1. I can read all of these words!
Word Recognition (Decoding and Sight Recognition) + Comprehension = Reading
I can read all of these words!

2. Characteristics of Struggling Readers
Over reliance on guessing strategies
May have low language skills
Limited phonemic awareness
Limited understanding of phonics
Memory problems
Read slowly and hesitantly, or not at all
Limited understanding about the text they read
Often become frustrated and avoid reading
Moats (1998)

3. What Makes a Reader Proficient?
Development of phonemic awareness
Understanding of letter-sound correspondence
Fluency based on automatic recognition of letter-sound relationships
Automatic recognition of sight words
Rich vocabulary
Because of a solid foundation in reading skills, proficient readers have more cognitive resources to focus on comprehension.
Moats (1998)

4. What We Know About Reading Instruction
Systematic and explicit approaches to instruction are consistently more effective than approaches that depend on student discovery and inference.
The need for explicit instruction extends beyond phonics. We need to teach fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies this way, too.

5. Critical Elements in Reading Instruction
Phonological
Awareness
Comprehension
Phonemic
Awareness
Oral
Language
Reading
Fluency
Phonics
Vocabulary
Development
These elements are taught through an integrated, balanced approach, and not in isolation.

6. Receptive Language Strategies
When providing information, use visuals such as pictures, charts, time lines, graphic organizers, webs, calendars, demonstrations, examples.
Keep instructions concise & emphasize key information.
Pre-teach new vocabulary.
Link new content to prior knowledge.

7. Expressive Language Strategies
When child makes a grammatical error, restate information using correct structures.
Use higher order thinking questions (explain, describe, evaluate, compare).
Engage in story telling.
Make scrapbooks of events, favorite things, or collections (discuss with child).

8. Phonological Awareness
is a general understanding that spoken words are made up of sounds.
is based on processing the sounds of spoken language.

9. Examples of Phonological Awareness
This sentence has 5 words:
The cat ran after me.
These words rhyme: cat - bat.
These words don’t rhyme: ran - bed.
This word has 2 syllables: af-ter.
These words start with the same sound:
me - milk.

10. Phonemic Awareness
The specific understanding that spoken words are made up of individual phonemes.
It is part of phonological awareness.
Phonemes are the individual sounds in spoken words. They are the smallest units of meaningful speech.

11. Examples of How Phonemic Awareness Relates to Reading
Blending phonemes into words.
Segmenting words into phonemes.
Deleting a phoneme from a word.
Say “sat” without the /s/.
Adding a phoneme to a word.
Add /m/ to the beginning of “at.”
Manipulating phonemes in words.
Say “bat.” Now change the /b/ to /k/.

12. Phonemic awareness abilities in kindergarten (or in that age range) appear to be the best single predictor of successful reading acquisition.
(A Position Statement from the Board of Directors of the International Reading Association, 1998)

13. Phonemic Awareness Skills: Intervention Strategies
Make Riddles
Ask students riddles that require them to manipulate sounds in their heads:
What rhymes with pig and starts with /d/? (dig)
What rhymes with at and starts with /f/? (fat)
What rhymes with dog and starts with /f/? (fog)

14. Phonics
“Phonics is a way of teaching reading that conveys an understanding that there are correspondences between phonemes (the sounds of spoken language) and graphemes (the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written language).”
Reithaug (2002)
The 26 letters of the English alphabet represent 44 phonemes.

15. Phonics: Instructional Strategies
Teach high frequency words – these are words that are often confused.
e.g. were/where; was/saw; from/for.
Teach patterns using onsets and rimes, also known as “word families.”
e.g. -ack; -ice; -ock, etc.
Teach chunking longer words into more manageable chunks.
Teach prefixes, suffixes, and root words.
Keep instruction in context.
Beers (2003)

16. “The twenty-five most common words make up about one-half of our written materials.”
Fry, Kress & Fountoukidis, 2000
“We have over a half-million words to communicate with, but half of everything we write and read depends on only 0.02 percent—on only those 100 most frequent words.”

17. Instant (sight) recognition of words, especially high-frequency words, develops best when students read large amounts of text.
The student who can read on sight 8 out of the 10 words in the sentence before them can read that sentence and can usually decode the remaining words by using phonics, context or picture cues. Most importantly, they can understand the meaning of what they are reading.
Without adequate high frequency/sight word knowledge, a reader’s fluency, and therefore their comprehension, is impaired.

18. Common High Frequency Word Lists
Dolch
Edward Fry’s “Instant Word” Lists
Rebecca Sittons Core Words

19. Assessment
High frequency/sight word knowledge needs to be assessed frequently and taught strategically.
Students need to be able to read the word without sounding it out and with automaticity.

20. Word Identification in a Balanced Reading Program
Teaching letter/sound relationships helps children build fluency, automaticity and independence.
Children are encouraged to use alphabetic, semantic and syntactic cues to identify unfamiliar words.
Teacher modeling and multiple opportunities to interact with text leads to the development of word identification strategies.

21. Becoming Aware of Language
When beginning readers and writers explore written language, they develop critical concepts about print.
When children explore oral language, they develop phonemic awareness and the ability to manipulate and play with the sounds of language.

22. Becoming Aware of Language (cont.)
Phonemic awareness is sequential. Children become aware of words, syllables, rhyme and eventually, to individual phonemes.
A child who has phonemic awareness can identify the sounds he/she hears, segment words and blend sounds into words.

23. (Adams, 1990; Anderson et al., 1985).
What Does Research Say?
Substantial evidence suggests that word identification skills should be taught directly rather than waiting for children to discover them on their own and that such skills should be taught early.
Effective readers are also strategic; that is, they learn how and when to use combinations of word identification skills
(Adams, 1990; Anderson et al., 1985).

24. Who Is At-Risk?
Children who overuse context clues and fail to attend to letter-sound associations may misidentify words, and that could cause them difficulty in constructing meaning for a passage (Simon & Leu, 1987).

25. Who is At-Risk? (cont.)
Children who do not effectively use meaning clues often sound out nonsense words or are so slow and laborious in word identification that they cannot simultaneously draw meaning from the words that they are reading (Biemiller, 1970; Samuels, 1985).

26. Why Develop Automaticity?
The first 300 words make up 65% of all written material. (Frye)
Comprehension begins to break down when students are focused on trying to decode or sound out the words.

27. What Are High Frequency Words?
High frequency words are phonetic and can be decoded, but occur with such frequency that they often need to be learned before their specific phonics pattern is taught.
Examples of frequently occurring words: the, in, I, a, go, to, that, with, about, please

28. What Are Sight Words?
Sight words are words, usually Anglo-Saxon in origin, that must be memorized because of their non-phonetic structure and high degree of usage.
Examples of nonphonetic words: come, said, was, two and through

29. What Are High Interest Words?
High interest words are words with special interest or emotional overtones and are frequently used and recognized by students in their personal reading and writing.
Examples of high interest words: mom, dad, dinosaur

30. Importance of Recognizing Words for Independent Reading
Enables use of context clues.
Increases fluency and ease of reading
Children can read greater amounts and for longer periods.
Focus can be more on comprehension than on decoding.

31. California Language Arts Standards
1.0 Decoding and word recognition
Kinder Read simple one syllable and high frequency words (i.e.: sight words)
1st Read common, irregular sight words (e.g. the, have said, come give, of)
2nd 1.6 Read aloud fluently and accurately with appropriate intonation and expression

32. Instructional Implications
Rhyme awareness activities
Sound awareness activities
Teaching onset and rime/analogy strategy
Letter-sound activities
Multi-letter chunking
Visual discrimination and configuration
Building words

33. Instructional Implications (cont.)
Word sorts
Cross-checking and self-monitoring
Context clues
Cloze Activities
Word Wall Activities
Structural Analysis
Phonetic cue strategies

34. Ways to Classify and Sort Words
There are many ways to sort and classify words on a word wall, in a literacy center, or in a whole or small group lesson:
Words that start the same (beginning blend, consonant cluster or onset)
Words that end the same (rime)
Words that rhyme
Words that contain the same number of syllables

35. Ways to Classify and Sort Words (cont.)
Long words, short words
Words I know, words I think I know and words I don't know at all
Words with long or short vowels
Words with schwa sound
Synonyms, antonyms
Compound words

36. Word Walls
Using word walls is an effective classroom strategy for learning and practicing HFW/sight words
As new words are learned they are added to the wall in ABC order
HFW words walls are added to and utilized all year
If it is on the wall, they are responsible for knowing how to read and spell it correctly!

37. Activities for Word Wall Practice
Speed reading all words under one letter
Read using different voices/expressions
Guess my word
Rhyming words
Read the entire wall forwards or backwards
Preposition/pronoun/noun/verb etc. hunt

38. Whole Class HFW Practice
Word wall games
Slap
I have_____, who has____?
Wordo
Word wall cards in ABC order
Pass the cards

39. Slap that Word Associate and reinforce written and spoken words that have been introduced during your lessons. need Materials: fly swatter, word wall (words written on a chalkboard or white board). The goal of the activity is that given a spoken word, the student will quickly be able to recognize the word's written form.
Aim: Building fluency and recognition skills
Activity: Slap words located on a 'word wall'
Outline:
Have your students gather near the word wall.
Use the following introduction: We are going to attempt to locate words on the word wall quickly. When you hear the word, look for the word on the wall and then swat it as fast as you can with this fly swatter.
Call out a word from the word wall and ask the first student whose turn it is to locate the word and swat it with the fly swatter.
Lead the class in a cheer when the correct word is slapped. Aid students who are having trouble. When the first student's turn is over, repeat the process for the next student.

40. Small Group HFW Practice
Slap
ABC order
Pass the card
Guess my word(s)
Concentration
Wordo

41. Individual Student Support
Word cards on rings
Word lists on desk
New words added to individual spelling dictionaries
Word hunts while reading
Practice, practice, practice!

42. Practice at Home Make sure you have directions to hand out to parents on Open School Night
Flash cards
Concentration
Word hunts for focus words
Make words with magnetic letters on fridge
Words posted around the house
Read, read, read!

43. Beyond the Word Bank
Match cards whose word begins with the same letter or syllable.
Match cards whose word ends with the same letter or syllable.
Match cards whose word is the same.
Match cards whose words rhyme.
Arrange cards according to alphabetical order.

44. Beyond the Word Bank (cont.)
Arrange cards according to the number of syllables in each word.
Make up sentences using the words on the cards.
Make up a story using all the words on the cards.
Find synonyms, antonyms or homonyms.
Find cards whose words have the same root or base word.

45. Beyond the Word Bank (cont.)
Find cards whose words have prefixes or suffixes.
Find cards with compound or derived words.
Arrange cards by the stress on the words.
Make up a story or poem using all or most of the words on the cards.

46. Designing Word Recognition Instruction
Identify word recognition error types.
Provide systematic word recognition instruction on specific skills.
Pre-teach word types in the text prior to reading.
Structure time for student to practice the text with a peer, adult, or tape.

47. High frequency/site words: is, be, to, us, am, in
High frequency phrases:
by the dog
for the day
on the bed
over the top
Source: Building Fluency: Do It Well and Do It Right! Molly McCabe

48. Vocabulary Development
Part of the semantic cueing system (word meaning).
Cannot be taken for granted that students understand all the words they read.
Oral vocabulary supports the understanding of reading vocabulary.
Reading vocabulary involves more than understanding individual words. It also depends on the sentence a word is in (its spelling, content, and pragmatics).

49. Vocabulary Development: Instructional Strategies
Read to students.
Use material above students’ reading level.
Elaborate on new vocabulary to create a deeper understanding of words.
Create scenarios/simulations that allow students to practice using new vocabulary.

50. Comprehension The goal of reading is to comprehend.
Proficient readers:
use a variety of strategies,
use strategies before, during and after reading,
use different strategies for different texts at different places along the reading development continuum,
interact with the text in order to construct meaning.

51. How Comprehension Relates to Reading
Relate the content of the text to personal experience and activate prior knowledge:
predict,
develop questions before & during reading,
clarify,
summarize,
visualize,
monitor understanding,
connect ideas to construct meaning,
inference.

52. An Example of a Reading Comprehension Strategy
THE PREP STRATEGY
Preview the reading
Read key paragraphs
Express ideas in writing
Prepare study cards
Hock, Deshler, & Schumaker (2000)

53. Fluency: Instructional Strategies
Review high frequency words.
Repeated Readings:
- Have students reread passages that are at an independent reading level.
- Reread passage until predetermined goal is achieved.
- Record reading time and number of correct words.