Take Home Midterm: RE5100 Margaret Greene
1. The assessments I would use at the beginning of the year in a first grade classroom to assess slow starting students would in many ways follow Dr. Morris’s suggested Individual Assessment. I would begin with an alphabet: letter/ sound/ name evaluation. I would evaluate to determine whether the child could name the upper and lower case letters when he sees visual representations of them and whether he can write them when letter names are dictated to him. I would also evaluate his ability to verbalize the correct phoneme when he sees the grapheme and to write the grapheme when he hears the phoneme for consonants.
It would also be important to determine whether a child can segment words into syllables and segment consonant vowel consonant words into individual phonemes. This is a strong indicator of reading success according to Marilyn Adams in the article Preparing Young Children to Read, pages 52 and 54 and the NRP report.
Then I would return to Dr. Morris’s concept of word in text. As a child attempts to read a four- sentence story, I watch finger pointing and listen. Does he have one to one correspondence: word spoken to word in print. Does he use beginning letters to match word he is “reading” to word in print? Can he use beginning letter clues to identify the target words in sentences?
I would also use the spelling check suggested by Dr. Morris. The six words he uses are a good representation of several phonics patterns and 20 possible phonemes.
The word recognition check suggested by Dr. Morris with five sight words and five closed syllable short vowel words is a good quick check.
With the results of the above evaluation, it would be possible to design instruction
to meet the needs of the slower progressing students and hopefully remediate in the classroom before the children fall further behind.
2. The article Preparing Young Readers to Read and the NRP report stress that phonemic awareness may be the most significant skill for reading success. Adams states “Awareness of phonemes…seems to come only after a child is aware of larger units. p.52 Therefore I would begin by making certain children can segment words in a sentence. This is the earliest segmenting task and most will already know how to do this successfully. Next I would teach segmenting of words into syllables. Clapping or tapping out the syllables can teach this skill fairly easily.
As we are working on the two above segmentations, I would be teaching letter sound associations. According to Ehri, letter sound associations are the “glue” which holds word images in memory, especially for those with limited literary experiences. We would use games and music to aid the matching of graphemes, letter names and phonemes.
We also would emphasize onset and rime to begin process of reading. Poetry can be useful here. I would start with /at/ or /an/ and make a game of changing beginning sounds. As the skill develops more rimes would be added. Discovering you can play with words and that they are telling you how they sound excites the young reader.
Then we would begin segmenting and blending simple short vowel, closed syllable single consonant words. First I would use the short a vowel so the child only has to think about the beginning and ending sounds. We would work on segmenting words into individual phonemes and blending the phonemes into words both verbally and as we
write the graphemes. We would move as quickly as the students master the concepts
to new phonemes and phonics patterns.
Success is the key to keep the child’s interest in literacy. A child who is successful at reading is much more likely to read. It is also incredibly important for beginning readers to be involved in a variety of reading activities to keep interest alive and reading relevant.
3. I have never taught a regular class or had students all day. This plan allows for a freedom I have never experienced to focus the day on reading, I would do math in the afternoon and reserve the mornings for reading. I found Morris’s daily schedule very helpful and I would probably follow it pretty closely.
Unless I happened to be in a school in which the whole grade groups for reading – which has never happened - or even more unlikely, a school where students go to music, PE, etc. at separate times, I will have to do my own grouping in the classroom. The following would hopefully include the continued use of teacher assistants in the classroom.
8:00-8:30 Whole class literature circle- We will read Big Books, write and read dictated stories, supported oral reading with some DTRA activities.
8:30-9:00 Writing or journal time- Students write on topics of interest to them and teacher and assistant provide needed support.
9:00-10:15 Reading groups- One group goes with teacher for story reading and word students. Second group do seatwork tasks. Third group do centers.
Every 20 to 25 minutes groups shift, Assistant monitors groups not reading with teacher.
10:15-10:45 Independent or self selected reading time. A good time to bring struggling readers back for a additional reading time- possibly repeated readings.
11:15 After lunch, teacher reads aloud to class.
Second essay Option 3
My background as a special education teacher for 20 years strongly influences my attitude toward decodable books. For any student to whom reading becomes a challenge, either one who entered school with limited pre-school literacy experiences or one with a disability hindering his ability to read, tools are needed.
Current studios by the NRP and others indicate a need for phonemic awareness. The development of phonemic awareness is directly related to decodable texts. The teacher can teach phonics patterns, phonemic awareness related to patterns taught, spelling of patterns and practice reading the words to develop fluency, speed and automaticity. The teaching of all these skills simultaneously plants the patterns firmly in the child’s mind. The patterns are then accessible for use in reading multi-syllable words in the years when the student will be bombarded by print and must read for information. For example, students who have word retrieval problems have difficulty remembering individual words. Even students with a mild disability will not be able to hold in memory the vast number of words they are expected to read in third or fourth grade. It is not uncommon for bright students who appear to be compensating, but have not been able to acquire the knowledge of phonics patterns, to show evidence of difficulty in third grade. Often they have been taught phonics patterns but have not had sufficient opportunity to develop automaticity with the patterns.
Students in the lowest 20 to 30 %, those Dr. Morris calls tutorable and the truly disabled readers, must have phonetic skills and must be taught consistently, systematically and in a structured manner. Decodable books help accomplish this goal. They are an important component of phonetic instruction.
The students who evidence difficulties in spelling are more easily remediated if they can read the words in decodable books as they are being taught phonics patterns and phonemic analysis. The more the student sees the words and uses the patterns, the more easily he can apply patterns learned to spelling - especially in first and second grades.
Decodable books are not for everyone. Many students will have no difficulty (50-60%) with reading and instruction of phonetic patterns will not need to be reinforced by decodable readers.
Even for those who are using decodable readers, other literature must be present. Decodable books, limited by their purpose and vocabulary, are not the most exciting reading. Group reading of Big Books, echo reading and rereading of books chosen by the students are important. They need to read a variety of books on their reading level to increase interest, sight word vocabulary and comprehension skills. Also the language experience stories written by students and read and reread help keep the reading experience relevant and personal. Teachers can use menus, magazines, newspapers recipes, etc. to help students see uses for reading in the real world.