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

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)

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)

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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/.

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)

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)

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.

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)

“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.”

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

(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).

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).

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).

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.

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

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

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

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.

California Language Arts Standards 1.0 Decoding and word recognition Kinder 1.15 Read simple one syllable and high frequency words (i.e.: sight words) 1st 1.11 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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.