WESTECH @ WEAVERVILLE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Teaching
By Alan Seidenfeld
In the 1998 book Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children the authors identified several ways to prevent reading difficulties and intervene to help those students who were already struggling with the task. Among the recommendations were many areas on which teachers should focus attention, including phonological and phonemic awareness, spelling-sound correspondences, fluency, and sight recognition of frequent words.
The National Reading Panel was established by Congressional mandate to review research in reading instruction to identify methods that consistently cause reading success in children. Their report in 2000 identified six fundamental reading skills that must be taught. Those skills are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and motivation.
The following is an overview of the six reading skills with links to websites for support with technology.
Reading Skill: Phonemic Awareness
Small units of speech are called phonemes. Thus, the awareness that language is composed of these small sounds is called phonemic awareness. The notion that speech is made up of sequences of these little sounds does not come naturally to human beings.
Research indicates that, without direct instructional support, phonemic awareness eludes about 25% of middle-class first graders and substantially more of those who come from less literacy-rich backgrounds. Furthermore, these children evidence serious difficulty in learning to read and write (Adams et al, 1998).
Websites:
These are games from the Earobics folks at game goo.
American English Pronunciation Page - put together as a resource for ESL teachers, this page supports many facets of Phonemic Awareness.
Zoo phonics software combined with the kinesthetic program is a winner!
More sing along lyrics than you can imagine.
PALS Activities - need an idea? Look here!
Phonological awareness
Phonological awareness is the ability to identify, blend, segment, rhyme, or in other ways manipulate the sounds of language.
Software to use:
Leap into Phonics - tracks student progress while they work with sounds, rhymes and parts of words.
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom - have the story read to you or just play with the alphabet. Ray Charles gets into the act in this engaging program.
Read, Write, Type - Not just a Keyboarding program. Lots of letter sound work.
Letter Sounds from Sunburst. Tracks student progress in a journal. The student can create word banks, and record their voice. Teachers can customize.
Zoo- Phonics has a CD to support the famous program.
Research
The Structure of Phonemic Awareness by Philip B. Gough and Kevin C. Larson, University of Texas at Austin and Hallie Yopp, California State University, Fullerton
Students must learn how sounds are linked to letters. Phonics involves teaching students the alphabetic principle, which is the idea that sounds can be mapped to written letters. The English alphabetic code has 26 letters that represent approximately 44 sounds or phonemes. This set of symbols is organized to communicate meaning.
The National Reading Panel identified several approaches to phonics instruction:
Websites
Between the Lions from PBS. The award winning program goes on line with plenty of games to support phonics instruction.
The parent site for Between the Lions has plenty of resources for phonics instruction.
BBC online allows you to have fun with the Creeps or create a variety of words with Jim's Crankophone.
Early reading website for pre-K students.
SCORE Phonics links. Welcome to the Phonics Link. Use the Phonics Link to Help Make the Wildest Dream a Reality
The Four Blocks website is a great resource for information on Phonics and more.
Software
Using Read, Write, and Type for Phonics Instruction
I Love Phonics - very interactive and customizable.
KidPix - create activities to support a Phonics Environment. Many have been developed on the web
Words help students read, learn and understand their world. The larger their vocabularies, the better able they are to learn and do. There are large discrepancies among the number of words students can understand when adults read to them, words they can read, and words they can write. Generally, receptive vocabularies exceed expressive vocabularies. This gap shrinks as students mature. However, deficiencies in vocabulary accumulate into reading comprehension problems (from
Each content area has its own unique vocabulary or lexicon. It is essential to teach content vocabulary, particularly the labels used to identify important concepts.
A number of studies have shown that intensive preteaching of vocabulary can improve comprehension but teaching target vocabulary during and after reading is also appropriate. Vocabulary can be taught through explicit and implicit instruction, multimedia methods, capacity methods, and association methods.
The National Reading Panel identified several ways of teaching vocabulary:
Websites
Working with words for primary students.
Puzzlemaker.com - make puzzles for the kids, customizable.
Quia.com -free games and support that kids find fun and engaging.
Funbrain games and activities-A favorite of students of all ages!
The Monster Exchange - make a monster, find a monster. This site is a blast!
Enchanted Learning Dictionary-great resource for word work and word play!
Words Their Way - The following activities come from what many consider to be the bible of word study, Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction, Second Edition by Donald Bear, Marcia Invernizzi, Shane Templeton, and Francine Johnston.
Eric's clearinghouse on
Software
Cleverkeys, free software piece that gives access to definitions and synonyms from many programs and your browser and e-mail applications
http://www.cleverkeys.com/ck.html?p=home&os=
Amazing Dictionary from DK multimedia, Engaging with hypertext words
Kidspiration / Inspiration -Help students "see" the meaning of concept words with this great graphic organizer creator!
I Love Spelling -Nice for vocabulary and phonics.
Research
Fluency in reading is one of the subtle steps in a child's development that is crucial to learning subject area material in later grades. Increasing reading fluency is one of the fundamental ways that we can help improve the academic success of students. Children typically develop fluency in reading in the second or third grade. By fourth grade, children are expected to learn independently from text, and the curriculum begins to shift from information that is generally known to children to information that is new.
There are two general approaches to improving fluency. The direct approach involves modeling and practice and is described below. The indirect approach involves encouraging students to read in their free time.
Students need ample practice with reading. One way to provide critical practice to build fluency is to follow these steps:
Instructional Strategies for Balanced Literacy
Websites
Candlelightstories.com unfortunately has a membership required($10) to access a variety of MP3 stories available with text to read. Great for read-along stories. You can demo some stories before subscribing.
Children storybooks online. There are many to choose from.
Internet Public Library online storytime.
Leveled Reading at Kidsclick!
More Literature than you'll know what to do with!
Aaron Shepard's website has plenty of reader's theatre scripts ready to use and download.
Time for Kids. Engaging non-fiction stories written for kids!
Software:
Living Books
Amazing Dictionary
Research
A Plan to Attack Fluency Problems by Candyce Ihnot
There are different levels of comprehension.
Researchers have documented that proficient readers use a small set of reading strategies to construct meaning as they read. Proficient readers:
Research has demonstrated the social nature of learning. Through in-depth conversations, teachers can guide students to delve deeply as thinkers, clarify ideas, and verify information. There is a strong and important link between oral language and reading comprehension.
Explicit instruction for teaching comprehension involves four phases:
Help students improve visual imagery by having them read high-interest material and try to picture the main character, the setting, and events in the story. Students can also create puppets or illustrations about stories.
Some specific teaching strategies to improve comprehension include:
Instructional Strategies for Balanced Literacy
Websites
Wall of words helps students work with a variety of vocabulary and sentence structures.
Over 500 author websites, created and run by authors themselves.
Children's Literature web guide, Hasn't been updated since 1998.
Cyberguides extend the study of a book beyond your classroom walls! Excellent assistance in building centers and projects.
How stuff works - motivating reading on everyday occurrences.
Software
Kidspiration / Inspiration - use graphic organizers from these programs as advance organizers to introduce units and chapters. Show students how to use them to track their comprehension as they read and to keep notes to refer to later.
Bailey's Book House - The award-winning software program encourages young children to build important literacy skills while developing a love for reading. Over seven activities to choose from. No reading skills are required: all directions and written words are spoken.
Amazing Encyclopedia
Motivational processes are the foundation for coordinating cognitive goals and strategies in reading. For example, if a person is intrinsically motivated to read and believes she is a capable reader, the person will persist in reading difficult texts and exert effort to resolve conflicts and integrate text with prior knowledge. A learner with high motivation will seek books known to provide satisfaction. The cognitive abilities needed to find books, avoid distraction while reading, and assimilate new ideas are activated if the text is fulfilling internal goals.
Research has revealed a high correlation between motivation and strategy use; a correlation that suggests motivated students employ deep processing rather than surface-level strategies. In fact many reading educators have redefined reading engagement as the motivated use of strategies for reading (Guthrie, 1996).
Baltimore County Public Schools' The Reading Page is an excellent resource for Web sites related to reading motivation.
Websites
All of these listed on this site!! Engaging Web sites and software programs are inherently appealing to students of all ages. When used as a classroom center activity, most students choose technology centers first!
Globalschoolhouse Projects. Get involved in a project
Other
Reading First Reading Online International Reading Association America Reads