Reading Specialist Blog

Preparing for the Coming School Year

teachbook — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:37:35 +0000

If our students are to develop as independent readers, they need to have and to know how to coordinate and use effectively the many different skills and strategies that successful reading requires. Just to begin reading, for example, students must to be able to attach spoken sounds to their spellings, recognize and process, or “decode,” words in print, then group these words in ways that give them access to the meaning of what they read. Then, as they move up through the grades, students need both to refine these skills and to add to them a range of understandings about how written language works—different text structures and organizations—and an array of mental strategies that they can apply to achieve full comprehension of increasingly complex texts. No wonder, then, that researcher Louisa Moats says that teaching reading is rocket science!

When you became a reading teacher, you willingly took on this monumental task. But relax. You’re not out there on your own. In fact, we started this Reading Specialist Blog with the express purpose of being here for you—to ease your way a bit as you work with your students to ensure that they acquire, develop, and apply the essential reading skills and strategies. Throughout the coming school year, we’ll be here, providing you with a ready source of information and assistance…and standing by if you have any special problem that you want us to address.

Specially, our blog will focus primarily on the five key areas of reading instruction as identified by the National Reading Panel. We do so because we know that most reading programs also focus on these areas:

Phonemic Awareness
Phonics
Fluency
Comprehension
Vocabulary Development

But in addition to these areas, we will also cover areas that we know from research contribute directly to reading success, and which, therefore, should be part of a complete reading program. These topics are:

Spelling
Writing

Over the coming year, our posts will be about specific topics that relate to each of these areas. Each post will review and summarize research in the targeted area in a form that will allow you to keep up with what research tells us about what does—and does not—work to improve reading performance. In addition, for each specific topic, we’ll also give you sets of activities based on that research. The activities come with lists of materials you’ll need, clear goals for their use, and other information that allows you to pick up and use them immediately.

For your lesson planning purposes, we have also prepared summaries of each of the areas that we will cover over the year. These summaries provide brief explanations of the areas, why they are important for effective instruction, and suggestions for how you can get ready to teach each area.

We hope that by providing you with this information this summer, you will get off to a smooth start as the new school year begins.

One more thing: As you teach this year, please let us know how things are going, what successes you have, what problems you face—and how we might be of more help to you.

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Incorporating Fun into Reading

teachbook — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:03:09 +0000

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Why Is Phonemic Awareness Instruction Important for Beginning Readers?

teachbook — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:06:07 +0000

One of the most consistent findings of research over several decades is that students who achieve early reading success invariably possess well-developed phonemic awareness, whereas students who struggle with reading rarely do. More impressively, this research shows that students who are able to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes maintain and increase their levels of reading achievement across the school years (e.g., Adams, 1990; Calfee, Lindamood, & Lindamood, 1973; Juel, 1991; Kamil, 2003; Torgesen, 2004; Tunmer & Nesdale, 1985).

Phonemic awareness is so important that it ranks as the best predictor—ahead of IQ test scores, SES status, and letter recognition ability—of a young student’s early reading success . . . or failure (Adams, 1990; Stanovich, 1986; Yopp, 1992). Students who lack phonemic awareness are most likely to have difficulty learning to read and to remain poor readers throughout the school years (e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Maclean, Bryant, & Bradley, 1987).

What makes phonemic awareness so important to early reading? Researchers Joseph Torgesen and Patricia Mathes (1999) offer this explanation: Awareness of phonemes helps students notice the regular ways in which letters represent sounds in words. This ability is crucial for fluent reading because it allows students to form mental pictures of familiar words, and so lets them recognize those words readily and accurately each time they see them. In addition, phonemic awareness gives students a tool they can use to generate possibilities for unfamiliar words they see but can’t sound out.

In brief, then, phonemic awareness is important because it provides young students with the foundation for all the elements of successful reading: phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.

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teachbook — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:55:33 +0000

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Activity: That’s Just Silly! (Grades 4 and up)

teachbook — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:58:50 +0000

Materials: No special materials needed.

What: This activity is a way to focus students’ attention on distinguishing and saying individual sounds in words.

Why: Research indicates that many older students who struggle with reading simply are not able to distinguish subtle differences in speech sounds—sip/ship, goal/gold, tot/taught. Games such as this one give practice in hearing and saying specific sounds.

Note: Although most early phonemic awareness activities are purely oral, research suggests that for older students in particular, the inclusion of print appears to contribute to rather than detract from phonemic awareness development.

When: Before reading

Who: Whole class

How:

Prepare
Have ready 2 or 3 silly sentences, such as the following (including some sentences made up of words that begin with blends or digraphs):

Monkeys make music.
Sleet slithers.
Pretty princesses practice.
Shelly’s shadow shimmered.

Model/Teach
Choose one of the sentences and write it on the board, leaving spaces between words. Read the sentence, and then call on students to suggest other words with the same beginning sound that you can to add to extend the sentence, such as:

Monkeys make music.
Mad monkeys make music.
Mad monkeys make marvelous music.
Mad monkeys make more marvelous music.

Pretty princesses practice.
Pretty princesses practice prancing.
Pretty practical princesses practice prancing.

Extend
Say a sound, such as /ch/, then call on a volunteer to write a silly-sentence starter with words that contain the sound. Have the class expand the sentence, with the student writing the words they suggest.

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Activity: The /b/illy /g/oats Gru/f/ (Grades 2-3)

teachbook — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:57:39 +0000

Materials
One rectangular plastic mat or other marker to indicate a “bridge”

For each student: one card with an animal picture (for younger students) or name (older students), such as lion, tiger, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, horse, zebra, snake, cougar, hyena, octopus, elephant, alligator, bear, kangaroo, walrus, moose, penguin, caribou (Note: The game works well with any category of words.)

CD/tape: any marching song

Book: Three Billy Goats Gruff

What: This game is a good way to use to determine the levels of phonemic awareness of individual students and, for small groups, to review sounds that pose special difficulties. It can be used for both initial and final sounds. You may want to continue this activity over several days, each day adding new (and more exotic or unusual) animal names for students to use.

Why: Even students with well-developed levels of phonemic awareness can have difficulty articulating individual sounds, and be reluctant to show this difficulty in a formal instructional setting. Games such as this one allow practice with saying sounds clearly—and in a non-threatening way.

When: Before reading

Who: Whole class; groups of 5 or 6

How:

Prepare
Ask students whether they know the story “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” Call on individuals to retell the story, or, if you choose, retell it yourself or read the story to the class.

Place the marker on the floor and explain that it is a “bridge.” Distribute the cards and circulate, having (or helping) each student identify the animal, read the name on the card, and say its initial sound.

Model/Teach
Have students form a line on one side of the “bridge,” each holding her/his card.

Stand beside the “bridge” and explain that you are the “troll.” Begin the song and have students march across the bridge as it plays. Say, “Halt! Who goes there?” and stop the song. Point to the student who is on the bridge and continue as follows:

Teacher: I am a troll, and this is my bridge. Before you can cross it, you must tell me what animal you are.
Student: I’m a penguin.
Teacher: Prove it! What’s the first sound in penguin?
Student: The first sound in penguin is /p/
Teacher: That’s right! You may cross my bridge, penguin!

Extend
Turn your place over to a student volunteer. In addition to the animal name, have each student give himself/herself a name that begins with the same sound, such as Patrick Penguin, Halle Horse. Have the “troll” ask for both names.

Shape the game to match student needs. Choose any word category or any specific sound that you wish to emphasize. Consider also choosing only initial/final sounds with which students, particularly English language learners, have the most difficulty.

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Activity: Have It? Say It! (Grades K-1)

teachbook — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:53:20 +0000

Have It? Say It!

Materials
• pocket chart
• at least 3 picture cards or laminated pictures from magazines each for objects with names that contain these initial consonant sounds: /d/, /f/, /h/, /n/, /p/, /t/
[at least 18 picture cards]

What: This activity is a way to focus students’ attention on beginning sounds and to reinforce the important understanding that the same phoneme occurs in many words.

Why: Research indicates that the ability to hear and distinguish the individual phonemes in words is an essential step toward beginning reading success.

When: Before reading

Who: Whole class

How:

Model/Teach
Quickly show all of the cards to students, naming each picture (don’t let students guess the names that you want them to say!).

Give each student one picture card. Call on individual students to hold up their cards and name their pictures. After a student says the name, repeat it, stressing the initial sound. Have the student do the same.

Tell students that you are going to say a chant, and if they have a picture that begins with the sound that the chant is about, they are to hold up their cards and say the sound when you tell them to. Say, for example:

Who has a /d/ card, a /d/ card, a /d/ card?
If you have a /d/ card,
Say /d/ . . . NOW!

Call on each student who says the sound and holds up a card. Ask each to name what the card shows and say its initial sound. If any students show incorrect cards, have each say the target sound then say the name of their picture. Do this several times until the student can distinguish the difference between the target sound and the initial sound of the picture on her/his card.

Repeat the chant for the remaining sounds.

Extend
Collect the picture cards. Have students stand in a row. Give each student one card to hold in front of himself/herself so that everyone can see it.

Name one student. Have that student show his/her card, name it, and say its initial sound. Tell the student to walk down the row and find all the other picture cards that begin with the same sound. For each picture the student identifies, have the student holding the picture name it and say the sound. If correct, have that student leave the row and stand in a designated place.

Continue until all pictures and sounds have been identified. Say the chant once again, but have students in each group respond as follows:

We have the /d/ cards, the /d/ cards, the /d/ cards!
We have the /d/ cards, and we say /d/!

After a group says the chant, quickly point to each student in the group and have that student name his/her card and say its initial sound.

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What is Phonemic Awareness? And what is NOT?

teachbook — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:01:33 +0000

As defined by the National Reading Panel (2000), phonemic awareness is “the ability to focus on and manipulate phonemes in spoken words.” This definition is clear enough—if we understand (1) what phonemes are, and (2) what awareness of phonemes means. What are phonemes? They are not just bits of sound. Rather, they are the smallest units of spoken language that make a difference to the meaning of a word. For example, the word let contains three phonemes, /l/ /e/ /t/. Each of these phonemes—in the order spoken—contributes to the meaning of that word and that word only. If we change just one phoneme in let, we can produce a range of other words with other meanings, including bet, get, net, set, lit, lot, led, leg, and less. We have awareness of phonemes when we recognize that the words we say and hear are made up of individual sounds, that these sounds can be isolated and moved around, and that it is the arrangement, or structure, of these sounds that creates specific words.

That’s what phonemic awareness is. Here are some things that it’s not:

Phonemic awareness is not phonics Phonemic awareness refers only to an understanding of the structure of spoken language. Phonics refers to the understanding of the relationship between the sounds of spoken language, and the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written language.
Phonemic awareness is not phonological awareness Although phonemic awareness is a type of phonological awareness, they are not interchangeable names for the same thing (e.g., Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001). Phonological awareness refers to a general awareness of how spoken language works. Phonological awareness instruction focuses on building students’ recognition of large “chunks” of language: sentences, words, syllables, onsets/rimes. Phonemic awareness is the most advanced form of phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness instruction focuses on helping students hear, identify, and work with individual speech sounds—phonemes.

Phonemic awareness is not a naturally developing part of language acquisition. Although some students develop an understanding of the structure of spoken language without formal teaching, many more do not. This is not surprising when you think about how we talk—in long streams of sounds, without breaks between phonemes. Indeed, it is this overlapping (or co-articulation) of phonemes that makes our speech fluent and understandable (just try to repeat this last sentence to someone phoneme by phoneme!). But co-articulation also makes hearing and identifying individual phonemes very, very difficult. In addition, as we listen and speak, we don’t focus our attention on individual sounds in words. We’re listening to get the meaning of those words (e.g., Adams, 1990; Torgesen & Mathes, 1998). So, if we want students to hear phonemes, we have to teach them how. And this teaching must be explicit and systematic.

So, now that we’re clear about what phonemic awareness is and is not, we’ll move on to what we know from research about why phonemic awareness instruction is so important both for beginning readers and for older students, especially those students who are struggling with reading

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Phonemic Awareness Instruction

teachbook — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:01:01 +0000

In our earlier phonics and word study post, we made the point that understanding the alphabetic principle—the relationship between sounds (phonemes) of spoken words and the letters of printed words (graphemes)—is the foundation of successful reading. Without this understanding, students will struggle to read words, which mean they will struggle to get meaning from written language. For many students, this struggle makes even the attempt to read a frustrating and pointless activity.

Before students can make the connection of spoken sounds to written spellings with ease and accuracy, they need first to become aware of what spoken language is: a stream of individual sounds that, when put together, form words, sentences, and ever-larger units of talk. In other words, they need to develop phonemic awareness.

We will take a look at what research tells us about the importance to beginning readers of explicit phonemic awareness instruction and to older students of continued work with individual sounds of spoken English. Before we get into specifics, though, let’s look at exactly what we mean by phonemic awareness.

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Reading Resources

teachbook — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:28:27 +0000

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