MRT STUDY GUIDE
Domain Competency 004 – Word Study
Submitted by: Madelyn Villegas
Explanation: (Important Ideas, Concepts, Strategies)
Phonics
-Phonics: It is a method of instruction that teaches students the systematic relationship between the letters and letters combinations in written language (graphemes) and the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken language and how to use this relationship to read and spell works.
-Phonics instruction is intended for children I the early grades and for older students that are struggling in reading. By first grade students should master phonics skills if they failed to do so; they will have reading problems in other areas as students’ progress in their schooling.
Assessments in kinder and first grade are based on alphabet principle and the reading of nonsense words. This is a good measure because students will use their decoding skills to read the nonsense words.
Intervention should begin as soon as a reading problem is identified through assessment.
-Approaches for Phonics Instructions: p. 172 TRS
· -Synthetic Phonics – Students learn how to transform letter and letter combination into sounds.
· -Analogy Phonics –students learn how to use rimes (phonogram) in a familiar word to identify an unfamiliar word.
· -Analytic Phonics – instruction begins with the identification of a familiar word (mat). The teacher introduces a familiar sound or spelling /a/. The teacher will identify other words that have the familiar sound. (fat, tan, bat) Students will read the new words without blending the individual sounds but using the familiar word as a foundation.
· Embedded Phonics – Phonics is introduced in the context of authentic reading and writing. Phonics elements are introduced informally when the teacher sense that the students need the new knowledge. Students use word solving skills such as context, pictures, familiar word parts, first or last letter of the word.
-General sequence for teaching PHONICS: p. 178 TRS
· Single consonant and short vowels
· Consonant diagraph
· Long vowel with silent e
· Long vowels at the end of the words and syllables
· Y as a vowel
· R-controlled vowels
· Silent consonants
· Vowels digraphs
· Variant vowel diagraphs and diphthongs
-Decoding: It is the ability to convert a printed letters in the word to speech. An important component of decoding is to blend the individual sounds in a word together.
-Encoding: Write the words after you produce the sound or you listen to the sounds. Ex. Mat the student writes m-a-t. mat ---the student encode the word. Ex. Church –ch-ur-ch.
-Word Work: activities that lead students to practice sound/spelling patterns by building, manipulating and sorting words. Word Work activities provide students with the opportunity to encode and decode words and can be conducted with manipulative materials or through writing.
-Some Word Work activities are: word sorting, Elkonin boxes with letters, word building and dictation.
Syllable Types:
Why teach syllables? It is important because it help students to read accurately according with the Six Syllable Type article from Reading Rocket Article:
Without a strategy for chunking longer words into manageable parts, students may look at a longer word and simply resort to guessing what it is — or altogether skipping it. Familiarity with syllable-spelling conventions helps readers know whether a vowel is long, short, a diphthong, r-controlled, or whether endings have been added. Familiarity with syllable patterns helps students to read longer words accurately and fluently and to solve spelling problems — although knowledge of syllables alone is not sufficient for being a good speller.
The hourglass illustrates the chronology or sequence in which students learn about both spoken and written syllables. Segmenting and blending spoken syllables is an early phonological awareness skill; reading syllable patterns is a more advanced decoding skill, reliant on student mastery of phoneme awareness and phoneme-grapheme correspondences.
I think the diagram can help us to understand the sequence of how students acquire the knowledge of the syllable types and how these affect their decoding skills. Also, this information can use as part of your back ground knowledge to decide how to approach the case study.
Figure 5.1. Hourglass Depiction of the Relationship Between Awareness in Oral Language and Written Syllable Decoding
(Contributed by Carol Tolman, and used with permission.)
Click
I also found that the table below can help us to develop any lesson related with the syllable type if I know them. This a great tool for refreshing our minds.
Table 5.1. Summary of Six Types of Syllables in English Orthography
Syllable Type / Examples / DefinitionClosed / dap-ple
hos-tel
bev-er-age / A syllable with a short vowel, spelled with a single vowel letter ending in one or more consonants.
Vowel-Consonant-e (VCe) / com-pete
des-pite / A syllable with a long vowel, spelled with one vowel + one consonant + silent e.
Open / pro-gram
ta-ble
re-cent / A syllable that ends with a long vowel sound, spelled with a single vowel letter.
Vowel Team
(including diphthongs) / aw-ful
train-er
con-geal
spoil-age / Syllables with long or short vowel spellings that use two to four letters to spell the vowel. Diphthongs ou/ow and oi/oy are included in this category.
Vowel-r (r-controlled) / in-jur-i-ous
con-sort
char-ter / A syllable with er, ir, or, ar, or ur. Vowel pronunciation often changes before /r/.
Consonant-le (C-le) / drib-ble
bea-gle
lit-tle / An unaccented final syllable that contains a consonant before /l/, followed by a silent e.
Leftovers: Odd and Schwa syllables / dam-age
act-ive
na-tion / Usually final, unaccented syllables with odd spellings.
Moats, L, & Tolman, C (2009). Excerpted from Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS): Spellography for Teachers: How English Spelling Works (Module 3). Boston: Sopris West.
Irregular Words:
Irregular Words: An irregular word is basically a word that the student does not have the phonics skills to read. Because the students cannot use their phonics skills to decode they need to learn to identify these words as a whole or by sight. (Ex. High frequency words)
Teaching irregular words:
· Introduce high frequency irregular words, then low frequency irregular word.
· Do not introduce together pair of words that are easily confused. Introduce them separate with a processing time among them. Ex. Of-off, there- their, and were-where.
· Introduce irregular words that have similar patterns or are part of the same word family in sets. Ex. could, should, would,
Teaching how to read multisyllabic words:
· Teaching how to read multisyllabic words is very important especially from 5th grade and up. Students will encounter a lot of text with multisyllabic words. Pattern Detection is a very important function of the brain that help with the reading of multisyllabic words (ex. able, tion). Those patterns recur in different words.
· Some of the patterns or chunk in the multisyllabic word can be syllables, affixes, or phonograms.
· Skilled readers’ ability to recognize a long word depends on whether they can chunk it into syllables in the course of perceiving it. When skilled readers encounter a long word, they automatically break it down into smaller units based on the brain’s memory of common letter patterns found in other words.
· Syllabication is the division of multisyllabic word into separate syllables with each syllable containing one vowels sound.
· Three Different research-based approached to teach students how to decode multisyllabic words.
§ Using Syllable Types and Division Principles. TRS p.263
§ Identifying Affixes or words parts. TRS p.266
§ Using flexible syllabication strategies TRS p.267
ACTIVITY #1 :Elkonin Boxes with Letters Source: Teaching Reading Sourcebook TRS Page: 188 & 189
Target: Elkonin Boxes activities to develop phonemic awareness. Students segment words into sounds using chips to represent the sounds. However Elkonin boxes can also be used to help bridge the connection between phonemes and graphemes. Once students are able to segment phonemes and have knowledge of sound/spelling correspondence, they can move to actual letter(s), or graphemes, for each sound into the individual Elkonin boxes.
Say word map
Say the sound /m/ /a/ /p/
Move the chips to the Elkonin boxes.
Write the letter that produce that sound inside of the Elkonin boxes and read the complete word.
/m/sound = chip / /a/ sound= chip / /p/ sound= chipwrite m / write a / write p
Procedure:
ACTIVITY #2:_Spell Out Strategy (Irregular Word) Source: Teaching Reading Sourcebook TRS Page: 255
Target: Introducing Irregular Words. Explain that irregular words cannot be sounded out in the regular way.
Procedure:
· Display the word car (possible words: for, would, should, etc.). Read the word (for) and say a sentence that contains that word. This book is for you.
· Read: Point to the left of the word. Pause briefly and ask: What is this word? Quickly sweep your finger under the word to signal students to respond. (for)
· Spell” Point to the left of the word. Ask: How do you spell the word? (for). Quickly point to each letter as the students spell the word for. (f-o-r).
· Read the word again. (for) Repeat the same procedure various times.
· Use the same procedure to introduce other irregular words.
· Use a word recognition grid to develop automaticity by reading a group of irregular words already learned.
and / for / in / thefor / and / the / in
in / for / and / the
ACTIVITY #3: Word Work Building Source: Teaching Reading Sourcebook TRS Page: 225
Target: This activity helps students to build words using the knowledge they already learned. (VCCe) Students will see how the pattern of VCCe it repeats and help them to write other words.
Procedures:
· We are going to build some words. Print the word on the board (cane).
· Ask: What is this word? (cane)
· Watch as I changed the letter in cane to make a new word. Erase the (n) and replace it with (m).
· Say: I change the (n) to a (m).
· Ask: What is the new word? (came) Erase © and replace it with (s)
· Say: I changed the (c) to (s).
· Ask what is the new word? (same)
· Give students a dry erase board. Explain that in this occasion they will build the words. The teacher just will tell them which letter to change and replace to form the new word. (ex. mate to make to male to sale)
· When word building sequence is complete, ask to a volunteer to read all the words aloud.
ACTIVITY #4: Syllable Division Strategy VCV Source: Teaching Reading Sourcebook TRS Page: 284
Target: Students will learn how to read multisyllabic words in this case two syllables word using the Steps for Syllable Division.
Procedures:
Using the word begin, closet, and river, students will
· Identify and label the vowels
· Identify and label any consonant between the vowels
· Look at the pattern and divide the word
· Identify the first syllable and then read the whole word
· If you do not recognize the word divide it in a different way
· If the students pronounce the word incorrectly, pronounce the word correctly for the whole class and explain the correct pronunciation of the word.
· Let the students apply their new knowledge as they read content text. They will identify example of words with VCV pattern in the reading. Ask students to choose one word and explain it to the class using the Steps for Syllable Division.
ACTIVITY #5: Flexible Strategy for reading Big Words
Source: Teaching Reading Sourcebook TRS Page: 309
Target: Students will learn how to read multisyllabic words by using the Flexible Strategy for Reading Big Words. Also, students will use their knowledge of prefixes and suffixes to accomplish this strategy.
Procedures:
Display the steps for the Flexible Strategy for Reading Big Words.
Display on the board the words: prediction, prevention and reflection.
· Circle the prefixes and suffixes
· Underline the vowels in the uncircled part(s) of the word
· Read the word by parts or syllables
· Read the whole word and confirm its pronunciation.
· If the student or students respond incorrectly, model the correct response for the entire group. For example point under the prefix and say: The prefix is pre-. Then, ask: Everyone, what is the prefix? Pre-. Point at the suffix and say the suffix is tion-. Then, ask: Everyone, what is the suffix? tion-. What part of the word is not circled? Underlined dic ask to students: Do you see a vowel in this part of the word? Yes. What is it? (i) What is the sound /i/.
· Then, let’s read the word part by part or syllable by syllable. Scoop your finger under each part or syllable as you read.
· Everybody read the word: PREDICTION