School Help

A Teacher and Tutor eGuide to Help the Older Student with Limited Word Reading Fluency/Book Excerpt

Carmen Y. Reyes

Digital Edition, License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, then please return to this seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright 2011 by Carmen Y. Reyes

Contents Background Cue System One: Phonological Knowledge Cue System Two: Decoding Cue System Three: Sight Vocabulary Cue System Four: Morphological Knowledge Cue System Five: Pattern Recognition Cue System Six: Finding Smaller Words Cue System Seven: Structural Analysis Cue System Eight: Semantic Knowledge Cue System Nine: Syntactic Analysis Concluding Comments About the Author

Background Older students with limited word pronunciation, or limited reading decoding, lack knowledge in strategy using, revealing little or no understanding that different words require different word attack strategies. When they try to strategize, these children are inflexible in the decoding strategy they use, on most occasions, using the same reading decoding strategy for all kinds of words (e.g. a letter-sound strategy or phonics). In addition, even when the student understands that there are different decoding strategies, he or she lacks understanding of when to use a particular strategy. To overcome a word-reading problem in an older student, teachers and tutors need to teach explicitly strategy using or cue systems. It is not enough to train the struggling reader in a letter-sound strategy, because older students will find in their readings many longer words with weak sound-symbol matching. Teachers and tutors need to prepare the student in word identification strategies that include all of the cue systems available to readers so that the child is able to identify longer words fast and to pronounce longer words fluently (without hesitation). In other words, an effective word reading remediation program must include training in the entire set of cue systems.

Cue System One: Phonological Knowledge Research shows a strong causal relationship between sound awareness understanding that spoken words are made of sounds- and word reading fluency: word identification and pronunciation is built upon the childs efficiency in using sound awareness. Phonological knowledge is an oral language skill; the child does not need to have any knowledge of letter names to be able to perform phonological awareness tasks. At the phonological level, we train the struggling decoder to notice and to manipulate sounds, not letters. Letters in a word are represented by visual symbols such as chips, tokens, lines or fingers. For example, a word like house has five letters but only three sounds, /h/, /ou/, and /s/. For this word, the teacher or tutor gives the student three chips or tokens to manipulate, one visual symbol for each sound. Although phonological knowledge precedes knowledge of sound-symbol relationship, or phonics, traditionally schools start teaching children how to decode words and read at the sound-symbol matching level or phonics, before the students phonological skills are well established. Consequently, if the childs auditory judgments are impaired, knowledge of letter-sound relationships will be impaired too, resulting in a struggling decoder and/or weak speller. Before we can even address a word reading problem, phonological skills need to be developed, in particular, the blending of sounds (synthesizing a sequence of sounds in a word), segmenting sounds (separating all sounds in a word and in the correct order), and manipulating sounds (deleting, adding, switching, or substituting sounds in a word). The ultimate goal in any phonological training is to help the struggling reader see how particular sounds in a word relate to particular letters or letter chunks. When we train the older student in sounds awareness, we must present the child with a variety of oral words, long and short, and syllables,

so that during reading decoding the student develops an automatic response to the visual symbols. The following sound awareness tasks are designed to help the child develop strategies in understanding and analyzing sounds in words. By simply varying the length and level of complexity of the words that you use, you can use the same activities with an older student as well as with a younger child. Activities that Require Discrimination of Sounds Have the student perform a motor behavior like raising his hand, standing up, thumb up, or clapping when she hears the target word (e.g. brown). You can say a string of words (e.g. hill, thump, blush, brown, cake), or you can say the word in an oral sentence (e.g. Felix has curly brown hair). Initially, use words that the child can distinguish easily, and then have the child discriminate among words with a closer auditory resemblance, for example, clown, town, brown, down, and frown. When you start, use a slower pace (a one second pause between words), progressing to normal speaking, and ending with a faster pace. You can also start with fewer choices (three words) and end with more choices (seven words). Have the student respond when he hears a target syllable embedded within a word, e.g. /ble/: pickle, puzzle, crumble, middle, and angle. Remember that you are pronouncing sounds, not naming letters. Have the student respond when he hears the target sound embedded within a word. For example, say, Raise your hand when you hear a word with the /ple/ sound: glass, stuck, class, blush, plush. Have the child discriminate between the same and different words. Do oral exercises such as, Stand up when you hear a word that is different from the others-pig, pig, pig, dig, pig.

Have the student analyze spoken words in terms of auditory differences. Example: Listen for the word that starts with a different sound-same, game, ghost, guess, gasp. Activities that Require Listening for Specific Words Prepare oral activities that require listening for a specific word. For example, say, Sweater, garden, judge, dark. Did I say garden? Alternatively, say, Should I buy the blue scarf or the yellow one? Did I say shirt? Did I say blue? Prepare activities recalling specific words from oral sentences, for example, Will you eat beans or beets with your lunch? Will you eat beans or _____ with your lunch? Activities that Require Counting Words Give activities that require counting groups of individual words, e.g., Tell me how many words do you hear-hobby, candle, ant, garage, elf, reading. (Six words) Give activities that require counting how many words are in a sentence, e.g., Tell me how many words do you hear in this sentence-Anthonys birthday is next week. (Five words) Activities that Require Sequencing the Auditory Information With sequencing activities, the student must recall the auditory information in the same order. Some examples are: Have the student imitate a series of three to seven tapping or clapping sounds, e.g. clap, clap, rest, clap, rest, clap, clap. Have the child repeat three, five, or seven items that you name. Read aloud a sentence and have the student repeat it. Start with short sentences and gradually increase in length.

Use oral exercises such as repeating the days of the week, months, skip counting, or the alphabet. Use varied rote sequences, e.g. name any letter of the alphabet and the child recites the alphabet starting from that letter, or starting with number twelve, have the student skip count by threes. Activities that Require Repeating Clusters of Sounds Have the student listen to and repeat clusters of sounds that do not say a meaningful word (nonsense words). For example, say, Repeat what I say, flip, linderplan, mussmick Vary the complexity of the nonsense words. This task requires that the child pays attention to and analyzes sounds. Activities that Require Adding or Deleting Sounds Ask questions such as: 1. What sound do you hear in seat that you do not hear in eat? /s/ 2. Say smart. Now, say art. What sound did I take away? /sm/ 3. Say gap. Now, say gasp. What sound did I add? /s/ 4. The word is cat. Which of these sounds is not in the word cat? - /t/, /k/, /b/, /a/ Activities that Require Discriminating Position in Sounds Make sure that the student understands that sounds vary their position within a word and between words. Typically, sounds placed in the initial position of a word can be discriminated easier than sounds placed at the end of words. Middle sounds (vowels) are the hardest to discriminate. Have the child (clap, raise hand, or thumbs up) when she hears the target sound in a specific position (beginning, middle, or end).

Use chips, or draw lines or boxes, to represent each sound in a word. Ask the child to identify the position of the sound by pointing to the right chip, line, or box. Provide activities identifying the position of sounds in words. For example, Where do you hear the /f/ sound in paragraph? (End) and Where is /n/ in runner? (Middle) Provide activities requiring discriminating the position of a target sound in a sentence. For example, ask, Which word in the sentence has /l/ in the middle- The referees ruling was not fair. Activities that Require Recognizing and Identifying Sounds Do oral exercises such as: 1. Grade, groom, and green all start with _____ (/gr/ sound). 2. Dentist, trust, and west all end with _____ (/st/ or /t/). 3. Tell me which word says the /sk/ sound- dusk, wasp, lump, sink, pest. 4. Tell me which of these sounds combination you hear in the word proud- /dr/, /pr/, /br/, /gr/. 5. Which of these words say the /ng/ sound? - plant, skunk, sting, jump 6. Is the word arm hidden in the word harmful? Have the student produce words that contain a smaller word. For example, say, Tell me as many words as you can with the word art in it. The child can say words such as smart, part, dart, partly, artful, and partner. Routinely read stories or poems and have the child listen for specific sounds in words.

Cue System Two: Decoding Reading decoding, or phonics instruction, is a higher-level skill than phonological knowledge. To become a fluent decoder, the student must learn the way that letters represent sounds in words. Most schools start teaching the mechanics of reading at the phonics level, and most remediation programs for older students are stuck at this level, telling the child to sound out longer words, making this cue system not only long, tedious, and frustrating for the older child, but also an obstacle to read with comprehension. What makes this cue system more complex than the previous one is that now the child is interacting with print, that is, the child sees the word at the same time that he hears the word. In recognizing words, the student sees the word and retrieves from memory its correct pronunciation. So, word recognition or phonics requires that the student stores in visual memory how the word looks, matches the string of letters that he sees with the correct sequence of sounds, and retrieves from auditory memory the correct sequence of sounds to pronounce the word. As we said earlier, if auditory judgments are weak, the childs reading decoding will also be weak. This is why we cannot emphasize enough how important it is that your remediation program always includes phonological training. With an older student, even when we are working at the phonics level, the focus should be always from sound to letter, not from letter to sound. Traditional phonics instruction emphasizes an orientation from letter to sound. Letters are visual symbols and are abstract making them harder to store in memory, in particular for students with weak visual memory. When we focus in sounds, we are reinforcing phonological knowledge. A child with strong phonological knowledge is better able to automatize sound-symbol matching, for example, What letters do you see at the beginning of the word? What sound do they make? What vowel combination

do you see in the middle of the word? What sound does it make? What letters you see at the end of the word? What sound do they make? In addition, when the child mispronounces a word, we can help him self-correct using graphophonic cues (sound-symbol cues). For example: 1. You said brownish, but this word (butterfly) says the /t/ sound (point to the matching grapheme) and the /f/ sound (point to the matching grapheme). Now, do you see any letters that say the /br/ sound? What about the /sh/ sound; can you find the letters that represent that sound? 2. Look at these three letters (point to fly); do you expect to see these letters in the word brownish? We need to explain to the child that letters are sound pictures, in other words, letters do not make sounds, but letters represent sounds. It is important that you always refer to the visual symbol (letters) by the sound they represent , not by the letter names. Also, provide many opportunities for the child to say each sound in a word separately. Make sure that the child has a good grasping of sounds first, so that, in decoding, he anchors the sound (phoneme) to its letter or letter group (grapheme). The following activities progress from sounds recognition to blending and segmenting sounds in words. You can use the same activities to reinforce the childs phonological knowledge or to develop and reinforce phonics skills. When you use sounds only (the letters in the word are represented by chips, lines, or fingers), you have the student at the phonological level, but if the child is interacting with printed words (sees and hears the word), he is at the decoding level. We placed the following phonological tasks here, so that you can see how the progression works.

Using Visual Cues or Visual Symbols Use visual cues like chips, lines, or boxes to represent: 1. Each word in a phrase or a sentence. You use lines to represent the sentence, one line for each word in the sentence. For example, for the oral sentence, The bee buzz and hum, the child sees: ___ ___ ___ ___ ___. 2. Each syllable in a word, e.g. pa-per is ___ ___. 3. Each syllable in a phrase or a sentence, e.g. ba-by sis-ter: ___ ___ ___ ___. You say a sentence or phrase and the child draw as many lines for each word. You say a sentence or phrase and the child draws as many lines for each syllable in the sentence. You say a word, and the child draws as many lines for each syllable in the word. You say a word, and the child draws as many sounds he hears in the word. You say a phrase or sentence, skipping a word or a syllable, and the child points to the chip, line, or box that represents the word or syllable that you skipped. You say a word, skipping a syllable and the child points to the chip, line, or box representing the syllable that you skipped. You point to the visual e.g. the third line in The bee buzz and hum, and ask, What does this say? (buzz) You point to the visual and ask, What does this say? For example, in the visual for the word dan-ger-ous, the third line says ous. Have the student match the visual that goes with a word, a syllable or a sound. For example, in the word A-mer-i-ca, you ask, Which chip says mer? In addition, Which chip says ca?

Activities that Require Blending Sounds into Words Say, Tell me the word I am trying to say, hel-i-cop-ter. Say, Tell me the word I am trying to say, /p/-/l/-/a/-/n/-/t/ (one-second intervals). (plant) In the first activity, the student is blending syllables; the second activity is a full blending or sounds blending activity. Remember that you are saying syllable or letter sounds, not naming letters. If the student is having difficulty with the blending of sounds, allow her to count each syllable or sound using her fingers, clapping, or putting chips or straws on the table. In addition, the child can repeat each syllable or sound after you. Have the child place her finger under each chip, sound, box, or line as she sounds it, and then, the child sweeps her finger under the whole word as she blends the sounds. To read the word, have the child add a single sound at a time to the beginning sound, e.g. /p/-/pl/-/pla/-/plan/-/plant/. Start with two phoneme units (e.g. at, on), followed by three phonemes with a short vowel sound (e.g. cat). Gradually introduce more complex sound patterns, with an initial blending (e.g. drum), a final blending (e.g. past); then move the child to both an initial and final blending (e.g. stamp). Vowels sound patterns that you should also reinforce are: r-controlled vowel sounds, e.g. horn and shirt single long vowels, e.g. hold and mind long vowels with a silent e visual configuration, e.g. cape, rope, and mule regular double vowels such as goat and meat

1. To teach words with a silent e visual configuration, use three markers of the same kind to represent sounds (e.g. three blue chips), and use a different marker to represent the silent e (e.g. a red chip or a cube). Place the silent e marker at a lower level and/or keep it apart from the markers representing sounds. Alternatively, you can draw one sound box for each sound, drawing a silent e outside the sound boxes. 2. To teach regular vowel combinations, use only one marker for each combination. A word like goat, for example, has four letters but only three sounds, so you use only three markers, not four. Make sure to include in the training the blending of sounds in nonsense syllables such as ize, ity, lish, mem, and neb. Older students find these kinds of syllables all the time when reading multisyllabic words such as, fer-til-ize, fes-tiv-i-ty, es-tablish, mem-o-ry, and neb-u-la. This way, knowledge of the syllable type develops first, and the child can use this knowledge later on as an aid in decoding words with the same syllable type. In addition, at the multisyllabic level, recognizing word parts, letter clusters, or syllables is a more efficient strategy for the older child than pronouncing single sounds. Make sure that the child develops awareness of seeing word parts, letter clusters, or syllables that make the sounds. Have the student circle or highlight targeted word parts in sentences or reading passages. To link mastered sounds to visual symbols, point to a combination of single letters randomly placed in columns, and have the child give the sound for each letter. Then, the child blends four, five, or six sounds into a real word or a nonsense word. To link mastered letter cluster sounds and syllable sounds to their visual symbols ***End of this Excerpt***

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