Fueling Up on Words: Vocabulary, Phonics, & Spelling

The Next ChapterSession 8

Barb Mick - COOR ISDJackie Fry - COP ESD

Time for a roadmap check…

We’ve introduced assessment, thought about our literacy histories and those of our students, looked at the developmental progression of readers and how to determine the level of our students, and taken a deeper look at comprehension. We looked at writing from a number of angles, and began to practice assessing our students’ writing. We’ve looked more closely at formative assessment and goal setting, and practiced using tools to score our students’ writing and confer with individual writers. We’ve been down the path of oral language and talked about talk as the foundation of comprehension.

Tonight we will circle back to fuel up on words, looking more closely at phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and vocabulary and examining those Digging Deeper Tools.

Your Turn…

1. Appoint a time-keeper at your table. (You will have 15 minutes total for discussion, so make sure everyone gets a chance to share.)

2. Talk in your group about which assessments you used, what they told you, and what lesson you designed to work on Oral Language.

3. Were there any surprises? What is one thing you changed as a result of our discussion last week?

Goals for Session 8

1. Review the foundations of literacy and take another look at the Common Core Foundational Skills through the lens of MLPP

2. Understand the Digging Deeper Tools (Concepts of Print, Phonemic Awareness, Hearing & Recording Sounds, Letter/Sound ID, Known Words, and Sight Word/Decodable Word List): when to use them and how they can inform our instruction

3. Reinforce our understanding of Phonics, Spelling, and Vocabulary and learn some tools for assessing our students’ skills in these areas

4. Understand the connection between Vocabulary and Comprehension

The Foundations of Literacy

Letter-Sound Identification

Concepts of Print

Phonemic Awareness

The lastest research…

Shows that kindergarteners made bigger gains in reading when they learn more advanced content such as matching letters to sounds.

Teachers spend nearly twice as much time on basics such as alphabet recognition.

“If you teach kids what they already know, they’re not going to learn as much.”

Researchers found that even students who started kindergarten lacking basic skills made bigger gains when teachers emphasized advanced material. Students learn more when taught advanced content, regardless of whether they have attended preschool or come from low-income families.

Academic Content, Student Learning, and the Persistence of Preschool Effects (November 25, 2013)

The Common Core Foundational Skills

Print Concepts

Phonological Awareness

Phonics and Word Recognition

Fluency

TURN AND TALK – What are the standards for each component for your grade? How does your school currently assess these standards? How do you use the information?

Phonemic Awareness: Definition

Phonemic awareness (PA) is the understanding that words are composed of a sequence of individual sounds. The phoneme is the smallest unit of sound.

Phonemic awareness includes both hearing and manipulating sounds (phonemes).

Phonemes (sounds) are different from graphemes which are written and represented in words. Phonics involves teaching students how to use grapheme-phoneme correspondences to decode or spell words.

5 levels of phonemic awareness

in terms of difficulty1. to hear rhymes and alliteration as measured by

knowledge of nursery rhymes

2. to do oddity tasks (comparing and contrasting the sounds of words for rhyme and alliteration)

3. to blend and split syllables

4. to perform phonemic segmentation (such as counting out the number of phonemes in a word)

5. to perform phoneme manipulation tasks (such as adding, deleting a particular phoneme and regenerating a word from the remainder)

Rationale

Students who have a

strong foundation in

phonemic awareness

become successful readers!

Research on Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of reading success.

Phonemic awareness training was found to be very effective in teaching phonemic awareness to students.

Phonemic awareness training improved children’s ability to read and spell in both the short and long term.

Programs that focused on teaching one or two PA skills yielded larger effects on PA learning than programs teaching three or more of these manipulations.

Research, continued…

Instruction that taught phoneme manipulation with letters better helped the children acquire PA skills than instruction without letters.

Teaching children in small groups produced larger effect sizes on PA acquisition than teaching children individually or in classroom-size groups.

Five to eighteen hours of PA instruction is optimal and showed better results than programs that used more or less instructional time.

Socioeconomic status (SES) exerted no differential impact on learning PA; however, the language spoken by the child does affect student learning of PA.

Based on the findings of Schatschneider, et.al. (1999), the following six tasks are ordered from

easy (1) to difficult (6):

1. First-sound comparison – identifying the names of pictures beginning with the same sound

2. Blending onset-rime units into real words

3. Blending phonemes into real words

4. Deleting a phoneme and saying the word that remains

5. Segmenting words into phonemes

6. Blending phonemes into nonwords

What does Phonemic Awareness

instruction look like? Phonemic awareness training often begins with

other phonological tasks like rhyming, breaking sentences into words, and breaking words into syllables before students are taught individual phonemes.

Initial PA activities are oral and move from the easier PA skills to the more difficult ones. After children are able to discriminate, isolate, and blend phonemes orally, the tasks should be linked to phonics instruction where the visual shapes of the letters are included.

Direct instruction should last no more than 10-15 minutes and then be reinforced throughout the day.

Instruction should be based on student need – children who lack phonemic awareness should be given multiple opportunities each day. Students who have already mastered PA move on to other activities.

Activities are deliberate, purposeful, and intentional with only one or two areas of focus.

Phonemic awareness is used in the context of reading and writing – not only in isolation.

Activities should be playful, engaging, and interactive.

What does Phonemic Awareness instruction NOT

look like? Paper and pencil activities

Phonemic awareness instruction is rote memorization and drill.

Activities are always presented to the whole group.

The focus is on the “sound of the week”

Awareness of the relation between sounds and the alphabet can be taught.

Because our language is alphabetic, decoding is an essential and primary means of recognizing words. There are simply too many words in the English language to rely on memorization as a primary word identification strategy.

Findings from the National Reading Panel

Definition of Phonics

The alphabetic principle (phonics) is composed of two parts:

Alphabetic Understanding: Words are composed of letters that represent sounds.

Phonological Recording: Using systematic relationships between letters and phonemes (letter-sound correspondence) to retrieve the pronunciation of an unknown printed string or to spell words.

http://reading.uoregon.edu

Rationale

Phonics is one of the tools students use when reading. Because our language is alphabetic, decoding is an essential and primary means of recognizing words.

Research

The combination of instruction in phonological awareness and letter-sound correlation is necessary for successful early reading.

Letter-sound knowledge is a prerequisite to effective word identification. A primary difference between good and poor readers is the ability to use letter-sound correspondence to identify words.

Students who acquire and apply the alphabetic principle early in their reading careers reap long-term benefits.

Teaching students to phonologically recode words is a difficult, demanding, yet achievable goal with long-lasting effects.

Good readers must have a strategy to phonologically recode words.

During the alphabetic phase, readers must have lots of practice phonologically recoding the same words to become familiar with spelling patterns.

What does instruction in the Alphabetic Principle look like?

Phonics can be taught in many different ways, but it is important that meaningful text is used for instruction and that students are able to transfer their phonics skills to “real” reading.

Instruction is short – 10 to 15 minutes per day of direct instruction and then reinforcement throughout the day and on an ongoing basis during reading and writing activities.

Phonics instruction can be whole group or part of the guided reading lesson. But it must be interactive, engaging, and meet the students’ needs.

Using meaningful words, students’ names, and connected text, student are taught to associate the sound with the letter.

What does instruction in the Alphabetic Principle NOT look

like? Instruction uses isolated drill or worksheets.

Instruction is rigid rather than based on students’ needs.

The focus is on “the letter of the week.”

All students are receiving the same instruction regardless of knowledge and need.

Hearing and Recording Sounds in Words (HRSIW)

WHAT: Hearing & Recording Sounds in Words measures a student’s ability to hear individual phonemes and record them as letters.

WHY: It demonstrates a student’s ability to hear individual sounds buried within words, and shows evidence of a student’s ability to represent sounds with appropriate written symbols.

WHEN: Start in mid-kindergarten and continue through second grade until the student has mastered the task.

High Frequency Words

Also referred to as “sight words”

Refers to those non-decodable words that do not follow phonics rules as well as those high frequency words that are decodable but should be “over-learned” so they are automatic.

Although there is some benefit to isolated word recognition, research shows that such training is insufficient as it may fail to transfer when the practiced words are presented in meaningful text. National Reading Panel

What does Sight Word instruction look like?

The focus is on the most frequently needed words in reading and writing.

Generally, 3-5 words are introduced each week.

Students will practice the words in a variety of ways.

Students will be held accountable for the words that have been introduced.

Words selected will come from the texts being read in all content areas.

What does Sight Words instruction NOT look like?

Too many words are introduced.

Words are practiced only in isolation.

No accountability for the words.

Word Wall never used as a teaching tool.

Materials for Sight Word Instruction

Instructional level reading texts

Word lists of high frequency words and phrases

Word Walls

Games, manipulatives, and other activities focusing on high frequency words

See the HANDOUT: Word Wall 10-Minute Review Games

Sight Word/Decodable Assessment

WHAT: The sight word decodable list measures students’ ability to read high frequency and decodable words chosen for a grade level.

WHY: Recognizing frequently seen words automatically increases a student’s fluency and frees the brain to attend to comprehension.

WHEN: As needed K-3. This task often provides a starting point for administering an informal reading inventory.

Known Words Assessment

WHAT: Known Words is an assessment that measures the ability of the student to write words easily and automatically. Students can also demonstrate their ability to use analogies to get to new words.

WHY: The assessment helps teachers understand specifically what individual students know about words in order to establish instructional priorities for each student in the early stages of literacy development.

WHEN: (whole group, small group, individually)

K – winter/spring; 1st grade – fall/winter/spring;

2nd grade – at risk students as necessary

The Digging Deeper Assessments

Take out your packet of Digging Deeper Assessments.

You have 10 minutes to look over the assessments, then talk about them at your table.

Please consider the following questions:

Who is using these assessments currently?

What questions do you have?

How could you use them for the grade you teach?

Alternative Assessment: Quick Phonics Screener (QPS)

Will help you find a deficiency in decoding skills more quickly and specifically than other assessment tools

Allows you to hone in on deficit areas to target needed skills

Order of subtests is in logical order: letter i.d., letter sounds, cvc words, cvc words with blends, cvce words, r controlled words, cvc word with digraphs, vowel pairs, words with suffixes and prefixes, 2 syllable words, and multisyllabic words

If a student misses 5 in a section, that is their instructional level

Works nicely with the Spelling Inventory

The Braid of Literacy

Literacy is like a braid of interwoven threads.

Oral Language

Stories

Reading

Orthography

Writing

Spelling (Orthography)

Students need explicit spelling instruction as well as explicit reading instruction.

Spelling skill should not be acquired through reading instruction.

The reason why spelling helps reading is that spelling instruction helps to cultivate students’ knowledge of the alphabetic system which benefits processes used in reading.

Ehri (1997)

Different Levels of Knowledge of the Alphabetic System

Successful Spelling Instruction(Recommendations from Gentry)

1. Follow a curriculum.

2. Use research-based techniques.

3. Focus on the right words and patterns at the right time.

4. Differentiate spelling instruction.

5. Connect spelling and word study to reading and writing.

Spelling Inventory

Read over the Spelling Inventory for your grade level.

As a table team, analyze the sample student’s assessment. Score it together and then talk about what you would do for this student’s next steps.

Be ready to share with the whole group.

Vocabulary

Definition:

Vocabulary refers to the words we must know to

communicate effectively in reading, writing, speaking,

and listening.

Rationale

Vocabulary is among the greatest predictors of reading comprehension (Baker, Simmons, and Kame’enui 1998)

Vocabulary size in kindergarten is an effective predictor of reading comprehension and academic achievement in the later school years (Scarborough 2001).

Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read.

The more words a child knows, the more a child comprehends (The Matthew Effect).

Vocabulary deficiency is one of the primary causes of academic failure.

Vocabulary knowledge and reading success are reciprocal. Students with rich vocabulary comprehend more fully. Students that read and comprehend well increase their vocabulary.

Checking comprehension when 5 percent of the words are

unknownFactoid 1

Caffeine is tasteless. A “strong” wepuha is mostly the result of the amount of coffee in relation of the the amount of the water. The longer the bean is sisku, the less caffeine it has. “Arabica” beans have less caffeine than “Robusta” beans. “Arabica” beans have more flavor than “Robusta” beans, which are mostly used in high-volume coffees and instant coffees.

Factoid 2

Wepuha is the way the bean is edusca, not the bean itself. You can use many different balksiks to produce wepuha coffee. You can also use the wepuha roasted coffee to make a larger cup of coffee. In the United States, wepuha roasting results mostly in a darker roast than wepuha roasting in Europe.

How many words do students need to learn?

Nagy and Anderson (1984) noted that students would come in contact with 88,500 word families by the time they entered high school.

These 88,500 words translate to about 500,000 words.

Luckily, about half of these words are very rarely used. That still equates to about 250,000 words.

Assuming that children attend 180 days of school for thirteen years, students would need to learn 107 words per day and never be absent.

We cannot afford to waste any time on ineffective approaches!

Which words should I teach?

General Vocabulary: TIER 1 Basic for reading

Rarely need to be directly taught

Developed as students read and are read to

Specialized Vocabulary: TIER 2High-utility terms that often change

meaning in different contexts

Includes words for which students know some part of the meaning, but do not have mastery of the complexity of the words’ meaning

Context matters

Technical Vocabulary: TIER 3Bound to a specific discipline

Often need to simply be defined

Vocabulary Words for GeographySeparated by Category

TIER 1

Area

Direction

Distance

Location

North

Place

TIER 2

Elevation

Globe

Hemisphere

Legend

Position

Region

TIER 3

Cardinal direction

Compass rose

Continent

Equator

Latitude

Longitude

4 Stages of Knowing a Word

1. having never seen or heard the word; not in your listening, reading, speaking, or writing vocabularies: catoptromancy, quidnunc, usufructuary, engastrimyth;

2. having heard the word, but not knowing what it means: punctilious, mendacious, mellifluous;

3. recognizing the word in context: discriminate, solution, compound, constitution, division; and

4. knowing and using the word.

What Does Hobbes Know? Not Know?

What does Vocabulary instruction look like?

Students are actively engaged in learning new words

Words that are most critical for understanding the story can be pre-taught

Words should be studied to show their connection to known words rather than in isolation

Children will need many exposures to the new words - approximately 8-15 meaningful exposures to each new word

Vocabulary instruction should include essential content words, multiple-meaning words, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and idioms

Most vocabulary is learned indirectly through a literacy rich environment; however, some must be taught directly.

What does Vocabulary instruction NOT look like?

Memorization of lists of words

Having students write dictionary definitions or write sentences using the words

Vocabulary – Writing Connection

Writing is thinking.

A writer thinks in language…words.

The more words a writer knows, the better he is at writing.

Writing helps students clarify their understanding of ideas and generate new understanding.

Extensive vocabularies help one refine one’s thinking through more nuance and sophistication.

Writing is the ultimate “assessment” of vocabulary.

Your Assignment

1. Do the Spelling Inventory with your case study students. Analyze the results and plan what’s next for these students.

2. Do one of the other assessments presented tonight and analyze the results.

3. Fill out the Reflection for Session 8.

4. Be sure to bring your assessments and analysis to the next session.

Ticket Out the Door & Wrap Up

Make sure to clean up your area and recycle your water bottles.

Please complete your Exit Ticket and turn it in as you leave.

Our next meeting will be: Making the Trip More Meaningful: Deeper Comprehension

Thank you for your hard work, thoughtful contributions, and professionalism.