Words Their Way (2)

1. How does a Preliterate (Emergent) speller read and write?

 During the preliterate stage, sometimes also known as the ‘emergent’ or the ‘prealphabetic phase,’ the student’s attempts to read and write are more ‘pretend’ than actual efforts. Writing during this stage resembles scribbles and there is no knowledge of letter to text connection. The student also becomes familiar with letters in their name, and sometimes even random letters. At this stage students are not able to read yet but instead they can “read” a story which they have memorized. They also sometimes will make up their own story to go along with the illustrations on the pages.

2. How does a Letter Name-Alphabetic speller read and write?

A student in this stage is considered a full alphabetic reader who mostly reads out loud and for the most part word by word. It is in this stage that students begin to use letter sound matches to identify words and store them in their memories. Because of their limited knowledge of letter sounds in identifying words, students in this stage are in the partial alphabetic phase; they use partial consonant cues and context to read words and they also begin to include vowels in their words.

3. How does a Within Word Pattern speller read and write?

In this stage readers begin to move letters into patterns or larger chunks. This chunking approach is considered to be a part of the Orthographic stage. Ehri and McCormick refer to this stage as the Consolidated Alphabetic Phase, due to the support that frequently occurring pattern units have on students’ reading and writing. After focusing on the onset, students then move onto the rimes. Students begin this stage needing support and multiple techniques in order to successfully read. At the end of this stage, students have learned the ability to independently read.

4. How does a Syllable and Affixes speller read and write?

In this stage the reader can accurately read most text both out loud or silently. They explore different genres of books but may become obsessed with a certain book, genre of books, or writing. Successful reading for them depends on their understanding and familiarity with the topic discussed in the book.

5. How does a Derivational Relations speller read and write?

These students have the liberty of choosing among a variety of reading styles to fit the text and their purpose for reading that specific text. For writing they are also able to write in different styles and the student is able to choose which style according to what information they are trying to convey.

6. What is the existing research evidence on the relationship between spelling and reading. Briefly describe research findings discussed on page 20.

Research findings clearly state that students who receive more spelling instruction do better on reading tasks such as oral reading and reading to themselves. The findings also say that student’s spelling attempts predict how well they will do in reading. We can conclude from all of this that spelling impacts reading on a large scale in a positive way.

Curt Assignment

Curt Assignment

1. Look at the spelling errors that Curt makes. What stage of word knowledge is Curt in? Why do you pick this stage of development? What are the key characteristics?
Curt is in the within word pattern stage. The mistakes he makes are within letter name and within word; when spelling the word ‘smell’ he wrote down ‘smile.’ He also showed the letter name stage when he messed up his vowel spelling words

2. Describe partner reading.
Partner reading is where two students, or a tutor and a student, read a book together out loud and they alternate reading the pages. The way it would work with a tutor is that he/she will start and walk through the book with the student, taking the time to discuss each page. Once that is done then they take turns reading.

3. Which is harder for a student, partner reading or DRTA?
DRTA is usually harder for the student because it requires the student to be actively involved in the learning process. With the teacher directing the reading, the student is encouraged to interact with the story line, make predictions about the story as it develops, etc. Overall DRTA is simply more work for the student.

4. In planning a DRTA, what is important about selecting places to stop?
The stopping places need to be well thought out and planned; every stopping place should be at a point where there is about to be a shift in the way the story is developing. Also teachers can stop after a new vocabulary word shows up in the text to ask students what they think that word might mean.

5. In planning a DRTA, what is important about deciding questions to ask? What kind of questions? How many?

All of the questions should be informal and very conversational. The kinds of questions should be open ended and encourage the student to make predictions. Questions about vocabulary words are also encouraged.

Ehri & Rosenthal Assignment

Ehri & Rosenthal Assignment

1. What was the hypothesis tested by the researchers?
The hypothesis tested by the researchers was that students will learn the meaning and pronunciation of new words better when they are exposed to these words and their spelling during study periods than when they are not exposed to the spelling.

2. Who were the subjects?
The subjects were students in the second and fifth grade.

3. What were the experimental conditions?
Low-frequency nouns were taught to the second and fifth grade students. They rehearsed the pronunciations and meanings of the words several times. The words were introduced during the first study trial. The rest of the trials tested the students’ ability to recall the words and after each attempt, the students were provided with the correct answer. Then the meanings of words were taught through pictures, definitions, and multiple sentences containing the words; making their meaning and use more clear to the students. The experiment went on until students reached the required criterion or the maximum number of trials allowed.

4. What did the treatment involve?
Students learned how to spell the spoken words and their meaning; some students with the spelling and some without the spelling. The students were tested on how quickly they could learn the words and how well the words were memorized.

5. Which group (spelling-present vs. spelling-absent) gained more in vocabulary learning? How were the groups’recall of pronunciations affected by the treatment?
The groups that were exposed to the spelling of the words gained more vocabulary than those who were not exposed to the spelling. With pronunciation, the groups where the spelling was present were able to recall the pronunciation of words much better.

6. Why do you think that fifth graders who were high on a word reading task benefited more from the spelling aids than their peers with less orthographic experience and knowledge, even though the two groups did not differ on receptive vocabulary knowledge?
I think that the spelling aids provided extra support and background knowledge to those fifth graders.

7. What general conclusions were derived from the study findings by the authors? What implications were offered for vocabulary learning and instruction?
That students who were provided with the spelling of new words, they were better able to pronunciate the word and retain the knowledge and also to recall the meaning of the word. The implications that were offered for vocabulary learning is that teachers should take the time to explain the spelling of a word when introducing students to new vocabulary.

Words Their Way Assignment

Words Their Way Assignment

1. Emergent (Preliterate) (0-5 yrs.)
Early Emergent Stage (A) – In this stage the student will most likely write down large scribbles while simultaneously telling a story out loud & the scribbles are more like pictures than letters. Just by looking at these scribbles one cannot decipher what the child is trying to write. These drawings might just look like large circles.
Middle of Emergent Stage (B) – This is the stage where the student begins to produce some letters. This is mostly pretend writing and the student makes no connection between letters and sounds. The writing usually occurs End of Middle Emergent Stage (C) – This is where the students begins learning letters and paying more attention to the different sounds in words. They can now make a few letter-sound matches and their writing will include the letter that they hear stand out the most in the word. This is where the student begins to learn writing his/her name.
End of Emergent Stage (D) – This is the stage where the student has memorized some simple words and writes them repeatedly.

2.Letter Name-Alphabetic (Letter Name)
- This stage is when students are formally taught how to read
- Students learn phonemes
- Also in the early part of this stage, students begin to make a connection between the letters in a word and the word itself because of how their mouths move when articulating the sounds in the word.
- In the first part of this stage, students use the letter names as cues to the sound they want to represent.
- In the early parts of this stage the students recognize the first and last sounds of the words they write, but leave out the middle vowels. This is called semiphonetic because only some of the phonemes are represented. By the middle part of this stage most of the letter sounds are represented and spelling is phonetic.
- By the end of the stage, students have full phonetic segmentation and are able to consistently represent most regular short-vowel sounds, consonant blends, and digraphs.

3. Within Word Pattern
- This stage begins when students start to read independently and ends somewhere between second and fourth grade.
-Once the student is at this stage he/she can read and spell many words correctly because of his/her knowledge of letter sounds and short-vowel patterns.
- Students in this stage study and learn words by sound and patterns at the same time.
- The most difficult patterns to learn are the ambiguous vowels because the sound is neither long nor short and the same pattern can represent different sounds.
- Homophones make students consider the meaning of the words as well as spelling when they are learning words that are homophones.

4. Syllables & Affixes (Syllable Juncture)- This stage is usually achieved in the upper elementary and middle school grades. During this stage students are expected to spell words that have more than one syllable. Students take into consideration things such as meaning units (prefixes & suffixes) and also spelling patterns where syllables meet. Many students in this stage have trouble with unstressed final syllables and two syllable words and are at the place where syllables and affixes meet.

5. Derivational Relations (Derivational Constancies)- The majority of students in this stage have completed elementary school. They examine how words share common derivations and find relationships between base words and word roots. Word study in this stage expands knowledge of vocabulary. Most spelling errors made during this stage are caused by the changing of the last consonant of a prefix to the first consonant of a root word.

Stahl (2003) Assignment

1. What is the Simple View of Reading? Explain how it works.  What part of the Simple View of Reading does storybook reading most likely impact?

Simple View of Reading is two, non-intersecting factors in reading comprehension.  It is made up of decoding (D) and language comprehension (C).  Reading Comprehension (simple reading) = Decoding (D) x Language Comprehension (C).  This equation provides an explanation for a student’s reading ability.  If one person failed at either decoding or language comprehension then they too will fail at the other (reading comprehension). 

2. What are Ehri’s 4 stages of word recognition? Name each and give a short description.  A question for you to think about is how these four stages compare to Morris’ four stages (as seen in Flanigan article—this would make a good exam question).

Visual Cue Reading: Children recognize words through distinctive visual features, such as the “tail” in monkey, or the two “eyes” in look.

Phonemic Cue Reading/Partial Alphabetic coding: In this stage children learn more words (visual identification).  Then phonemic awareness helps students use salient letters to identify words.

Full Alphabetic Coding: This stage is when children examine more parts of a word in order to identify it.  This stage may come with instruction in decoding, or children may develop it their self. 

Consolidated Word Recognition: In this last stage the reader uses groups of letters, either chunks or through analogies, to recognize words automatically.

3. On page 368, there is a good definition of Phonemic Awareness. What is it? (Remember it.)  The development of spelling: This is a nice short section on how spelling develops. We will explore this in more depth in class, but this might be a good reading to come back to for a summary of developmental spelling.

Phonemic Awareness – is the part of phonological awareness which deals with phonemes, rather than syllables or onsets and rimes.

4. On page 370, we learn that knowledge of the alphabet is necessary for beginning to learn to read and spell words. There is a developmental sequence to learning about the alphabet: What is it?

The developmental sequence to learning about the alphabet is recitation of the alphabet (usually the ABC song) begins with naming of individual letters, the printing of those letters, and the identification of letter sounds.  Children do not need to know every letter of the alphabet in order of them to learn to read, however, knowledge of the alphabet helps support growth in word recognition, spelling, and phonemic awareness.

5. What is the value in “reading to” or having children “read” alphabet books?

Alphabet books overall improve children phonemic awareness.  When alphabet books are read to children they are able to develop the knowledge they need in order to understand how words contain sounds.  Studies have proven that alphabet books lead to greater awareness of print, which in turn strengthens their reading skills.  

6. What is the value in children’s finger pointing as they read?

Finger pointing is closely related to children’s ability to use initial and final letter cues to recognize words.  Morris found that children who had more phoneme awareness were initially better at finger pointing.  In addition, students who are able to finger point are typically better at indentifying letters as well as final consonants in spelling.  They are also able to segment beginning consonants, and recognize words in isolation.  Lastly, once children master the alphabet and develop an awareness of initial sounds, they can then use the initial consonants to identify words, both in isolation and in context.  This can then lead to further analysis of words, and eventually to full segmentation and alphabetic decoding.

7. What is a predictable book and what is its value in helping children learn to read?  On page 377, we learn that most likely children become aware of vowel phonemes in words through reading words. So, reading helps drive full phonemic awareness.

Predictable books or patterned books contain a repeated linguistic pattern that children can use to support their reading.  Such books usually carry the pattern throughout the book until the end when it is broken.  Patterns can be more or less complex, and the books’ predictability can come from the text placement, the amount of support given by the pictures, or the familiarity of the content, as well as from linguistic patterns.  Lastly, these books (predictable books) allow young readers to concentrate on the words as they use the text for support, and after the predictable books have been read over and over the reader is expected to be able to read to themselves.  The reason for predictable books is to help children read more accurately.

8. So, in the end, what role does storybook reading play in helping children learn to read? 

Storybook reading helps children with word recognition and learning new vocabulary words.  In addition, it helps with language comprehension, letter sounds, and other language skills.  Overall, all of these are important for a child who is learning how to read.

Specifically, what role does storybook reading play in developing vocabulary and comprehension? 

When children start to finger point, then word recognition, and then letter-sounds; then the child will learn new words every day; especially when they read books that challenge them. 

What role does storybook reading play in developing children’s word recognition skills?

The role storybook reading plays in developing children’s word recognition skills; is as they continue to be shown words and their vocabulary every day, then they learn new words and pronunciations.  In turn, children gain a more complex vocabulary. 

What other things can help with children’s development of word recognition skills?

Other ways to help children with their development of word recognition is through reading at home, reading repetitive books, learning vocabulary words every week, and reading challenging literature.  Doing these things will help a child with their word recognition skills.

Morris/Slavin Chapter 1-3

1.  Explain what Morris means by the traditional role of kindergarten is “to level the playing field” in terms of literacy experience.

          When entering kindergarten some children come into the classroom with some literacy experience in the way that their parents read to them on a regular basis, while others come into the classroom with absolutely no experience.  What Morris means by saying that the goal is “to level the playing field,” is that we need to try and put everyone on the same page in kindergarten, when it comes to reading, in order to make it easier for every student advancing to the first grade.

2.  What literacy activities should be included in a kindergarten reading program?

          Reading aloud to the students, having them memorize individual words, echo reading in the classroom (dictated stories and big books), learning the alphabet, phoneme awareness, and letter-sound correspondences.

3.  Why read aloud to children? (5 things children learn)

          It is important to read aloud to children because it helps them create new experiences through books, exposes them to new vocabulary, familiarizes them with the structures and rhythms of written/book language, makes the child create a mental picture of what is going on and helps them sustain that picture throughout the duration of the book and after; in trying to create meaning out of what they are hearing and seeing in their mind, and they also have a chance to “reconstruct this world by interpreting the author’s words.”

4.  Why is guided contextual reading important in kindergarten?

          Guided contextual reading gives children a supportive, concrete, and meaningful introduction to reading.

5.  Describe dictated experience stories (language experience approach—LEA).

          In this approach we use children’s own experiences written in their own language to teach them how to read.  As a class the students recall on experience such as how to ride a bike. Together they decide what each line should say and the teacher records it on the board. Once the story is written, the teacher reads it several times pointing at each word as she goes along.  After that, the students choral read the story along with the teacher.  The next day, the story is brought out and everyone choral reads it a few times.  The teacher asks the students some questions about how the story is written (line similarities, etc) and then provides the students with their personal copy of the story.  As the students draw the story on the back of the paper, the teacher goes around the room and one by one asks the students to finger point as they read the story one more time.

6.  Describe big book approach (shared reading approach)

          This is a lot like using the LEA approach, but instead the book is not written by the students.  A big book has large illustrations and words that make it easier for all the students in the class to see.  The language in the book is often simple and repetitive.  At first the teacher introduces the book by reading it aloud and pointing to each word as she reads.  Before having the students choral read, the teacher asks questions about the story line as she goes along reading (like text talk), and then the students proceed to choral reading.  As an activity after this the students are put into groups to read the book while the teacher walks around to each group taking notice of the finger pointing going on.

7.  Why include both LEA and shared reading methods in kindergarten?

          Because both methods emphasize choral reading, the process is modeled by the teacher, they both have natural language patterns, and both of these methods have repetition and support the reliance on memory for learning how to read.

8.  Is there a role for independent reading in kindergarten?

          Not as much in the classroom, as it is encouraged at home, but yes there is.

Chapter 3;

1. What does Fraatz (1987) mean by “paradox of collective instruction”?

What he means by this is that teachers have to provide reading instruction for every single student in their class and address the students’ individual needs at the same time.  He states that there is a problem in teaching this essential tool of reading to a large group of individuals, and the problem is the “paradox of collective instruction.”

2.  What are the three critical components of learning to read?

(1)These beginning readers must first learn to attend to individual sounds within words.

(2) They must be able to decipher words by matching the letters to sounds

(3)Their word processing must become something that happens automatically in order for them to concentrate of what is being read.

3.  List the four tasks that the first-grade teacher can use to assess individual children’s reading ability during the first week of school. Describe what each task is used to assess?

(1)Alphabet;

This is a recognition and production task in which the student names the alphabet letters (lower & uppercase) as the teacher randomly points to them.  Then the student writes the letters down as the teacher calls out the letter names.

(2)Concept of word in text;

During this part of the assessment the teacher finger points while reading a sentence from a story then asks the student to do the same.  Right after the student finishes finger pointing the teacher points to the first target word and ask the student if he/she can identify the word.  Following the first target word, the teacher then points to the second target words and again asks the student to identify it.  This process is repeated with the second, third, and fourth sentence.

(3)Spelling;

            The teacher begins this assessment by modeling a sound-it-out word spelling of a word such as ‘mat.’  She asks the student what letter they should write first and then writes down the letter ‘m’ even if the student answered wrong.  She goes on my asking which letter would come next and so on.  After this word is completed, the pencil is now given to the student and the teacher calls out six words and asks the student to write each word down paying close attention to the sound of each letter in the word.

(4)Word recognition;

            This is a simple assessment; the teacher simply points to ten words, one at a time, and asks the student to read each word as it is pointed to.  The first five words are common sight words and the last five words are short-vowel words.

4.  How does Supported Oral Reading (SOR) differ from round robin reading in guiding children’s contextual reading?

Round robin reading simply consists of reading a book aloud in class with each student taking turns.  This approach is not very effective in assisting students, other than maybe with word recognition struggles, and it can be discouraging to those students who are not as comfortable with their reading level.  Supported Oral reading is a much more in depth approach at teaching and practicing reading.  It happens over the course of three days and involves the tasks of echo reading, partner reading, and expert reading.  This method is preferred over round robin reading because it allows the student to read with the class, then with a student of either a higher or lower reading level, and finally work one-on-one with the teacher.

5.  Why is appropriate leveling of books important?

The level of the books is important because the content is what it is all about.  When learning to read, the students follow a pattern in the knowledge that is presented to them.  The book calls it a ‘sequence of instruction,’ and the content that is given to students for reading should fall under this.

6.  Describe the developmental sequence of word study instruction. What does the continuum consist of? Why is it recommended that teachers follow such a sequence of instruction?

Word recognition is efficiently taught through guided reading and small reading groups. This makes it easier for readers of all developmental levels to learn letter-sound matches and spelling patterns at their own pace.  At first, teachers should teach students how to tell the difference between beginning consonant sounds then the reading groups should move on to learning short-vowel word families one at a time. The teacher then models how to sort one or two short vowel words, and the children sort the remaining cards. Once these steps become second nature to the students the teacher can move on to other activities. Consonant blends and digraphs should be introduced early in the school year, and practiced throughout the rest of the year.  This sequence  is effective because it helps readers master the short and long vowel patterns and by mastering these patterns they can then understand other spelling patterns.

7. How could you assess where a beginning reader is at on the continuum of word recognition skill?

The teacher  can analyze the student’s attempt at spelling a word correctly and be able to see where the student is, depending on his knowledge of beginning and/or ending consonants, letter sounds, words families, etc.

8. Describe word sorting activities to teach beginning sound consonants and short-vowel word families.

Picture sorting and word sorting would be appropriate for this level; the teacher would set up the columns with the appropriate headers and demonstarte how to sort.  The student would then sort the pictures and words on their own under the supervision of their teacher.

9. What skills does word sorting help develop in beginning readers coupled with word games and spell checks?

After a student has learned beginning consonatnts, word sorts along with word games and spell checks is the easiest way to introduce them and bring them into word analyzing.  With these games they become comfortable with the words and eventually it becomes something second nature to them.  They use critical thinking by analyzing words that might be new to them and comparing them to other words to make them fit under a certain family.

10. What is instructional pacing?

What they mean by this is that the further the child pregresses in the first grade, the more significant and higher level of reading progress that will occur by the end of the year.

11. In what ways can writing help beginning reader’s development?

Students will develop phonemic awareness and they will be able to practice spelling sounds and letter sorts in their writing which will only enhance their development as readers.

12. What are three tasks that could be used to assess end-of-year reading achievement? Describe the tasks briefly.

The tasks that can be used to asses end-of-year reading achievement are word recognition, passage reading and spelling.  “In word recognition the child attempts to read a list of forty words.  If the child cannot read a word within three seconds then the examiner will move on to the next word.  One point is given for each correct word and if the child misses seven words in a row then the testing is over.  In spelling the child attempts to spell a list of fifteen words the words are scored according to a developmental rubric.  In passage reading the child reads aloud up to six passages that progress in difficulty from early first grade to late second grade.  The final four passages contain 100 words each.  The child’s score equals the highest passage reading level attained.”

Text Talk Part 2; Goldilocks

by Google Images

 

Goldilocks and The Three Bears

Retold & Illustrated by James Marshall

Published in 1992

ISBN # 0-8037-0542-5

            0-8037-0543-3

Summary

This is a story about a disobedient girl named Goldilocks.  When sent on a chore by her mother, she wonders off into a forbidden part of the woods.  In the woods she goes inside a strange house and makes a mess.  She falls asleep and wakes up surprised to find three confused and angry bears staring at her.  She jumps out of the window and takes off running before anything can be said.  The bears wonder who the intruder was but they are glad that she is gone, and Goldilocks learned her lesson to listen to her mother next time.

Text Talk Questions

P.2       What do you think Goldilocks is going to do?

            What makes you think that?

P.7       Do you know what the word ‘scalding means’?

            What do you think it could mean?

            Why do you think that?

P.12     Goldilocks doesn’t have very good manners, does she?

            Do you think Goldilocks knows that three bears live in that house?

            How come?

End Questions

• What lesson did Goldilocks learn in the end?
• Do you think Goldilocks will ever go inside a stranger’s house again?
• What do you think the bears will do to keep little girls like Goldilocks out of their house?