EDN340---Blog Entry 3

Childhood Reading Memories

I have pictures of myself at age 2 and 3 holding cardboard cut outs with words like “kite” and “book”. According to my mother, I knew the whole key board at age 2 (she was a computer trainer back in the 90’s DOS days). I remember the first book I studied to read myself was a pink book called “c-a-t spells cat”. My mom bought it for me some months before I started school. It had pages about other things too, among them a cow, an apple, and a dog. By the time, I started kindergarten I could read that book by myself, and knew many sight words. However, in elementary school, the teachers never really pushed us to read much until first grade. In kindergarten, we were just studying letter identification and sound. Some kids, like myself, were reading, but it wasn’t a requirement. In my first grade class, I guess after we were assessed, we had reading centers. During this time, I remember seeing classmates working with the leveled readers like the 1-4 reading levels now required to pass kindergarten. When they were working in small groups, one with a teacher, one with an assistant, I was in the “read to self” group. I could just pick any book from our class room reading corner and read to myself. I remember we read a few books as a class, the large print kind, and then would have a follow-up activity, often some type of craft thing. In 2^nd grade, the teacher did class readings with chapter books like “Junie B. Jones” and “Amber Brown is not a Crayon”. In other grades I also remember frequent whole class readings. Our homework or after reading work would usually consist of vocabulary and questions.

Phonemic Awareness vs. Phonic Instruction

Phonemic awareness usually comes soon around the time children understand the alphabetic principle, which is understanding that words are formed by letters and letters make sounds. Developing phonemic awareness is hearing the sounds that make up words, like the end sounds, beginning sounds, and noticing words rhyming. Phonemic awareness does not mean children are seeing the words, just hearing the sounds, and in fact it can come with eyes closed. Phonic instruction requires the child see the words and letters in print. Phonic instruction is teaching the children the relationship between letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes). Children learn to “sound out” their words. Combined with other types of word study, phonics help improve spelling skills. Phonic study alone is not learning to read, and is most effective when used with other reading instruction. Even though both phonemic awareness and phonic instruction focus on the individual letter sounds in a word, one is only hearing those sounds, and the other is understanding the relationship between the written letter and the sound.

How/Why do we Implement Word Study?

The main purpose of our word study activities is to help the children develop a deeper understanding of the way written words work. Incorporating frequent word study activities in the classroom will help students notice common patterns and conventions in our written language and increase their knowledge of individual words (increase their sight word knowledge). One helpful way to develop their knowledge of different sounds and words is through various sorting activities. During a sound sort, we may examine the different sounds of “I”, with starting words “win” and “line”, and then file other words in its corresponding category. Other common types of sorts used in classroom word study are picture sorts and word sorts. In a word sort, children examine the different spellings of a word that sounds the same, like “hair” and “hare”. We also have meaning sorts, where we discuss in detail the different meanings of words being sorted. In the classroom, we have a routine of word study activities. We get into small groups, one group at least is teacher directed, and we keep it short and simple, no more than about 30 minutes a day in word study. Word study is a very gradual process, and can “come to” different students at different time. Spending too much time a day on word study, or introducing too many word study words, can cause the brain to overload, and not remember many of them at all.  As we learn new words, we add them to our word wall. The word wall is great because it stays up all the time. As students are writing, they can go check the spelling of a word on the word wall.

Word sorts facilitate student’s spelling and reading skills.

Sorting is a great way to help children learn to make sense of words and the written language in general. At first, as beginning readers, children learn about beginning sounds while sorting pictures, later when they are transitional readers, sorting by vowel patterns is most helpful. In middle school, they sort prefixes, affixes, and syllables, and then in high school, sort by Latin root words. They will progress in knowledge and the way they look at words. Sorting gives students an opportunity to form their own ideas and generalizations about the English language system. Instead of just memorizing a specified list of spelling words, word sorts help children see the rules and common patterns in many words. They can apply learned knowledge of rules and patterns in their writing, spelling, and reading.

Links to elementary word sort videos

A concept sort in an ELL classroom-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWqbYKf72tc

In a concept sort, first choose 10-15 important words from a text, then ask students to sort the words into 2 or more meaningful groups. In this video, the 2 concepts are animal sounds and animal movements. In this video, teacher assigns students to work in small groups. While groups are working together, teacher walks around observing and helping groups when needed. Concept sorts can be done in groups, as a class, or as individual work. They are especially helpful for ELL students.

A picture sort in a kindergarten classroom-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZO9A1TUVTE

                Before beginning the sort, teacher discusses with class, the 2 letters they are working with, an “m” from their previous week’s studies, and a “t” from their current week’s studies. Before they stick any pictures under either letter on the board, teacher brainstorms with class words that start with “m” and words that start with “t”. This is a teacher-directed sort in a whole-class lesson setting. After she holds up each picture, she asks students who know which side it belongs on, to raise a “quiet hand”. Then that student stands up and sticks it under the correct letter.  

A word sort in a first-grade classroom- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjgUx7zSX14

                I really like the disclosures and explanations the teacher gives to viewer before beginning this video, and how she specifically shows the standards fitting her main points. She explains that the small groups for this activity have been determined by her assessments at the beginning of the year showing what word sounds/concepts each student needs to work on. In this example, she sorts out and explains words with silent sounds to a small group. The students are sorting words like “gnat” and “know”.