Ideal Reading Program For Sixth Grade

Reading is an acquired skill, developed through explicit teaching and founded upon a child’s innate ability to hear and process sounds from birth. Beginning at birth exposure to oral language, gestures and the functions of communication (Fellows & Oakley, 2010 p.165) allows exploration of sounds and words and their connection to each other, and introduces cue systems that will later assist in decoding complex text as development of reading ability occurs. Cue systems including linguistic rules of speech, such as grammatical, pragmatic, semantic and syntactic structures (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2004, p. 324), provide readers with strategies and knowledge for comprehension and phonological awareness (Gascoigne, 2005, p. 1). Rich language exchanges

The purpose of this paper is to identify and understand the importance of a supplemental phonics program, such as Fundations by Wilson Language, to ensure that students are making noticeable and trackable changes in reading and understanding. Phonemic awareness is the key skill needed for students to better understand how letters and sounds correlate. Some basal reading programs do not have an

Bobrow discusses the importance of phonemic awareness. Bobrow states that phonemic awareness is important for reading achievement and learning how to read. According to Bobrow, students need to be able to “grasp printed words”(para.3) and know how words “work together”

Within the field of education, a continuous debate about the most effective manner in which to provide reading instruction has been on-going since the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty Report of the 1960s. The primary focus of that debate is whether a skills-based approach or a meaning – based approach was most effective for teaching beginning reading skills (phonemic and phonological awareness), comprehension, and enrichment. (Frey, et.al, 2005) The silks-based or direct instruction approach to reading instruction focuses on explicit and systematic instruction of letter-sound correspondence, phonological and phonemic awareness, and their relationship to reading and comprehension. The meaning- based or balanced

To measure children’s phonological awareness, teachers should look at children’s ability with different skills. For example, a child with strong phonological awareness is able to understand and can use, alliteration, the concept of spoken word, rhyme, syllable blending and syllable segmenting. Children start to read by listening others, and then recognizing sound in words, sounding words out for themselves and recognizing familiar words, so it is important for children to learn the phonological awareness because it can help kids to become a successful reader.

When phonological awareness is worked on skills of attention, perception and visual amplitude are developed that allow to acquire greater fluency for reading.

To become a strong reader, the students must develop skills in all six components of the reading - phonological awareness, phonics, oral language, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Now, let see how interdependent they are. First, fluency is considered to be bridge recognition and comprehension. Fluency readers have the ability to read at a suitable rate of speed for their grade level. This ability will them to focus on students can focus on the meaning of the words rather than on decoding the words. With the background knowledge, the students have the ability to manipulate sound of the language. This called phonological awareness skills which help the student to make a connection between sounds and the words. Also, learning to make a

In completing the CAP, I administered the Phonemic Awareness Skills Screener (PASS) to five of my seven students in my summer middle school English class. The results of the assessment are attached in the submission of the document. In looking at the raw data that I collected on my student’s phonemic awareness skills the area that every student needed to work on was phoneme segmentation or phoneme deletion.

Blachman, B. A. (in press). Early intervention and phonological awareness: A cautionary tale. In B. Blachman (Ed.), Foundations of reading acquisition and dys-lexia: Implications for \Early intervention. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associate

Synthetic phonics can be taught in many ways. The Primary Framework for Literacy (DfES, 2006a) gives a progressive plan on how to teach phonics. I found during my time with Foundation year 2’s the teacher I was working with concentrated on implementing four new letters every week as well as recapping what they had learnt from the previous week. I asked her if it worked well and she certainly seemed to think so. Before she would be doing a new letter a day, although this would allow her to teach at a good pace she noticed the children were struggling to remember all the letters and sounds they would learn. Because of this she had to revise the way she was teaching the phonics to go at a pace the children were comfortable with. She revised her plan so that every day her children would recap over the letters they had previously been taught. I noticed that however much planning was in place that it was always best to go by how the children would cope and over time you will

According to Stanovich (1986) and Kaminksi & Powell-Smith (2016), phonological awareness stands out as the highest predictor of reading acquisition. Phonological Awareness (PA) is the process in which students learn that words are made up of phonemes (sounds) and learn each individual phoneme (Eissa, 2014). PA is the ability to recognize rhymes, counting syllables, and separating the beginning sound from the ending sound (e.g. /c/ from /at/) (Yopp & Yopp, 2000). More than twenty percent of kindergarten and first grade students struggle with an aspect of PA; furthermore eight to ten percent show significant delays (Trehearne, 2003).

Instead of allowing students to feel helpless, there is a need to provide the students with tools that will enable them to overcome the reading difficulties themselves. According to Dr. Joseph Torgeson (2002), two components are necessary for reading comprehension: language comprehension skills and the ability to read words in print fluently and accurately.

How should a flourishing reading program for fifth grade appear? “There’s no one best way to teach reading; instead, [educators must] create a balanced literacy program” to meet every student’s needs (Tompkins, 2014, p.327). It is essential that all literacy programs feature instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension so that students can become capable readers and writers.

The process of learning to read can be difficult for young children. Teachers require knowledge and understanding of the reading process as well as skills to teach children skills and strategies to become a successful reader. Using a balanced approach to teaching children reading skills and strategies, teachers start with explicit instruction before gradually giving students responsibility and independence in using these strategies for reading. Teachers must understand the importance of oral language, vocabulary, concepts of print, phonemic awareness, phonics and comprehension within the reading process to ensure that children are well equipped with these elements prior to learning to read. Knowledge and understanding of these concepts give teachers the skills to teach children to read.

Deriving lessons from an exhaustive review of research, consultations with experts, and public hearings, the members of the National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000) highlighted five essential components of effective reading instruction, as follows: (1) phonemic awareness – instruction designed to teach children the ability to focus