Shannon Keough
December 10, 2009
RE 5100 Final Exam
RE 5100 Fall ‘09
Emergent Readers
1. A. Explain why a child learning the alphabet needs to compare and contrast
- A child needs to find the distinctive features of a letter. He needs to compare the features of one letter to all other letters to determine what really make an M an M. This helps the child to categorize letters by the features that are distinctive to each letter. They must compare the letter to many others to get a good concept of that letter. In the same way a child will need to compare an animal they have just learned about, such as a cow, to many other cows as well as other four legged animals to determine what makes a cow a cow.
- A child needs to see the same letter in different fonts and handwriting to see what is alike among all forms of that letter. What features make it an S? This helps a child to determine how much a letter can change and yet it still remains the same letter.
- When a child is forced to write a letter the way he thinks it should look he is forced to bring all his knowledge about letters to the forefront of his brain. He is able to express his current theory about how that letter work and then is able to compare it to the actual letter.
B. I would assess a group of kindergartners by asking them to spell unfamiliar words. Their invented spellings would allow me to determine where they were in mastering the alphabet. If a child was spelling with beginning consonants or anything lower than this I would assess their alphabet knowledge by using the alphabet assessment from the Howard Street Tutoring Guide. If students cannot identify capital letters, then they would be given a strip to see if they could track the alphabet in order. Students who were unable to track would be one group, those who could track but still needed work on capital letter production would be another group, students who could write capitals but needed work on lower case would be a third group and finally the last group would be students who knew all of the alphabet and where beginning to work on initial consonants.
C. Describe how to teach and give the rationale for teaching students:
a. Teach a child to sing the alphabet song and then give them a strip with the alphabet on it. Teach them through practice to point to each letter as they say the letter in the alphabet song. As students are able to track the letters of the alphabet they will begin to understand how letters work and will be able to recognize them. If a child knows how to track accurately he can find any letter on his strip and figure out what it is by tracking to. If the child knows the letter name they are on their way to spelling using letter names. This knowledge is essential to reading and writing and the child must be able to recognize all letters in order to develop in spelling and reading.
b. Teach a child how to recognize letters in isolation by writing a letter at a time and having students check their guesses tracking on the letter strip. Students must learn to recognize the letters out of the context of the alphabet strip in order to truly master the letters and understand the way the letters work.
c. Tell students to write a letter. Once they have written the letter they can flip their alphabet strip over and track to the letter and see if they made it write. This practice allows students to test their hypothesis about the letter.
d. Provide students with a sheet of paper with columns for each letter they have studied that week. Provide a bag of typed letters that all look the same. Instruct students to put the letter from the bag and put them in the column that they match with. After a couple of days also include the letters in different fonts. Sorting forces students to compare letters to other letters and glean the distinctive features of these letters.
e. Last weeks letters can go in a coffee can for independent work. Students can work in pairs at the coffee can station and one student can time another while they sort the letters. When students sort letters for speed they are learning how to recognize the letters more quickly. Students must recognize letters quickly in order to read words with accuracy and fluency. As students learn letters they may mess them up with other letters, but the goal is for the child to quickly and accurately identify all letters of the alphabet in order to begin reading words.
2. A. Explain how you would conduct a language/experience with students who were spelling in the letter-like stage
- Students would share a common experience in class. This experience would be something that the teacher creates, so something like a show and tell item. The students would talk about the item and the teacher would tell them something about it. The students would then think of their own ‘story’ about the item. The teacher would go around and write down each student’s dictation. The teacher would limit the child to 4-6 words per page. The child is not accurately tracking at this stage, but could be taught how to track 4-6 words per page that they dictated. After all students have their stories written down they would then be required to “read” or recite their stories to another student and teach that student how to track their own story. Students are able to practice with tracking and begin to understand what it feels like to track accurately even before they can actually do it. Each page could then be bound together to make a class book. Each page would include the author’s name, so a child could always find the author if they forgot what the page said.
- For a longer personal narrative, let the child tell a story that goes on and on. When they are done telling their long story, ask them what they want you to write. As the child dictates the story, the teacher should say it back to him word for word. The child does not yet have concept of word so he cannot say it word for word, but the teacher can aid him in his understanding of a word by saying it back word for word. The long dictation should be divided into pages of about 3-6 words. This allows child to track the memorized text even though they cannot truly track yet. The small number of words makes it easier to track and allows child to know if they are right or not when they get to the end of the page.
B. This same activity with students who are learning beginning consonants would differ in three ways: the words could go longer on each page (8-10 words), as the teacher is taking the dictation they can ask the child what they think the word they are saying starts with, student can track and use their knowledge of beginning consonants to self-correct when they get off track.
3. Explain
A. Why children who are spelling with random letters
a. These children point to words because they already understand letters. They are no longer learning their letters and therefore are no longer obsessed with letters. When the human mind is attempting to learn something it becomes cognitively obsessed with that thing and notices it much more than normal. That is why when children are learning their alphabet they point to letter instead of words. However, children who are writing with random letters have already learned the alphabet and now can focus on words.
b. These children do not yet have concept of word because they do not have initial consonant sounds. This means that when they recite a memorized text they words are broken up by stressed syllables and not words. Until the child learns initial consonants they will not be able to self-correct this behavior and begin pointing at the correct word as they say the word.
B. Why children who are spelling with beginning consonants
a. Children begin spelling with beginning consonants because the beginning consonant is often the most salient sound in the word. They do not also start spelling with ending consonants because the ending consonant of a word is not often enunciated like the beginning consonant is.
b. Children say one syllable every time they point to a word after they have already tried using stressed units for dividing language. When stressed units don’t work they try to divide language by syllables.
c. These children can learn to track because they can recognize the letters at the beginning of words. Once they can recognize and name letters they are able to use the letter names to identify the sound they think the letter makes. So when a child attempting to track a memorized passage such as Sam, Sam the baker man, they may say bake when they point to baker and attempt to say er when they point to man. If they understand initial consonants they will see that man starts with m and er does not make the m sound. They will then figure out the word that does make the m sound and point to it. They will then be back on track and will be able to self-correct as they track memorized text.
4. A. A child is ready to start learning beginning consonants when he is spelling with random letters. Once he is spelling with random letters he can write and recognize the letters of the alphabet. He can now begin looking at what letters are at the beginning of words. He knows all the letters so he will be able to understand when you try to show him the letters at the beginning of words. Once he understands the letters he can now build on his understanding by learning which letters go at the beginning of words.
B. They can recognize familiar objects in pictures. Each phoneme is a class of sounds, and if students were taught the sound of a letter in isolation that sound would not always be true. You cannot accurately teach letters sounds in isolation because each consonant is co-articulated with the vowel that follows the consonant. If picture sorts are used then children are able to discover the sound that comes at the beginning of different words and match it to a letter. They will learn all the sounds that a word can start with and still start with the letter B. Also, using picture sort allows students to not only hear the variations of the sound B but also the difference between those sounds and the sounds of another letter. Just like when children learn to recognize letters they must compare the letters to other letters and versions of the same letter, the same is true as they begin to learn the sounds that are associated with each letter. For the purpose of categorizing they must do the same with letter sounds. In a picture sort children will be able to recognize variations of the sound that a letter makes as well as the differences between that letter and another. They will discover the distinctive features of the letter B at the beginning of word.
C. Picture sorts are more helpful because children at this stage cannot read. This also gives them the opportunity to sort by the sound at the beginning of the word and not the letter they see.
Beginning Readers
1. These students know how to divide text into words. When tracking they recognize the beginning and ending sound of a word and know what it should look like, so if they get off track they can easily self-correct by their knowledge of beginning and ending consonants.
2. In order to achieve complete phonemic awareness children need to have lots of exposure to text. Tracking memorized text will allow the child to see the words they are saying spelled correctly. This activity will reinforce their understanding of how letters work in words and will allow them to master many spelling patterns when they see the word they are saying. Complete phonetic awareness cannot be achieved until a child is able to track because if they are not able to track they will saying different words then they are pointing to and will not be able to build their understanding of how letters work in words.
3. A child cannot practice reading words until they are able to track. Once they are able to track they are able to isolate the word and every time they see that word it is reinforced in their mind. It becomes automatic. They also begin noticing the vowel patterns in words, and so this allows them to get words into their sight vocabulary and to keep them separate because of their vowel patterns. When a child does not have concept of word and is still spelling with beginning consonants they have no way of spelling/seeing the difference in similar words such as pot and pet. Once the child is tracking they begin to glean information about how vowels work from the words they are “reading”.
4. A. They need support from both the material and the teacher. They do not have enough words in their word bank to be able to read text that is higher than pre-primer one.
B. The material gives support by providing predictable patterned text and by providing relevant pictures that accompany the text. Children may also dictate their own stories. This provides support because then the text is in the student’s own language.
C. A teacher can give support by participating in choral and echo reading activities with the child. The teacher can also do a picture walk with the book that is going to be read. Teachers should give as little support as necessary for the child.
5. The more a child sees the word, the more automatic that word becomes to their brain. A word bank should be only for words that a child can already read. A word bank is not a good way to teach a child new words, but it is a good way to reinforce the spelling of words that child does already know. Practicing with familiar words will increase word recognition, which will increase reading ability. This practice also allows children to look close at words. The only way to keep words a part in their brain is to notice the vowels. When words are in context children do not always need to pay attention to vowels, but when they are in isolation they do.