Curriculum Guide for Spoken Language and Word Recognition

10), an embedded approach, investigating the complexity of relationships of graphophonic knowledge. Additional activities to support phonics instruction include building word lists based on common elements (Pinnell & Fountas, 1998, p. 157), segmenting words into onset and rime (Emmitt et al, 2013, p.12) and the introduction of high frequency or sight words through modelling and sight words games such as flash cards, sentence strips, bingo, word shapes and extensive reading (Fellows & Oakley, 2010, p. 219) ensuring students reach a point of automaticity (Konza, 2016, p. 157), as sight words feature sounds that contradict the rules for learning the 44 phonemes and the point of automaticity allows higher-level comprehension processes to occur due to available cognitive

Phonemic awareness is a vital role in literacy instruction. Many schools and districts adopt a commercially published basal reading program and it becomes the cornerstone of their instruction ( (David Chard, n.d.). We also know that through investigation and research it has shown us that word-recognition instruction and instruction in oral language skills related to word recognition were inadequately represented. (David Chard, n.d.) The same researchers have found that the reading passages that students are reading didn’t relate to the words they were learning. In order for students to read at grade level or above a supplemental program should be implemented. I have found that at my school we are lacking a phonics program that will reach different students abilities and make them successful in reading. My goal for this paper is to show my district that using a supplemental phonics program aside from our basal phonics program will prove beneficial to strategic readers who fall below grade level.

The Fry Sight-Word Inventory is an informal, criterion-referenced screener which measures high-frequency word achievement. Fry 's Instant Words have been determined as the most common words used in English ranked in order of frequency. Specifically, Fry found that twenty-five words make up approximately a third of all items published, one-hundred words comprise almost half of all of the words found in publications, and three-hundred words make up approximately sixty-five percent of all written material. The first three-hundred words on Fry’s list should be mastered by the end of corresponding grade levels, and lists four through ten should be mastered between fourth and fifth grades. Each hundred words are broken down even further into twenty-five words per list, according to difficulty and frequency, and should be assessed sequentially. The goal of progress monitoring high-frequency word mastery is to increase fluency on high-frequency words in order to further automaticity within our students’ reading, which ultimately impacts overall comprehension.

Phonics advocates have been arguing that in order for children to learn to read, they need to have an explicit instruction in the rules of printed text in order to read properly. The phonics approach has been described as “bottom up” as it teaches the children to decode text and then the meaning and understanding will follow while the whole word approach is described as “top down,” as the children depend on the pictures within the book, form hypothesis and make predictions of the words with the text of the book being read (Wren, 2003).

Fluency in reading and writing involves many steps that can be taught at home or in the classroom; however, when a teacher and/or parent focus is primarily on the preparation of a variety of activities that include practice in one particular area, such as a popular activity called Scoop the Pelican. This activity involves cut-up sentences. Scoop the Pelican is a productive activity for children who are having difficulty learning about letters, sounds, and words. When reading continuous print, children seem to forget what they know. When we test in isolation, most students seem to know letter-sound relationships, phonograms, or high-frequency words; however the reader uses both pauses and intonation to parse sentences into meaningful phrases.

As discussed within the lesson plan, the letters-sound correspondence th- /th/ was chosen as the focus for this lesson due to data from a previous phonics assessment and anecdotal evidence that supported the idea that many students are confusing the /th/ and /f/ sounds when spelling and pronouncing unfamiliar words. In particular, many students are substituting the /th/ or th in words for a /f/ or f – spelling the word “with” as “wif”. This lesson aligns directly with the standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.3.A (Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs) and specifically works to strengthen the correspondence between th-/th/. Additionally, by learning and gaining confidence with using digraphs students work towards the standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.1.2.E (Spell untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling conventions) as they begin to use these digraphs to decode and spell new words.

The targeted skills for my reading toolkit are phonological awareness and alphabetic understanding through sound segmentation and blending. This lesson will address the Kindergarten standard of K.3B. In this standard, students use the relationships between letters and sounds, spelling patterns, and morphological analysis to decode written English. Students are expected to use knowledge of letter-sound relationships to decode regular words in text and independent of content. I chose Elkonin boxes as the tool to help my student master this targeted skill. I selected this particular strategy because Elkonin boxes help students build phonological awareness by segmenting words into sounds or syllables. Additionally, they teach

The guided reading level of our focus book, Arthur Lost and Found by Marc Brown was level K. Ryan was able to read 90% of the words correctly, which determines that this book is at his highest instructional reading level. Ryan’s errors were all visual miscues. These miscues displayed a pattern in Ryan missing the medial phonemes in words, but he uses phonics in order to successfully read the initial and final phonemes. Throughout his reading, Ryan made up words that were not real words in the English language, such as “growled” as “growereld,” “habits” as “hubits,” and “paid” as “palled.” This determines that Ryan is not reading for meaning, as he makes up words as he reads, rather than using context in order to make meaning of the words.

As a special education teacher, I learn to recognize that the way to support the range of diversity in my classroom is to know how to decide which aspects of literacy development to teach. Students must be able to recognize the sounds, or phonology, of language in order to understand how speech is related to print. Children with special needs require assistance in learning to develop phonological awareness and this understanding is essential to learning to read an alphabetic language. Some of the strategies that really work for me are; (1) to model and practice a simple task, such as rhyming, and (2) then complex tasks, such as segmenting and blending. I also use additional strategies to help students manipulate sounds, such as using blocks

According to our textbook, there are five approaches to phonics instruction. The approaches include synthetic phonics instruction, embedded phonics instruction, analogy-based phonics instruction, analytic phonics instruction, and phonics-through-spelling instruction. Synthetic phonics instruction shows the student how to change letters or letter combinations into speech sounds to form known words, and is commonly referred to as sounding out words. Embedded phonics instruction teaches students by embedding phonics instruction in text reading and relies on incidental learning. Phonics through spelling instruction teaches students to segment spoken words into phonemes and write letters that represent those

Before reading, it is important for students to decode words. Teachers use phonics instruction to individually focus on each letter of the alphabet as well as their corresponding sounds. Kindergarten students must have phonemic awareness, which is also known as the understanding of each letter of the alphabet represents its own sound. Author Stewig stated, “In a class, I had the children listen to the sounds and try to tell the group what they thought the sound was. This was an effective motivation for group discussion, and much excited giving of reasons for their ideas. If the children couldn’t tell from listening to the tape what the sound was, then I would make the sound, to give a visual clue as well. Identifying the sounds without the visual clue was a challenge for the children, and they were quite proud of themselves when they could correctly identify a sound”. In other words, not every student learns and processes information the same way; therefore, teachers use different strategies for their students. When students have mastered the concept of phonemic awareness and decoding, they will be able to read beginner

Robert Meeham once said, “Every child has a different learning style and pace. Each child is unique, not only capable of learning but also capable of succeeding” (Brainy Quote). Some students are faced with difficult hurdles throughout their education. Some students have learning disabilities. Learning disabilities cause obstacles for the student, teachers and parents to face on a daily basis. In particular, younger students with speech disorders have a noticeable effect on educational programs and effects on teaching/learning process. Due to the frustration that speech disorders can cause for younger children their behaviour can become unpredictable. Parents and educators cannot be certain of child’s actions in all scenarios.

Roberts, T. (2003). Effects of Alphabet-Letter Instruction on Young Children's Word Recognition [Electronic Version]. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95 (1), 41-51.

Improving vocabulary is crucial to the learners reading comprehension abilities. For the Reflective Observation stage of the vocabulary instruction part of the session, the learners will be provided with a list of words that are commonly seen in materials the learners are likely to encounter in their everyday lives. They will be given a few minutes to look over the words and then asked to rank their knowledge of the words, including pronunciation. Next, for the Concrete Experience stage, the instructor will introduce the words and their definitions, giving the learner time to write down the definitions, visual pronunciation cues, and the opportunity to ask questions. For the Abstract Conceptualization stage, the learner will then be asked to reflect on their initial rankings, and invited to discuss whether they felt their initial ranking was accurate or not. For the Active Experimentation stage at the end of the vocabulary session, the learners will be given a fieldwork assignment, which request that they find in materials that contain the vocabulary words they learned during that session.

The child generally lacks knowledge of the alphabet, lacks left-to-right directionality in writing, and lacks concept of word (one-to-one matching of spoken and written words). Consistent spacing between words and consistent use of letter-sound correspondences are absent.