Directed Questions

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Directed Questions for Beginning Word Reading

Multiple Choice

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Discuss emergent literacy. Identify different factors that can influence literacy development and give some examples of ways to prevent reading difficulties before kindergarten.

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Emergent literacy is the developmental process of literacy acquisition generally lasting from birth until children begin to use letter-sound associations to sound out words. During the emergent literacy phase, children are learning to understand language and beginning to understand the functions of print. Emergent literacy can be influenced by children´s own developmental processes, sensory impairments, health, and, experiences with language. Children´s experiences with language are influenced by cultural values, the level of community support, and family characteristics. Teachers can influence emergent literacy by promoting community literacy programs, early childhood screening programs, and early intervention programs.

Some activities that foster emergent literacy are reading aloud to and discussing stories with children, playing language games, singing songs, reciting nursery rhymes, having conversations, and expanding on children´s comments and ideas.

For individuals with disabilities or for those who were not exposed to print, emergent literacy can take place at any age, even through adulthood. Teachers and parents can continue to regularly read aloud and discuss different types of written material until students transition from \"learning to read\" to \"reading to learn.\"

2.	List the major stages of word recognition development and give a brief explanation of each.

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The logographic stage typically begins around the age of two. It is during this stage that children first begin to understand that symbols can represent words and ideas. Distinctive visual characteristics of words may be remembered. There is no recognition that letters represent sounds in spoken words.

The transitional-alphabetic stage generally begins around the age of three or four when children are beginning to recognize some letter shapes and learn some letter names and sounds. Children in this stage typically use letter names rather than letter sounds to sound out words. Generally first and last letters are considered and the middle letters are ignored. This is not a very effective method for identifying words.

The alphabetic stage can begin at age three or four, but more typically begins during kindergarten when children learn to use letter-sound associations to sound out words. During this stage, beginning readers learn to look at and consider all of the letters when they sound out words. This now gives them an effective method to approach sounding out unknown words.

Once readers have seen and decoded a word numerous times, the specific letter patterns within the word becomes more and more familiar until the patterns or words are recognized automatically without having to be sounded out. This is called orthographic knowledge. Orthographic knowledge enables readers to automatically recognize words and word parts, thereby enabling them to concentrate on understanding what they are reading rather than trying to identify the words.

3.	Discuss the characteristics of effective intervention programs.

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Effective intervention programs are well-integrated research-based programs in which all teachers coordinate their efforts to provide the necessary levels of intensity for all students in the school. Ongoing staff-development is provided to support teachers in developing a common knowledge base as well as specialization. Sufficient time is allocated for teachers to plan and implement the interventions. Students are allowed the necessary time to develop the necessary levels of fluency. Systematic, explicit instruction in both reading and spelling is provided. High quality materials are utilized to provide students with the proper levels of reading and practice materials. Students´ interests are also considered when materials are chosen. Finally, continuous assessment of students´ progress and evaluation of program effectiveness guide the instructional and programmatic decisions.

4.	Why is learning about phonemes important for learning to read?

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Written language is the use of abstract symbols to represent spoken language. In the English language, one or more letter combinations represent each of the 39 to 45 phonemes. By understanding that spoken words are made up of speech sounds, beginning readers can begin to develop the understanding that the letters of the alphabet represent the individual speech sounds in words. Once students learn which phonemes represent which letter combinations, students will be able to sound out and arrive at a close approximation of the pronunciation of most words in the English language.

5.	When teaching students how think about the consonant phonemes when they say them, what types of things would you have your students pay attention to?

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Students should be taught to pay attention to voicing, continuous and stop-like sounds, and the relationship between the teeth, lips, and tongue when they are saying the consonant phonemes. By noticing all of these aspects of phonemes, it will be easier to identify the phonemes in spoken words.

6.	How would you help a student distinguish between the \|b\| and \|d\| phonemes?

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I´d have the student say both sounds and notice how when making the |b| sound, the lips are held tightly together until the air is released. When making the |d| sound, the lips are apart and as the breath is released, as the tip of the tongue is suddenly released from the roof of the mouth.

7.	Why is it important for teachers to understand the unique characteristics of the phonemes in the English language?

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If teachers understand the unique characteristics of each of the phonemes, teachers will be better able to help students learn about and feel the differences when they say each phoneme. This will also help teachers to choose suitable examples for teaching decoding and spelling, as well as develop appropriate instructional sequences. Having this knowledge also will help teachers be better able to interpret students´ spelling and reading errors. Teachers can then provide the appropriate types of explicit, systematic, intensive instruction with this knowledge.

8.	Discuss the instructional considerations required for choosing appropriate words and examples to be used in phonological awareness activities.

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Teachers must be systematic in developing an appropriate sequence of activities and in choosing examples of words and sound units for strengthening students´ phonological awareness. Four dimensions of words that contribute to phonological difficulty are the size of the sound unit, the number of sound units, the position of the sound units/cluster within the word, and the phonological properties.

Although the goal is to work with the smallest sound units --phonemes-- to help students begin to understand how to start thinking about the sounds in words, it may be necessary to start with larger sound units. Prior to blending and segmenting words at the phoneme level, students may need to work with larger sound units, such as compound words, two- and three-syllable words, and onset-rime units in one syllable words.The number of sound units is also a consideration. It is easier to work with words with two or three sound units than to work with words that have four or more sound units. The number of letters in a word does not necessarily relate to the number of sound units in a word.

Another consideration when asking students to detect or identify sound units is the position of the sound unit. Sound units at the beginning of words are the easiest to detect. The next easiest to detect are sound units at the end of words. Sound units in the middle of words are the most difficult to detect or identify. This applies to both the syllable and phoneme levels.

The phonological properties or the characteristics of the phonemes also contribute to the difficulty of a word. For instance, words with continuous sounds, single consonants, and voiced phonemes are easier for students to compare, blend, and segment than are words with stop sounds, consonant blends or clusters, and unvoiced phonemes.

In summary, to increase the opportunities for students to be successful, it is important that each of these dimensions be considered in relation to the students´ prior knowledge when choosing examples of words to use to strengthen students´ phonological awareness.

9.	Discuss the similarities and differences between comparing, synthesizing, and analyzing sounds in words.

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All three of these tasks--comparing, synthesizing, and analyzing sounds-- are phonological awareness tasks. Each embodies a continuum of difficulty that must be considered when choosing words to use as examples for activities.

Comparing sounds is the easiest task of the three and involves both judgments, which are easier, and production, which is harder. Comparing initial sounds and rhyme patterns is easier than comparing final and medial sound units.

Synthesizing sounds is the process of hearing separate sounds and blending them back together to form words. Analyzing sounds includes segmenting sounds, deleting sounds, and manipulating sounds. Segmenting sounds, which is listening to a word and breaking it into smaller sound units, is a complementary process to blending sounds. To develop students´ ability to segment sounds, it is helpful to use concrete objects to represent the different sound units. Once students segment the sounds, they also should blend them back together to form the original word. Sound analysis and sound synthesis are helpful for both reading and spelling.

Students should learn to blend and segment one type of sound unit before being introduced to a more difficult type of sound unit. Students may need to begin working with compound words, followed by words with two or three syllables, then onset-rime units, and finally, phonemes. The goal is for students to be successful with synthesizing and analyzing words at the phoneme level.

10.

Explain the concepts of phonological and phonemic awareness and describe the roles they play in learning to read and spell.

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Phonological awareness is a broad term that refers to one´s sensitivity to, or explicit awareness of, the sound structures of words. It is being able to segment, compare, and rearrange different sizes of sound units in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is a more refined level of phonological awareness. It is the understanding that words are made up of specific sequences of phonemes, as well as awareness of the unique characteristics of the individual phonemes.

Phonological awareness is important for beginning readers and spellers for three reasons. First, it helps students understand that sounds in words can be represented by letters or graphemes. Second, phonological awareness enables students to notice the regular ways that letters or graphemes represent the sounds in words. Students with stronger phonological awareness can more easily make accurate matches between phonemes in words and the different spelling patterns that can represent them. Third, with a basic understanding of the letter-sound associations, students have a way to approach sounding out unknown words.

11.

Discuss and give examples of the different word types that would be good for beginning sounding out and spelling instruction.

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The different word types that are good to use for teaching beginning readers to decode words all have letters that represent their most common sounds, and have one letter for each sound heard in the word. These words range from having two to six letters. When first introducing sounding out and spelling, it is easier for students if the words begin with continuous sounds. Once students are proficient with continuous sounds, words with stop sounds at the beginning of the word can be used.

The easiest types of words to use for beginning sounding out and spelling are VC words such as ´am´, and ´it´, as well as CVC words such as ´man´ and ´sit´. Once students are proficient with these types of words, and can sound out consonant blends, moderately difficult CCVC and CVCC words such as ´from´ and ´jump´ can be introduced. Later, words with consonant blends at both the beginning and the end of the word such as the word ´stand´ and words with consonant clusters such as ´spring´ can be introduced.

12.

What are some of the instructional considerations for teaching letter-sound associations?

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Instruction in letter-name and letter-sound associations needs to explicitly link the letter forms with their sounds and names. For initial instruction in letter-sound associations, students should be directly taught the most common sound for each letter. Students who are at risk for reading disabilities have difficulties when they have to infer letter sounds. Once students have been explicitly taught that a specific letter represents a specific sound (e.g., ´b´ represents the sound |b|), it is helpful for students to learn to link the letter-sound association to a ´key word´ such as the word ´ball´ for the sound of the letter ´b´.

When teaching letter-sound associations, the most frequently used sounds should be taught first. Also, the most common sounds for letters should be taught before the less common sounds. Letters that are similar in appearance or sound should be separated by at least five lessons or until a student is both accurate and fluent in recognizing the first of the pair. For example, students should be accurate and fluent in giving the sound for the letter ´b´ before the sound for the letter ´d´ is introduced. Single vowels that say their names rather than their sounds should be introduced first.

Once students are accurate and fluent in being able to say the sounds for five consonants and one vowel, these letters should be used in \"Sounding-out\" and \"Say It, Move It, Read It\" activities. As more letter-sound associations are mastered, these too should be included in the beginning word reading and spelling activities.

13.

Discuss the reasons for assessing phonological awareness as well as the types of skills and knowledge that can be examined (e.g., letter-name knowledge).

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Phonological awareness has been found to be important for understanding the alphabetic principle and beginning to learn to read and spell. There are three reasons for assessing students´ phonological awareness, beginning word reading and spelling. These reasons are: to establish a baseline of student knowledge, to monitor student progress, and to determine who might be at risk for reading disabilities. It is important to establish a baseline of what students already know so you can determine what students need to learn and what you need to teach. Regular assessments can provide a means to monitor students´ progress and indicate which students may need extra help. Frequent monitoring also helps teachers judge the effectiveness of their instruction. Finally, assessments can help identify those students who score in the lowest 20th percentile and may be at risk for reading disabilities.

Some of the assessment activities examine students´ letter-name knowledge and letter-sound knowledge; skills in sound comparisons, sound synthesis, sound analysis, and sound manipulation; and spelling skills. Rapid-naming tests may also be given to students who may be at risk for reading disabilities. There are several published phonological awareness assessment kits available that have complete directions for giving and scoring the assessments.

14.

Discuss how to make instruction more intensive for those students who need it.

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While all students need quality instruction, students who are at risk for or have been identified as having reading disabilities require instruction that is specific to those needs. The most critical elements of effective teaching in reading include giving the right kind and quality of instruction, delivered with the right level of intensity and duration, to the right children at the right time (Torgeson, 1998).

To be able to do this, teachers must continually monitor students\´ progress, and choose the appropriate materials, intensity, rate, and method to use with each student. This is especially important for students who are at risk for reading difficulties, though all students deserve the same kind of consideration.

Students who have been identified as being at risk or as having reading disabilities need explicit, systematic instruction. The level of intensity that individual students need can vary as they progress through the different stages of reading development and can be increased by having the teacher work with fewer students at a time. For these at-risk students, most initial instruction needs to take place in small groups or on a one-to-one basis with the teacher for up to 40 minutes a day. Mastery level of skills should be approximately 90% on a given task and should be followed up with practice opportunities. Well-trained and supervised para-professionals, peer tutors, or volunteers can be helpful in providing additional practice opportunities with immediate corrective feedback.

Beginning Word Reading