is composed of four distinct sounds, or phonemes: /k/ /i/ /t/ and /e/ phonemes Phonemic Recognition of Students should be able to recognize and recombine phonemes to make Awareness phonemes, ability to new words. For example, a student exhibits phonemic awareness by segment words into constituent recognizing that the /k/ in kitty can also be used to begin the word call or phonemes, ability to can’t blend phonemes and substitute phonemes to make new words Phoneme Syllable Voiced (and unvoiced) consonants Smallest unit of sound /s/, /ch/, /f/, /e/, /sh/ A word or distinct cant segment of a word can•ti•le•ver that is naturally chalk pronounced in a chalk•i•er single, uninterrupted e•ryth•ro•my•cin vocalization grid•dle Voiced consonants make your vocal cords Voiced: b, d, g vibrate; unvoiced do Unvoiced: p, t, k not biology {bio-}=”life” {-logy}=”science” Smallest unit having Morpheme meaning: base words, prefixes, and su xes biologist {-ist}=”one who practices” chokers {choke}=”obstruct the trachea” {-er}=”one who [chokes]” {-s}=”more than one In the word rock, the first letter, the r, makes the /r/ sound. The o sounds like ahh, and the ck sounds like /k/. You’ll see the ck after short vowel Phonics Study of relationships sounds, like in rock, sick, tack, luck, neck, and chick, but not after long between sounds and vowel sounds, like in lake, nuke, poke, hike, and cheek. Note too that in their written form words that end with a “vowel + consonant + e” combination (VCE), the vowel is long, which means that it sounds like its name: ay, ee, eye, oh, you. You’ll be able to link back to this table down the line, but for now let’s look more closely at some of the key terms. Phonemes If we smile and press the tongue to the back of the roof of the mouth and force a burst of air over the stubborn tongue, we’d have the phoneme /ch/. (The slashes tell you that we’re referring to a single phoneme.) You can’t break /ch/ down any further if you still want the sound /ch/, as in the word choke. Phonemes, then, are the smallest elements of spoken language. The fact that /ch/ contains two letters is a little frustrating for most of us, but it just happens to be a limitation of the English alphabet that we don’t have a single, unified symbol—a letter, or grapheme—to represent the single, unified phoneme we hear at the beginning of the word choke. So “ch” is also a grapheme, even though it’s two letters. And since these two letters form a single phoneme, we call it a digraph. The digraph that represents the “ch” sound is /ch/. Here’s how this information may be presented in a test question: Question Which of the following represents the smallest element of spoken language? A. Grapheme B. Morpheme C. Digraph D. Phoneme R EVEAL ANSW ER Every little sound of every word ever spoken in any language is a phoneme, though each language makes use of a di erent number of phonemes in order to say what they need to say. For instance, native Spanish speakers have no problem trilling their “r”s, as the trilled “r” is an important Spanish-language phoneme. Many English speakers, however, find it di cult to produce a trilled “r,” as evidenced by our one-time fascination with repeating a declaration that suchand-such national brand of potato chips has “rrrridges.” While it may seem clear that graphemes match up perfectly with their respective phonemes, English is a weird language. Consider this group of graphemes: ghoti Of course, this is an extreme example, and goes against all our spelling conventions, but this group of graphemes could represent the animal in this picture: Here’s how: gh represents the phoneme /f/, as in the word enough o represents the phoneme /i/, as in the word women ti represents the phoneme /sh/, as in the word nation Why spend so much time and effort on phonemes when most people haven’t even heard of them? Keep in mind that we’re talking about “phonemic awareness.” The “awareness” part is key because our short-term goal is to make students conscious of the fact that language is made up of a finite number of phonemes. They can recognize these phonemes, distinguish one from the next, break them apart, and make new words by switching one or more phonemes for others. Once kids have mastered the complexities of onset and rime, syllabication, and phoneme segmentation, they’re ready to match those familiar sounds to the letters that represent them; and, of course, that will determine whether they’ll be successful readers and, consequently, successful students. Review The Alphabetic Principle is the idea that letters can represent sounds. Phonemes are the smallest units of speech sounds. Graphemes are the symbols that represent phonemes (in English, they are letters). Digraphs are graphemes made up of more than one letter, such as “ch”. Segmenting means breaking down words into their component phonemes. Click back to the Phonological Terms to review key terms. At this point, you should know about the alphabetic principle and how graphemes and phonemes come together to produce the language that we share. You should also have a basic grasp of the specialized terminology of the discipline and be able to answer questions about phonemic awareness. Building on Phonemes Let’s move from sound to meaning. A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that creates meaning. We could combine /ch/ and /o/ and /k/, in that order, to form the word choke. Because we need all of that word to convey any aspect of its intended meaning, the word {choke} is a morpheme. In the word choker, the {-er} at the end is also a morpheme. Why? Because {-er} conveys meaning all by itself: It tells the listener that we’re referring to one who does the first part of the word; that is, one who chokes. Adding yet another morpheme, the plural {-s}, now tells us that there are at least two who choke. Like the slashes used to indicate phonemes, brackets are used to indicate morphemes. Question 1 Which of the following is a morpheme? A. {sca-} B. {a-} C. {tr-} D. {-nk} R EVEAL ANSW ER Question 2 Which of the following words begins with an unvoiced consonant? A. Baggage B. Garage C. Kismet D. Dunce R EVEAL ANSW ER Let’s try another one. Examine these words: harpist, escapist, cellist, linguist In each case, the –ist ending means that this person does something, such as plays the harp, escapes, plays the cello, or works with languages. Question 3 The –ist ending is a A. grapheme. B. morpheme. C. phoneme. D. lexeme. R EVEAL ANSW ER Sometimes it’s helpful to analyze several di erent components of one word. Let’s look at the word harpist. We’ve labeled some important parts of this word. Review Morphemes are the smallest units of language that create individual meaning. Onset and rime are parts of syllables; the onset is the first consonant, and rime is made up of the vowels and consonants that follow the onset. Teaching Phonics Making students aware of phonemes and how they work together to create morphemes is important, but it’s only a means of teaching them to be strong readers and e ective writers. Learning phonemes and how they work is like getting familiar with the parts of the engine that make the car run. Now, let’s look at how to get students behind the wheel. Styles of Phonics Instruction In practice, most teachers probably use a hybrid of di erent phonics instruction styles. However, the one backed by most researchers is synthetic phonics. In some ways, we’ve been talking about this style of instruction already in this course. Synthetic phonics instruction begins by teaching aspiring readers the basics of grapheme-phoneme relationships. Students then learn to blend these patterns into words. Some key words attached to this method are systematic and explicit—you’ll hear these a lot when studying phonics instruction. Successful modes of instruction are deliberate and measured—systematic. They are also clear and to the point—explicit. In the classroom, a teacher may determine a group of letters to teach the students, for example, “b,” “a,” “t,” and “c.” This instruction may take di erent forms, but notice that one component is already in place: explicitness. Nothing is left to chance here—the teacher has set a definite course of action. Teaching these letters may take a variety of forms: songs, oral games, chants, call-and-response activities, and so on. Once the students have learned these sounds–/b/, /a/, /t/, and /k/–the teacher will systematically explore simple words that employ these phonemes. Cat and bat are obvious choices, and the students will readily blend these phonemes to produce those morphemes. Another hallmark of synthetic phonics instruction is practice. The students will regularly be asked to practice the phonemes and graphemes that they are learning. The teacher will systematically employ writing exercises, customized reading texts, and other methods to ensure that the students get enough rehearsal time with their new skills. Techniques You should also be familiar with various techniques used by the teacher and the students in phonics instruction, including blending and segmenting. Blending Once students know a group of phonemes, they can combine these to form words. This is called blending. Remember that teachers will be explicit and systematic in presenting groups of phonemes, so they will retain a certain measure of control over the blending technique. Segmenting Students (or teachers) practicing segmenting will break a word down into the phonemes that comprise it. For example, segmenting the word “tap” would entail drawing out the phonemes /t/, /a/, and /p/. Teachers and students can demonstrate how to segment the word “tap” by moving each letter away from the others while saying the sound that corresponds to it. Tying the phonemes to the graphemes via one-to-one correspondence boosts the phonemic awareness skill of segmenting up to a phonics application. Decoding More closely associated with reading, decoding means using phonemic knowledge and prior knowledge of spelling conventions to read a word. Experienced readers decode at a rapid rate, but early readers use blending to slowly decode words, usually one at a time. While synthetic phonics is the most preferred method, you should also be aware of the other techniques with which it’s combined. Some of these are used as stand-alone methods as well. Analogy Phonics Since it’s such an intuitive approach, you’ve probably been using analogy phonics all along. In this approach, you discuss a word that is already familiar to your students, thereby activating prior knowledge. Then you simply have them make a textual connection between a new word that is very closely related to a familiar word. For example, you might want to introduce the word “prank.” Fortunately, you’ve already addressed the concept of “bank” during your discussion of communities, and you had the presence of mind to tape the word “bank,” neatly printed in large letters, on the Word Wall. You simply point to the word, asking a student to read it. She correctly reads, “bank.” You ask another student to state the last three letters of the word, and he correctly says, “a, n, k.” You then ask that same student to state the last three letters of the new word. Once he does, you remind the students that many words that end with the same letters also happen to rhyme. Next, you point out that both words end in “ank.” You then ask the question: “If we drop the /b/ and add /p/ and /r/ to the beginning of the word, what does it sound like?” This should elicit the word “prank.” Analytic Phonics Another approach to phonics that capitalizes on prior knowledge is called analytic phonics. This is similar to the analogy approach, but with a small di erence. In analytic phonics, you’d do everything as it was done in the analogy approach described above except for the way you introduced the “p” and the “r” at the end of the lesson. With analytic phonics, you’d refer to a word you’d previously taught that contains the “pr” blend, such as “pretty.” You’d ask the students to say the word that starts like “pretty” and ends like “bank” in order to elicit the word “prank.” Notice that you’re not discussing individual phonemes outside the context of a real word, as in analogy phonics. Embedded Phonics In some circles, the least popular approach to phonics instruction is embedded phonics. The drawback many see with this approach is that it is more or less incidental; that is, it is not systematic and explicit. However, if you happen to encounter a word such as “prank” in your reading of a learner-appropriate text, you’re free to unleash the power of the analogy or analytic approach in order to address this word. The only di erence is that you’re addressing a word type as it happens, rather than as an explicit strategy in anticipation of encountering such a word. Spelling Phonics An approach that is more successful with truly phonemic languages (such as Spanish) is phonics through spelling. Despite the occasional frustration with words like one, scents, gnome, and knock; and, of course, the less frequent bough, rough, trough, and through, this is still a fun and useful way to get from spoken English to written words. After you have the students break words up into phonemes, they get to pick out letters to match those individual phonemes. Then they put them all together and read the blended concoction. In this approach, students are actively engaged in determining which letters to choose in order to represent the sounds in their words. This, of course, corresponds to mandated and useful learning objectives. Try some questions about di erent types of phonics instruction: Question Which of the following phonological awareness skills is integral to analogy phonics? A. Knowing that text runs from the top of the page to the bottom B. Recognizing that spoken sentences are composed of individual words C. Knowing how to segment sentences into words D. Recognizing when words begin or end with the same sound R EVEAL ANSW ER Question What is the primary di erence between analogy phonics and analytic phonics? A. Analogy phonics incorporates words from previous lessons. B. Analytic phonics utilizes students’ prior knowledge. C. Analogy phonics uses full words instead of phonemes out of context. D. Analytic phonics uses full words instead of phonemes out of context. R EVEAL ANSW ER Question Which of the following explicit phonics instructional methods begins with a spoken word and ends with a written word? A. Embedded phonics B. Analytic phonics C. Synthetic phonics D. Phonics through spelling R EVEAL ANSW ER It’s important to note that phonics does not equal reading, just as dribbling and passing a basketball does not equal playing basketball. Good phonics instruction gives students the ability to establish a solid connection to the Alphabetic Principle and starts them on their way to decoding. Regional speech di erences, di erent dialects, speech impediments, and other issues result in di erent needs for di erent students. As a teacher, you will have the freedom to emphasize or combine teaching strategies in order to meet the needs of every individual learner in your class. Systematic instruction should include significant amounts of time for students to practice segmenting and blending phonemes, matching graphemes with phonemes, and other crucial skills. Explicit instruction should include purposeful lessons in which the teacher begins with a specific objective, models how to perform the objective, and allows students to attempt the objective themselves. Blending means combining previously learned phonemes to form words (remember that segmenting is breaking words up into phonemes). Decoding is the use of spelling patterns and phonemic awareness to recognize a word. Phonics instruction should be explicit; the teacher takes a deliberate course of action in introducing phonemegrapheme relationships. Instruction should also be systematic—the teacher organizes the material in a way that leads students from phonemes to groups of phonemes to words. Synthetic phonics starts at the phoneme level and builds toward the word level. Analytic phonics starts at the whole word level and then analyzes their component phonemes. W O R K SHO P INDEX NEX T L ESSO N ➡ Back to Top ⬅ PR EVIO US L ESSO N W O R K SHO P INDEX NEX T L ESSO N ➡ Phonics Instruction, Part I Objective In this section, we’ll continue to examine how students become readers, specifically how letter knowledge, mastering conventional spelling patterns, and other skills move them closer to comprehension and fluency. We’ll also review some more phonics terms that you’ll need to know. Previously Covered Students who have gotten the hang of phonemic awareness and basic phonics concepts are more likely to become successful readers than students who haven’t. Specifically, we spent some time familiarizing ourselves with how word study relies heavily on solid letter knowledge and the distinctions among implicit and explicit phonics, analogy phonics, analytic phonics, synthetic phonics, embedded phonics, and phonics through spelling. Back to Basics: Letter Knowledge For students to become good decoders (and, later, fluent readers), it’s imperative that they have solid letter knowledge. Knowing which phoneme corresponds with the grapheme t, for example, should be automatic. Conversely, when presented with a phoneme, such as /f/, students will be able to match it to the letter f. With more advanced letter knowledge, that student would also be able to match the /f/ phoneme with the letters gh, as in the word enough. Fostering Letter Knowledge While kindergarten is the likely time that teachers begin working on letter knowledge, the methods can take a variety of forms. In addition to many commercial products, including software, oversized inflatable letters, and letter cards, teachers also use writing as one way of helping students gain knowledge of letters. Early writing may take the form of scribbling or drawing images that resemble letters, but with support students at this age should begin to write or draw letters. Writing words as they sound can help children get a tighter grasp on the phoneme-grapheme connection. The physical act of writing may be harder for some students than others due to di erences in motor-skill development rates, but instructors can use letter blocks or letter cards like the ones below to facilitate easier word construction. Letter Cards Assessing Letter Knowledge Of course, assessing the student’s mastery of any skill is important. There are many rubrics for letter-knowledge assessment available, and instructors also use more informal approaches. For example, the teacher may hold up a series of letter flashcards and ask the student to identify the letter on the card. The teacher may also ask the student to produce the phoneme that matches the letter on the card. Performing this test and recording the results several times during the school year will give the teacher a sense of how each student is progressing. Spelling Patterns Working on conventional spelling patterns is also important to decoding and eventual fluency. Again, there are a vast number of methods out there, but let’s look at a simple one that uses the student’s prior knowledge. Using three words that the student already knows, create a simple chart like this one: Get Cat Cake After creating the chart, you may introduce the idea that spelling uses patterns—this will depend on the individual student. Have the student fill in the chart with other words that have the same rime, like this: Get Cat Cake set fat bake bet hat make Depending on the student’s penmanship ability, you could make word cards that they place in the chart. For example: Facility It’s important to have some fluency when analyzing words. For example, you should be able to name the basic parts of a word—a x, syllable, onset, rime—quickly and e ortlessly. Question What is the rime of the second syllable of the word below? A. -ase B. BC. -ment D. -ent R EVEAL ANSW ER Terms and Techniques Phonics is a powerful way to reach the students who need your best e orts in direct instruction, while ensuring that the “naturals” really are “getting it.” Let’s examine some of the terms and techniques that you’ll need to know for e ective phonics instruction. Consonant Blends When a lady with a chocolate bar turns a corner and collides with a gentleman who is holding an open container of peanut butter, the resultant confection is a blend. You will still see and taste the chocolate, and you will still see and taste the peanut butter. Blending them together creates a synergistic whole that is somehow greater than the sum of the parts. Nonetheless, you have not taken away any of the properties that distinguish the chocolate from the peanut butter. So it is with consonant blends. Two or three letters come together to form a phonemic blend, but the sounds that distinguish one letter from the other remain. In the word stray, for instance, one can discern the individual phonemes /s/, /t/, and /r/, yet they are blended together like chocolate, peanut butter, and graham crackers. An easy mnemonic goes like this: “Blend is a word that contains two blends.” flagrant Take a look at the word above. Consonant blends (also called consonant clusters) may appear at the beginning of a word, within the middle of a word, and/or at the end of a word. For instance, in the word agrant, there are three consonant blends: fl, in which one can clearly hear both constituents, /f/ and /l/; gr, in which the /g/ and /r/ sounds are still distinguishable; and nt, which allows the voices of both the /n/ and the /t/ to be heard. Of course, not all unions of consonants permit the members to maintain their individuality. There are some couples who surrender their individuality and produce a totally di erent sound altogether. These, you may remember, are called digraphs. Click here to review them. Please keep in mind that any discussion of representing phonemes is secondary to the primary objective of drawing the desired sounds out of letters and letter combinations that appear in words. Recognizing the various forms that appear in written English will help students draw sounds from written words, blend those sounds, and arrive at the intended word. This process is called decoding. Decoding One of the big two competencies for successful reading is decoding. The other is comprehension; let’s see how the two are related. Decoding means that the student is able to divine a word from a group of letters. This can be done through the processes that are systematically and explicitly taught to students by their teachers. Those processes, in turn, rely upon the discrete lessons and strategies with which the reader is equipped, specifically for the purpose of being able to decode words. Let’s try some decoding ourselves. Check out the following word: exophthalmic Whether you can comprehend this word is beside the point, at least during the decoding process. You undoubtedly recognize it as a word and can break it down into its component parts (prefix, root, su x). Once a word is pulled from the decoding process, the reader’s ability to comprehend spoken language will allow him or her to extract meaning from the word that he or she just decoded. That is, decoding turns a written word into a spoken word; and if the student is not familiar with the word that was just decoded, then the comprehension part of the equation has failed to produce a mental image for the reader. Of course, encountering a certain percentage of indecipherable words will frustrate the reader. Such texts are considered beyond the reader’s independent reading level. A picture book would probably be accessible to younger readers—or older readers who have not yet mastered the decoding process, but specialized texts (like astrophysics) would probably not be accessible to these readers. The adjective exophthalmic, by the way, means “characterized by the prominence of the eyeballs.” Etymology Etymology is the study of word origins, as well as the di erent meanings the word has had throughout its history. Etymology is taught explicitly, as the meanings of roots are not always intuitive. Explicit word study is the vehicle for teaching etymology, and word study is virtually impossible without the prerequisite mastery of sound-letter relationships. The student who has gained a firm grip on a family of roots is now equipped to both decode and comprehend derivatives of those roots. The study of the prefixes and su xes that one might tack onto these roots is called morphology, which is also addressed later in this lesson. Morphology Morphology is a close cousin of etymology. You’re already familiar with the root of the word, {morph}, which refers to change or derivation. The morpheme {-ology} refers specifically to the science or study of something, in this case, changes or derivatives of words with reference to the relationships among roots, prefixes, and su xes. When discussing morphology, it is important to note that a morpheme can be as little as a single letter, provided that the letter contains or imparts meaning. For instance, in the word morphemes, the {morph} has its own meaning, as noted above. The {-eme} also contains its own meaning, “a discrete unit of linguistic structure,” a la morpheme, phoneme, grapheme, etc. The morpheme {-s}, as attached to the end of a word, is the Great Pluralizer. This single letter imparts meaning, namely “more than one.” Let’s take another look at exophthalmic, this time adding some annotations: Our facility with the English language steers us toward morphology automatically. By teaching students how words are structured, we can give them powerful tools for comprehension. Orthography Let’s use two disciplines that we’ve discussed previously (morphology and analytic phonics) to investigate the meaning of orthography. The Morphology of Orthography The morpheme {ortho} means “correct,” and the morpheme {-graphy} means something to the e ect of “to write.” Put them together, and you get the meaning “to write correctly.” However, orthography isn’t about the physical act of writing; it’s about spelling and the conventions that govern how we spell. Analytic Phonics Approach The analytic phonics approach is more fun, as is often the case. As an adult, you’re probably familiar with other words that incorporate {ortho}. I’m thinking orthodontist, orthotics, and orthopedics. I already know how to pronounce {ortho}, but thinking of analogous terms helps me crack the meaning. All of the terms orthodontist, orthotics, and orthopedics, refer to straightening things out, be they teeth, feet, or joints. The {graphy} part is even more common, appearing in ethnography (writing about race), graphite (pencil lead), biography (writing about one’s life), grapheme (written representation of a phoneme), and autograph (signing one’s own name). We again get “straight writing,” or “correct spelling.” By explicitly teaching the correct spelling of words—particularly irregular words—you’re building the students’ awareness of spelling conventions. When used in combination with morphology and etymology, the students’ opportunities for “getting it” are exponentially increased. Sight Words The inspiration behind many of Dr. Seuss’s books was the objective of writing books that used a limited vocabulary of short, decodable words in anticipatable, rhyming stories. Even in novels for adults, a surprisingly significant percentage of the words are among the one hundred or so most common words in the English language. Directly teaching students to recognize many of these frequently used words brings a two-fold benefit: it quickens the pace of reading and eases the sounding out process in the case of words that are often di cult for children to sound out. Automaticity with regard to the most common words helps move a reader along at a quicker pace. Getting from the initial capital at the beginning of a sentence to the period at the end can be a slow struggle. If the student is not spending valuable time trying to figure out words like if, the, is, not, to, and, and out, then he or she will finish the sentence with some idea of what the key words in the sentence were trying to communicate. The secondary reason for drilling (that’s not always a bad word) students on sight words is that many such words do not lend themselves to being sounded out. For example, of can reasonably be decoded as “o .” The word to all too easily could become “toe.” Some kids would naturally assume that one is “own” and that sure is “sewer.” The quick-and-dirty analogy goes like this: If I were not able to type with automaticity, I would use too much of my brain power simply trying to find the keys on the keyboard. Equipped with some keyboarding skill, however, I can concentrate on the subject matter and won’t be tempted to shortchange you, dear reader, by being overly parsimonious with the analogies. Appropriate drilling, then, is an investment in skills that will permit students to perform simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, decoding, and sight reading without obscuring higher-order objectives. Spelling conventions It is tempting to declare that spelling conventions belong in the writing domain only and should not be addressed until some point after students have gained confidence in their writing ability through phonetic spelling. In this, as in many cases, the intermingling of writing and reading points to the utility of teaching spelling conventions in order to enhance the students’ decoding ability. Of course, as you encourage your students to write, your focus will not be holding them accountable for spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Initially, you’ll want to prevent writer apprehension by emphasizing the importance of getting ideas and stories onto the paper. Later in the year, as the students mature into imaginative writers, you can begin to introduce editing conventions one at a time. This is where your e orts with sight words and word walls will pay o . It’s where phonics through spelling becomes more interesting for both you and the students. The conventions that appear frequently in monosyllabic words and within polysyllabic words lend themselves to explicit instruction on conventions. For instance, in monosyllabic words that have a short vowel sound, the spelling will be a vowel-consonant combination (or VCC), perhaps with another consonant tacked onto the end, as in tack, a VCC word. When those same VC words are turned into adjectives—that is, when they end in what sounds like a long e—the final consonant is doubled before adding the final {-y}, as in sap’s transformation into sappy. Since tack and other VCC words already have that extra consonant at the end, it is only necessary to add the final {-y}. Word Study Word study often incorporates a strategy known as a word sort. Word sorts provide students with an opportunity for guided practice and independent practice, but they require that students have mastered the ability to identify letters as vowels or as consonants, to sort like items, and to recognize patterns that appear in like words. Like words, in this case, may refer to words that end in VC (vowel-consonant) or VCC. The discussion of spelling conventions in this module provides an example of generalized conventions that are conducive to word sorts, and vice versa. Question Which of the following phonics concepts emphasizes roots, prefixes, and su xes? A. Morphology B. Graphology C. Phenomenology D. Orthography R EVEAL ANSW ER Question Which of the following involves drills intended to support automaticity with common words? A. Phonics through spelling B. Sight words C. Etymology D. Synthetic phonics R EVEAL ANSW ER Question Which of the following best describes etymology? A. Conventions of spelling that can be generalized B. Words that are very common in most English texts C. The study of a xes D. The study of word histories R EVEAL ANSW ER Review Decoding is using phonemic awareness to recognize a word. Etymology is the study of a word’s origins and its usage over time. Morphology is the study of word structure. Orthography is the study of spelling patterns and conventions. Automaticity is the ability to quickly and easily decode words (remember that this is a di erent skill than fluency). ⬅ PR EVIO US L ESSO N W O R K SHO P INDEX NEX T L ESSO N ➡ Back to Top ⬅ PR EVIO US L ESSO N W O R K SHO P INDEX NEX T L ESSO N ➡ Phonics Instruction, Part II Objective In this section, we’ll continue to examine how students become readers, specifically how letter knowledge, mastering conventional spelling patterns, and other skills move them closer to comprehension and fluency. We’ll also review some more phonics terms that you’ll need to know. From Phonemes to Graphemes Print surrounds us—on monitors, magazine, buses, televisions—and it can be di cult to realize what it might be like to take the first tentative steps into this world. However, it is crucial to familiarize students with the conventions of our language as it appears in print. Students should know the following: Printed words carry meaning (just like spoken words). Print is always organized; for example, it appears on a page from left to right, top to bottom. Words are made up of letters. Words are separated by spaces. Words are grouped into sentences. Of course, as students’ skills develop, they may develop print awareness, which may include recognition of punctuation and other subtleties. At the outset of their reading careers, however, it’s enough for students to grasp the basics of the printed word. Putting It All to Work They use the letters in a word to figure it out instead of guessing at it from context clues and adjacent graphics. They consider pretty much every letter in a word when they decode. They rely on their knowledge of phoneme-to-letter relationships to decode words. They attack words with strategies that work for them. They have a firm grip on sight words, which are words they’ve encountered enough times to recognize without having to consciously decode them. If you weren’t aware of those basic concepts, you might not be able to recognize and intervene when your students exhibit characteristics of unhappy or struggling readers, including the following: They’re not yet comfortable manipulating phonemes. They struggle with naming the letters of the alphabet. They have mastered only a few phoneme-to-letter relationships. They’re not adept at applying any strategies for decoding words. Their modest repertoire of sight words, in combination with the other limitations, results in frequent frustration and, therefore, fewer attempts to read. Measurement Conducting frequent formal and informal assessments of your students’ reading characteristics will inform your decisions about what to emphasize, as well as with whom. If you fail to recognize the needs of your frustrated readers, there is a strong possibility that their future reading habits will continue to diverge—in a bad way—from the healthy reading attitudes and habits of your happy readers. Assessing a student’s facility with sight words is one common way to check on reading progress. There are several prepared lists of sight words, the Dolch list being one of the more popular. University of Illinois researcher E. W. Dolch assembled this list, which is divided by grade level. Here’s a sample: Dolch List: First Grade Dolch List: Second Grade after does lot gave once those take their walk upon These lists can be used to guide assessments of students’ sight-word abilities and can be used throughout the school year. Common Errors At the outset of their careers as readers, young students may make a variety of mistakes, such as confusing the letters b and d or s and z. Other problems include skipping words, confusing “the” and “a,” using pictures to decode a word, and guessing the word based on its first letter. Early on, a young reader’s fluency level will be such that they read word-by-word, and they will usually recognize mistakes in their own reading. As an instructor, it can be useful to help them formulate questions about what they’re reading. For example: Student: “When the sun set, the house grew bark.” Teacher: “Does that make sense? ‘The house grew bark?’” Student: “No—houses don’t grow bark.” Teacher: “Let’s look at that sentence again.” Rereading is another e ective strategy in smoothing out students’ decoding process, as well as helping them build fluency. Younger students will usually want to read and reread, and teachers can use this tendency to correct mistakes, build fluency, and increase comprehension skills. Question Which of the following is characteristic of successful readers? A. They have a modest repertoire of sight words. B. They consider pretty much every letter in a word when they decode. C. They have mastered only a few phoneme-to-letter relationships. D. They’re not yet comfortable manipulating phonemes. R EVEAL ANSW ER What can I do to turn my students into happy readers? Here’s a scenario: You’ve assessed your students’ reading habits and have identified one or more kids who aren’t yet comfortable manipulating phonemes. It might be tempting to continue at the pace of your middle group, but doing so will widen and perpetuate the nascent divergence we just talked about. Instead, you’ll need to conduct small-group lessons with your struggling readers in which you deal with phonemic awareness. How? First, recognize that—even though this is phonemic awareness—this is something you can teach and that your students can learn. Rhyme and alliteration are, developmentally speaking, usually the most accessible to young children. For pre- kindergarten and kindergarten students, a number of daily activities that incorporate songs, poems, fingerplays, nursery rhymes, tongue twisters, and stories in anticipatable rhyme provide opportunities for explicit instruction in rhyme and alliteration. During such activities, draw students’ attention to words that have the same ending sounds (rhymes) and words with the same beginning sounds (alliteration). Incorporate those skills throughout the day by asking students what words rhyme with new words you’ve learned, or with new students’ names, etc. Similarly, ask students to identify something in the cafeteria that begins with the /t/ sound, such as table, turkey, trays, etc. Question Which of the following statements is true about phonemic awareness? A. Since it only applies to preschool children, there’s no need to assess phonemic awareness in first-grade students. B. Phonemic awareness is a natural function of a kid’s development; it is not the type of thing that can be taught. C. Most successful first-grade readers can’t count the syllables in a word. D. Phonemic awareness can be taught deliberately and learned. R EVEAL ANSW ER Mastering rhyme and alliteration will make the phonological concepts of onset and rime more accessible to your students, but experts recommend swinging past sentence segmentation and syllable segmentation on the way to onset and rime. Such segmentation lessons lend themselves to kinesthetic learning, as you may ask your students to clap, slap, snap, or hop for each word in a sentence or for each syllable in a name or word. The activities listed above—poems, fingerplays, etc.—are not done simply to take up time or because kids like them, although the former means you can squeeze lessons into transitions during the school day, and the latter is just plain fortuitous. When you’ve determined from some form of assessment the type of lesson your students need, you then choose the type of phonemic awareness activity that will facilitate your teaching objective. Make sure that your instructional methods address specific goals—they need to be explicit and systematic. Click here for an example. All of these phonological awareness competencies anticipate the most granular of the segmenting activities, the segmentation of words into discrete phonemes. It is this level of phonological awareness that people call phonemic awareness. Such progression from the most accessible to the most discrete phonological awareness competency is cumulative and natural. Let’s take a look at one small-group activity. As you work through small-group lessons, keep a tally sheet that lists the specific letters you’re addressing, as well as the students in the group. This will enable you to record areas of continued need for each student, allowing you to group your students more e ectively for subsequent instruction. Doing this will actually free you from aimless lessons and will be of greater benefit to the individual learners in your classroom. Large letter cards for use by teacher (one of each letter) Use these cards to activate the students’ prior knowledge of the letters and their associated sounds. After reviewing the letter names and sounds, model the objective for this lesson by stating the name of the letter d, identifying the photo of the dog on the photo array as representing a word that starts with d, and placing one of the small d letter cards on the photo of the dog. Photo array for use by students (one for each student). There are ve pictures of things that start with d, ve of r, and ve of t. Small letter cards for use by students ( ve of each letter for each student) After you model how to use the tiles, let the group of students support each other in guided practice: Hold up the large letter card for any of the three letters and ask the group the letter’s name and sound. Then ask the group to identify a photo on the array of something that begins with that letter. Then ask the group to place one of the appropriate small letter cards on that photo. Once it is clear that the group can perform the objective, clear the array, divvy up the cards again, and ask students to perform the objective independently, with their own sets of small letter cards and their own photo array, as you flash each of the large letter cards five times, in scattered fashion. Play the game, evaluate, and reteach, until mastery. Now that the students can consistently match letters with their names and with photos of things that begin with the letters’ sounds, it’s time to evaluate students’ mastery of the objective of associating the written letter with its name and its sound. The evaluation is always done on an individual basis. Choose two of the three letters from the activity and shu e the ten small letter cards. Draw cards one at a time. The student is to identify the name of the letter and its sound. Use the tally sheet below to record student performance. Each student is shown each of the ten small letter cards in the shuf ed deck one at a time. He or she is to state the name of the letter, as well as the sound of the letter. Mark the corresponding space for each correct response. If the student does not respond correctly, leave the corresponding space blank. The goal is at least four correct responses out of ve chances. Ricky needs some more practice with the letter “r”. For teaching letter-sound associations, there are many visual aids and manipulatives you can either make with the students or buy commercially. If you have several di erent types of programs, letter manipulatives, or reading instruction methods available, you can judge the relative e ectiveness of each one to the others, based on the results of your ongoing progress monitoring. Question Continuous progress monitoring helps the teacher do which of the following? A. Verify mastery, identify students with continued need, isolate skills that require further practice, assess e ectiveness of instructional methods. B. Validate failing grades, identify disruptive students, commercialize programs, address letters. C. Value holistic grading, identify with other teachers, isolate trouble students, access permanent records. D. Vilify failing students, identify constant disruptions, isolate skills that require further practice, assess e ectiveness of instructional methods. R EVEAL ANSW ER Question Which of the following is another way to say “explicit and systematic”? A. Formal and fortuitous B. Rhyme and alliteration C. Specific and deliberate D. Kinesthetic and anticipatable R EVEAL ANSW ER It is likely that students will gain some understanding of the mathematical concept of one-to-one correspondence around the same time that they are being taught phonological awareness lessons. If you teach first grade and have noticed that a student isn’t catching on to the segmenting activities, it may be that he or she hasn’t grasped one-to-one correspondence yet. Such students will not be able to transfer manipulatives from one container to another while counting each manipulative aloud. That is, they do not recognize that each number corresponds to one and only one of the manipulatives. It is apparent that lacking that ability would have a negative e ect on students’ segmenting e orts in phonological awareness activities. Question Which of the following phonological awareness skills represents “phonemic awareness?” A. Alliteration and rhyme B. Sentence segmentation C. Segmentation of words into syllables D. Segmentation of words into sounds R EVEAL ANSW ER How Can I Teach a Struggling Reader to Make Letter-sound Associations? First, monitor each student’s phonological awareness to verify whether he or she is on track with the objectives you have set. In the course of your monitoring, you will be able to identify the specific students who need further practice with the assessed objectives. You can also use the results of your monitoring to determine the type of further practice that is needed; you’ve asked about letter-sound associations, so we’ll say that is a need for several of your students. Ideally, you will also have determined from your monitoring which specific letter-sound associations these students require more work with. When providing additional instruction, work with small groups of students showing similar needs. Whole-group instruction is least e ective for reviewing objectives needed by only a few students, as those who have already mastered the objective may become bored and disruptive or may be overeager to demonstrate what they know, giving the target students little incentive to apply themselves to the lesson. One-on-one instruction sometimes puts students ill at ease; but small-group instruction allows you to focus on specific objectives with a small number of students, while providing a sense of insulation that encourages each student to participate. Vocabulary Development Like phonics instruction, vocabulary instruction works best when it is systematic and explicit. And, while “explicit vocabulary instruction” can conjure up images of word lists, dictionaries, and weekly quizzes, it doesn’t have to be boring or rote. The English language has seemingly endless twists and turns, and these can be used to engage students more directly than memorizing definitions from the dictionary. For example, you could dig a little deeper than the dictionary in examining the word “gave” in the following sentences: Marcus gave James $199. John gave his wife a kiss. She gave her patient an injection. The troupe gave an excellent performance. Review Phonics is part of a larger arc of instruction that begins with simple phonological awareness concepts. Mastery of phonemic awareness—that is, segmenting and manipulating individual sounds within words—is a necessary prerequisite for reading mastery, but letter-sound associations (phonics) can be introduced before such mastery is attained. Awaken kids to necessary objectives through explicit, systematic lessons that incorporate phonics in word study, spelling, and reading activities. Use performance data from progress monitoring to identify students who need more practice, isolate the specific objectives they need to work with, and determine the most e ective reading instructional methods to use. ⬅ PR EVIO US L ESSO N W O R K SHO P INDEX NEX T L ESSO N ➡ Back to Top ⬅ PR EVIO US L ESSO N W O R K SHO P INDEX F UR T HER R EADING ➡ Fluency Objective In the pages to follow, we’ll begin our discussion of fluency as it pertains to learning to read. The discussion will help define fluency in this context and touch on some of its hallmarks: speed, comprehension, and expression. Previously Covered In the previous sections, we looked at print awareness and how students begin to invest the printed word with meaning. We also discussed the initial stages of reading, ideas about assessing a student’s progress, and some methods to build vocabulary. What Does Fluency Mean? When considering the meaning of fluency, it helps to think about the term second nature. Whereas first nature would apply to innate knowledge—that is, horse sense—second nature would apply to acquired knowledge that has been practiced to the extent that it, too, appears innate, or automatic. Those who spend a great deal of time typing may be able to type accurately without really paying any attention to what they’re doing. It is then possible to devote all of one’s conscious brain power to the task of composing the ideas to be typed. Of course, if a typist has not taken the time to learn keyboarding, then no amount of hunting and pecking will result in typing that is both accurate and automatic. Therefore, the person who hunts and pecks will probably never achieve fluency in typing. The most common usage of fluency—in reference to the ease with which one speaks a language—is also conceptually similar to reading fluency. If one does not consciously have to translate ideas from her native language to the language she is currently using, then she is able to think in her non-native tongue. For her, ideas exist in both of the languages she knows. The words appear in her head both accurately and automatically. She is, therefore, fluent in that language. It is instructive to note that bilingual speakers who use only one language for an extended period of time may complain of being out of practice in the other language. For speaking other languages, typing, riding a bicycle, playing a harmonica, or any other acquired ability, a prolonged lapse in practice will adversely a ect one’s ability to accurately and automatically perform the hitherto fluent skill. So it is with reading. Reading fluency is the sum of reading rate and accuracy. Accuracy, in turn, is directly related to prosody. Prosody—the appropriate inflection or expression with which a student reads—is directly related to comprehension, which is synonymous with understanding. If we were to express all these relationships in a series of formulas, it might look like this: R + A = F, where R=rate, A=accuracy, and F=fluency; and F ∝ C—that is, F (fluency) is directly proportional to C (comprehension); and C ∝ P—that is, C (comprehension) is directly proportional to P (prosody) Simply put, if a student does not understand the words she is reading, she will not be able to read with expression. If a student is not able to read age-appropriate texts with expression, then she is not a very fluent reader. Question What is the primary relationship between fluency and comprehension? A. Fluency is speed reading, which decreases the student’s comprehension. B. Fluency is silent reading, which enhances the student’s comprehension. C. Fluency is shared reading, which has no e ect on the student’s comprehension. D. Fluency is prosodic reading, which reflects the student’s comprehension. R EVEAL ANSW ER Please note that there isn’t a magical plateau called fluency. Rather, fluency fluctuates. Our hypothetical reader above is having di culty reading sentences that are leveled for the current month of her current year in school. Let’s say she is in the fourth month of the third grade. Though she isn’t reading on level with much fluency, perhaps she can read texts leveled at the eighth month of the second grade in a lively, conversational manner. Similarly, only a few college graduates can extract any meaning from the translated works of prominent cultural theorists. The rest of us are not very fluent with those types of texts and certainly cannot read them with expression. Reading with expression? We’re Just Now Sounding Out Words. Should I Be Working on Expressive Reading Already? The surest way to determine what your objectives should be is to assess each student individually. It is recommended that you begin formal, individual fluency assessments by the middle of the first grade. That’s typically when students are able to read connected text while stumbling over fewer than two words out of every twenty. The purpose of assessing students on an individual basis is to determine the type of instruction needed by each student. The spectrum of student abilities can be broad, even within a single classroom, and assessment data will help you make instructional decisions. If your students are having di culty associating letters and their sounds, then continued phonics instruction towards letter-sound mastery would be a more appropriate goal at this time. Automaticity with letter-sound associations, common spelling patterns, and sight words will help students to decode individual words. The ability to decode individual words will, in turn, help students achieve fluency. Question Which of the following statements is true? A. It is reasonable to begin formal assessments of reading fluency halfway into the first grade. B. It is necessary to begin formal assessments of reading fluency in order to build automaticity. C. It is typical for students to reach a plateau in reading fluency that spans across di erently leveled texts. D. It is important to emphasize fluency in reading connected text in order to improve a student’s understanding of phonics. R EVEAL ANSW ER The Language of Assessment Leveling students with regard to fluency takes many shapes (by grade level, age, socioeconomic status), and research is always in progress. To give you an example of one rubric, the chart below shows the language used by the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal body that measures a variety of academic subjects. Here are their four levels of fluency: Level 4 Reads primarily in larger, meaningful phrase groups. Although some regressions, repetitions, and deviations from text may be present, these do not appear to detract from the overall structure of the story. Preservation of the author’s syntax is consistent. Some or most of the story is read with expressive interpretation. Level Reads primarily in three- or four-word phrase groups. Some smaller groupings may be present. However, the 3 majority of phrasing seems appropriate and preserves the syntax of the author. Little or no expressive interpretation is present. Level 2 Reads primarily in two-word phrases with some three- or four-word groupings. Some word-by-word reading may be present. Word groupings may seem awkward and unrelated to the larger context of sentence or passage. Level Reads primarily word-by-word. Occasional two-word or three-word phrases may occur, but these are 1 infrequent and/or they do not preserve meaningful syntax. You may also encounter other ways of grouping students according to their fluency. The table below is another typical way of classifying fluency levels: Independent Level 97% to 100% Instructional Level 90% to 96% Frustration Level <90% How Can I Assess Students’ Fluency? Obviously, the student must read aloud from an appropriate, grade-level text in order for the teacher to assess fluency. There are leveled texts with numbered lines and word counts that are provided specifically for assessing fluency. As the student reads for one minute, the teacher follows along on his or her copy of the passage and marks misspoken words, skipped words, self-corrected words, etc., with a slash (/) over such errors. An example of such a leveled text—one that is appropriate for you and me—lies below. Just for fun, read the passage for one minute. Be honest with yourself and write a slash over misread words. Kennedy was aware of Stevenson’s likely advice concerning the Bay of Pigs 12 invasion plan; he was also aware of Stevenson’s political clout. Recognizing 23 the danger these two factors would have posed to the life of the plan, 37 Kennedy chose not to invite this experienced decision maker to the secret 49 meetings. Kennedy neglected to assemble all of those in his administration 60 whose opinions would have been relevant to any major foreign policy decision. 72 For the Bay of Pigs meetings, he practiced a selective form of neglect that 86 excluded mainly those whom he knew would oppose the plan. If Kennedy was 99 able to gain an easy consensus with the policy group, it was because he had 114 chosen amenable advisors. 117 Even those who privately opposed the plan surrendered their opinions in 128 deference to Kennedy. In addition to those already discussed, one such 139 obedient advisor was Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. As the president’s special 150 advisor, Schlesinger had a closer working relationship with Kennedy than most 161 of the other advisors. After the meeting of April 4, Kennedy asked Schlesinger 174 his opinion in private. Schlesinger answered that he was opposed and, having 186 stumbled over his explanation, submitted a memorandum to the president on 197 the following morning. 200 In order to compute your fluency score, determine the total number of words you read correctly or otherwise. The cumulative word counts to the right of the passage can help you determine this. Then count the number of slashes and subtract this number from the total words you read. The di erence represents your fluency score, which is expressed in “words correct per minute,” or WCPM. All the words you read, correctl