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Faye Chandler - Reading Comprehension for ELLs

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Faye Chandler - Reading Comprehension for ELLs

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This article talks about strategies to help ELL students with building background knowledge, making inference, predictions and other strategies to help them improve Reading Comprehension .

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It's so interesting to me that words aren't stored using visuals, but by mapping. Initially I thought that would be a much more complex method, but after reading this article it makes better sense. We see the letters in the word + sounds we hear in said word = process as a sight word and stored. To be very clear this is not the same as memorizing a word based on visual appearance. In orthographic mapping, scholars are using prior knowledge and connecting it with something new. A scholar with great phonemic awareness can pull words apart, and break them down into phonemes (individual sounds). Orthographic mapping develops from phonemic awareness (segmenting and blending). In kindergarten, scholars focus on blending and segmenting in written words which develops skills to decode. Decoding needs to be in place for orthographic mapping.

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Comprehension is vital to learning, in all subjects. It's the reason we read, to understand. For MLLs, it is important to learn comprehension in order to thrive in all subjects in education. For example, as a Math teacher, I've had many aha moments pertaining to literacy being the beginning of ALL learning. Initially I didn't comprehend it but now I do. If a scholar cannot comprehend, it will be challenging for them to do things such as follow direction as they may not understand them. This is vital to their learning.

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While searching online, I found this resource to support myself as I try to support my English Language Learners. As I am a beginner with ELL's, reading comprehension strategies and prereading strategies appear to be positive supports to help me in the classroom.

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Reading is knowledge and knowledge is power.
Reading is your students' bridge to language and culture in the English-speaking world.

It's perhaps the most essential skill for beginning language learners to develop.

Once you've chosen the perfect reading material for your ESL students, where do you go from there?

If taught properly, reading comprehension skills will help students do far more than just read. Reading enhances other essential ESL skills like speaking, listening and writing.

Putting reading comprehension to use at the beginner level will also allow your students to build vocabulary, practice pronunciation and develop grammar knowledge subconsciously. Yes, subconsciously- the best way for students to develop those boring grammar skills is when they don't even notice.

Once your students begin improving by reading, their thirst for more reading material will grow. They'll most definitely turn to reading for education and entertainment.

They may want to read local news, learn more about places they'll travel or become enthusiastic about the best selling English novels they hear about. Reading comprehension opens the door to infinite knowledge and your students will come to appreciate the time they spend in class honing their reading skills.

Reading comprehension is also a key component to almost all formal ESL tests worldwide. These are tests they may be required to pass in order to attend school abroad or get their dream job with an international company.

So, all that being said, how can we help our ESL students develop these crucial skills in the right way?

Here are a few helpful tips to give your students the key to reading comprehension success.

Where Do I Start?

When discussing reading comprehension at the beginner level, it's crucial for students to have some basic ESL skills to begin their reading journey.

Starting with the ABCs is the most obvious first step. You'll then continue with basic vocabulary. After a foundation has been built, you can start tossing in more complex components like prepositions and articles.

Let's see how this might look in a typical reading comprehension lesson plan. You're ready to practice reading one day. Here's how you get started.

For a class full of newbies, a quick ABC warm-up activity can be very beneficial before you start practicing reading together. Refreshing their ABC knowledge will allow the flow of the class to continue without much interruption during the practice section of the lesson.

Once the alphabet soup is out of the way, jump into words. Help your students pronounce and develop a quick thinking approach to saying words as they appear before them. Most native English speakers learned to read this way, and creating a firm foundation from the get-go will make your lesson more effective in the long run. Oversized flashcards, a powerpoint presentation or a verbal game can all be good vocabulary warm-up options.

One important side note: Choose to warm up with words that are relatable to your students, something they may have at home or take an interest in. The word "dog" is, of course, relatable to almost everyone in the world and can easily be used in a sentence.

Our example word "dog" can be magically implanted into the sentence, "Tom has a dog." You can easily transform the words your students spent a few minutes pronouncing and discussing with their classmates into sentences.

Remember to build your lesson material like you would build a rock wall, brick by brick. This will allow your students to maintain a base knowledge of the material. Formulate sentences using the words previously discussed, adding context to them as you continue on.

Preparing ESL Students to Read Longer English Texts

Before unleashing your eager students into a literary garden of new words and sentences, you must first find material suitable for your class.

Know your students, their goals, needs and interests. Most children won't be interested in articles on self-improvement, just as adults won't always appreciate bedtime-style stories. Finding the best, most appropriate material for your students to read will keep them engaged and will ensure that they'll want to read more.

Once you've passed around the day's reading material, guide your students through some enticing pre-reading tasks. For example, create a short list of 5 to 7 key vocabulary words that are essential to the concept of the reading material. Your students will inevitably discover new words as they read, but taking a little legwork out of it will give them more confidence when they see and understand a word they just learned in the text.

Some other great pre-reading exercises include class or group discussions about the author of the reading material. You can use pictures and let your students discuss the genre the author writes about as well as where he or she is from, what he or she enjoys doing and so on.

You can also share important concepts within the reading material and discuss them briefly, giving your students a base knowledge of what's to come. You may even want your students to try skimming the text. Skimming involves seeking out certain types of words and information in the text without reading. What jumps right off the pages? Numbers, colors, familiar vocabulary, places and names are often things that are picked out of texts at a first glance.

Set up the reading and success will follow.

Now, when it comes to actively interacting with English reading material, you'll need to give your students additional direction. Here are some great strategies for helping your ESL students get the most out of classroom reading practice.

1. Scanning

This is a great follow-up activity after skimming, enhancing your students' comprehension of the reading even further.

Scanning is much like skimming, allowing your students more time to review the reading material, but without letting them stew or converse over every word. The goal behind scanning is to give your students the ability to deconstruct the material and take a closer look, picking up the specific details and combining them with the general information they discovered while skimming.

Basically, it's just a quick read-through. You may want to set a timer for this activity to be extra effective.

2. Predicting

Yet another great method for ESL reading comprehension practice- giving your students more creative freedom.

Choose an individual paragraph and allow your students to discuss what will happen in the next one. This will open up discussion and get them really thinking in English. In order for them to discuss their predictions with their classmates, they'll have to have a basic level of comprehension and they'll practice their speaking skills. Saying new words and phrases from the text out loud will reinforce this language in their minds.

Plus, they can ask questions to clarify what's going on if they missed something. They'll likely even pick up a few textual details they may have missed from their classmates during conversations. As we've previously discussed, it's always great when ESL students can learn from each other.

3. Summarizing

This is some next level stuff in reading comprehension, giving the students the opportunity to show off their new reading comprehension skills.

When a student can summarize a given piece of reading material in their own words, they've definitely developed an excellent understanding of the material's main concept and message.

You can have students discuss their summaries with one another in groups. You could also give each student a different section of the text to read and have them present their summaries in front of the class.

4. Discussing

The exceptional reading comprehension methods above can all be combined with discussion-based activities that'll allow students time to develop other sub-skills in ESL development.

Let your students communicate and explore their own unique styles for optimal reading. Prepare easy questions to ask them as a class after reading and, if you're up to the challenge, think up a couple of controversial questions that'll really get students fired up.

Multiple choice questions will let them think through what you've said and choose best possible answers. They'll invariably give different answers. Students can then discuss, as a class, why they'd choose one particular answer as opposed to another.

5. Extracting

This sounds surgical, but it's actually one of the most fun methods here! Take a vacation with your students by using tourist board information or travel agent brochures.

Most ESL students share a few things in common-the desire to explore new things is usually one of them. Utilizing tourist information or vacation brochures can allow your students to visualize the words in the text as they try to understand it more clearly. Pictures in these kinds of materials really make for a fun experience too!

6. Diving in

Using classified ads from newspapers or online websites is useful and fun.

Your students must negotiate what the advertisement is selling or offering in a short paragraph containing a few sentences. Most classifieds are descriptive and enjoyable to students. They can also give class or group presentations on the classified ads they read. They'll really need to fully commit to diving into these authentic materials.

Whatever the material, it's important to make sure it's relevant to your students' ages, English levels, interests and English goals and needs. Keep in mind that just reading can be boring for some, so keep an interactive dialogue going before and after each reading period.

Don't let reading go too long-just long enough for your students to grasp the general and specific concepts in the text. Make it fun and enjoyable to harbor more enthusiastic and confident beginner students!

Stephen Seifert is a writer, editor, professor of English and adventurer. With over 7 years of teaching experience to students worldwide, he enjoys the many aspects of culture and traditions different from his own. A world traveler and adventurer, Stephen continues his search for the next challenge to inspire him and his writing, boldly enjoying life to the fullest.

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach English with real-world videos.
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6 Super Strategies for Improving ESL Reading Comprehension for Beginners

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Reading is knowledge and knowledge is power.Reading is your students' bridge to language and culture in the English-speaking world.It's perhaps the most essential skill for beginning language learners to develop.Once you've chosen the perfect reading material for your ESL students, where

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12 Ways to Support English Learners in the Mainstream Classroom

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12 Ways to Support English Learners in the Mainstream Classroom

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Angel Johnson
This is an article that is written from the Podcast, "Cult of Pedagogy," and although it was published some years ago, I feel that it has very relatable content, and explains the best strategies to support English Language Learners.
It begins by making note of how the terminology has changed from ESL (English as a Second Language) to ELL (English Language Learners), and I must make note that since the date of this publishing, the term has changed again to MLL (Multiple Language Learners), and the percentage of multiple language learners has grown in American Schools to about 25%. It goes on to give a scenario about having a new student from Japan who knows no English and the author poses the question of how to best support this student.
The article then goes on to list 12 strategies to support ELL students in a mainstream classroom:

1. Make It Visual - Make instructions visual by writing them on the board and using pictures or diagrams to aid understanding.

2. Build In More Group Work - Increase group work to engage students and provide opportunities for language practice.

3. Communicate with the ESOL Teacher - Maintain good communication with the ESOL teacher to align content and vocabulary used in both classes.

4. Honor the "Silent Period" - Respect the "silent period" when new language learners may be hesitant to speak, and avoid pressuring them to talk.

5. Allow Some Scaffolding with the Native Language - Allow some use of the native language (L1) to aid comprehension and participation, especially for written assignments.

6. Look Out for Culturally Unique Vocabulary - Be aware of culturally unique vocabulary and directly teach essential terms to ESL students.

7. Use Sentence Frames to Give Students Practice with Academic Language - Use sentence frames to guide academic language practice during discussions and writing.

8. Pre-teach Whenever Possible - Pre-teach materials to ESL students to increase their understanding of upcoming content.

9. Learn About Cultural Background - Learn about the cultural background of students to show respect and foster inclusivity.

10. Don't Make a Child Speak for an Entire Culture - Avoid asking students to speak for their entire culture and be sensitive when discussing topics relevant to their background.

11. Show Students How to Take Themselves Seriously - Model risk-taking and humor in language learning to encourage students to take their own language-learning risks.

12. Always Take the Students Seriously - Take students' efforts seriously and avoid dismissing their attempts due to language limitations.

The article states that by implementing these strategies, teachers can create a more inclusive and supportive environment that benefits all students in the classroom.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
A note on terminology: The acronym ESL is used less often now in schools than it used to be, because we recognize that many students who are learning English already speak several other languages, so English would not be a "second" language. I use it several times in the post because schools sometimes refer to the teachers as ESL teachers, and the term is still widely used as a search term for this topic. My intent in using the acronym is to make this post easier to find online.

You have a new student, and he speaks no English. His family has just moved to your town from Japan, and though he receives English as a Second Language (ESL) support, he will also be sitting in your room every day to give him more exposure to his new language. How can you be a good teacher to someone who barely understands you?

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, an average of 9 percent of students in U.S. public schools are English Language Learners (ELLs); that number is closer to 14 percent in cities. Although many of these students start off in high-intensity, whole-day English programs, most are integrated into mainstream classrooms within a year, well before their English language skills would be considered proficient.

How prepared are you to teach these students? If you're like most classroom teachers, you have little to no training in the most effective methods for working with English language learners (Walker, Shafer, & Iiams, 2004). So that means we have a problem here: Lots of ELL kids in regular classrooms, and no teacher training to ensure the success of that placement.

Below, three ESL teachers tell us what they know about the things regular classroom teachers can do to improve instruction for ELL students. These 12 strategies are simple, they are not very time consuming, and best of all, they will help everyone in your class learn better:

1. Make it Visual

"Avoid giving instructions in the air," says Melissa Eddington, an Ohio-based ESL teacher. "ELL kids have a harder time processing spoken language." So instructions - even basic directions for classroom procedures - should be written on the board whenever possible. Challenging concepts should be diagrammed or supported with pictures. And modeling the steps of a process or showing students what a finished product should look like can go a long way toward helping students understand. "Sometimes showing our students what to do is all they need in order to do it," Eddington says. Not only will this kind of nonlinguistic representation improve comprehension for ELL students, it will help all of your students grasp concepts better.

2. Build in more group work.

"Kids aren't just empty glasses that we pour stuff into and then at the end of the day they dump it back onto a test," says Kim, an ESL teacher who was the subject of my very first podcast interview. "If you really want the kids to learn, they've got to be engaged." That means less teacher-led, whole-class instruction, and more small groups, where students can practice language with their peers in a more personal, lower-risk setting. And if ELL students attend your class with a resource teacher, make use of that person: In most cases the resource teacher doesn't have to work exclusively with the ESL students; they can work with smaller groups that happen to contain these students, helping to improve the teacher-student ratio and give kids more time to practice.

3. Communicate with the ESL teacher.

Mary Yurkosky, a former ESL teacher in Massachusetts, credits much of her students' success to the strong relationship she had with the regular classroom teachers. "The classroom teachers were always talking to me about what they were doing in their classes," she says. "They made it so easy for me to support them: If a teacher was going to be doing a unit on plants, I could make sure we used some of that same vocabulary in the ESL class."

Ideally, this could be systematized, where ESL teachers could regularly get copies of lesson plans or collaborate with regular classroom teachers to build solid back-and-forth support, but "it doesn't have to be that much work," Yurkosky insists. "Just talk to each other. Talk about what's going on in your classrooms, invite each other to special presentations, share what your students are learning, and the words will naturally find their way into the ESL class."

4. Honor the "silent period."

Many new language learners go through a silent period, during which they will speak very little, if at all. "Don't force them to talk if they don't want to," says Eddington, "A lot of students who come from cultures outside of America want to be perfect when they speak, so they will not share until they feel they are at a point where they're perfect." Just knowing that this is a normal stage in second language acquisition should help relieve any pressure you feel to move them toward talking too quickly.

5. Allow some scaffolding with the native language.

Although it has been a hotly debated topic in the language-learning community, allowing students some use of their first language (L1) in second-language (L2) classrooms is gaining acceptance. When a student is still very new to a language, it's okay to pair him with other students who speak his native language. "Some students are afraid to open their mouths at all for fear of sounding stupid or just not knowing the words to use," Yurkosky says. "Letting them explain things or ask questions in their first language gets them to relax and feel like a part of the class."

And this doesn't only apply to spoken language. If you give students a written assignment, but the ELL student doesn't yet have the proficiency to handle writing his response in English, "Don't make them just sit there and do nothing," Eddington says. "Allow them to write in their first language if they're able. This allows them to still participate in journal writing or a math extended response, even if you can't read what they write." There has even been some evidence that allowing second-language learners to pre-write and brainstorm in L1 results in higher-quality writing in L2 in later stages of the writing process (Yigzaw, 2012).

6. Look out for culturally unique vocabulary.

"For most of these kids, their background knowledge is lacking, especially with things that are unique to American or westernized culture," says Eddington. It's important to directly teach certain vocabulary words: "Show them videos of what it looks like to toss pizza dough, show pictures of a juke box or a clothing rack - things that are not common in their own language."

One way to differentiate for ELL students is to consider the whole list of terms you're going to teach for a unit, and if you think an ELL student may be overwhelmed by such a long list, omit those that are not essential to understanding the larger topic at hand.

7. Use sentence frames to give students practice with academic language.

All students, not just English language learners, need practice with academic conversations. Sentence frames - partially completed sentences like "I disagree with what _________ said because..." - show students how to structure language in a formal way. Keep these posted in a highly visible spot in your classroom and require students to refer to them during discussions and while they write.

For this kind of language to really sink in, though, Kim says it has to become a regular part of class. "They won't do it if it's not the norm in the class, because they'll be embarrassed to use it among their peers," she says. "But if they can put it off on the teacher and say, Oh, well, you know, Miss Kim makes me talk like this, then they don't look as hoity-toity as they would otherwise."

8. Pre-teach whenever possible.

If you're going to be reading a certain article next week, give ESL students a copy of it now. If you plan to show a YouTube video tomorrow, send a link to your ESL students today. Any chance you can give these students to preview material will increase the odds that they'll understand it on the day you present it to everyone else. "That kind of thing is wonderful," Yurkosky says. "The kids feel so empowered if they've had a chance to look at the material ahead of time."

9. Learn about the cultural background of your students...

Our second-language populations grow more diverse every year. Taking the time to learn the basics of where a child comes from - exactly, not 'somewhere in the Middle East/South America/Asia/Africa' - tells the student that you respect her enough to bother. Kim remembers one time when she had to set the record straight about the diverse South American population at her school: "I was listening to the teachers talking about the 'Mexican' kids in our building," she says, "and I was like, 'We don't have any Mexicans.'" Not taking the time to at least correctly identify a child's country of origin, much like not bothering to pronounce their name correctly, is a kind of microaggression, a small, subtle insult that communicates hostility toward people of color. Make a commitment to be someone who bothers to get it right.

Once you have the country straight, take things up a notch by learning about students' religious and cultural practices. If he is a practicing Muslim, he should be told if one of the pizzas you ordered for the class party has sausage on it. If she comes from a culture where eye contact with adults is viewed as disrespectful, you'll know not to force her to look you in the eye when she's talking.

10. ...but don't make a child speak for his entire culture.

In her podcast interview, Kim shared a story about watching a teacher ask a new Iraqi student how he felt about the war in his country, right in the middle of class. "That's not cultural inclusiveness," she explains. "I've seen teachers do this and then pat themselves on the back. The students' English is limited so they can't express themselves very well, and they don't want to 'represent'; they just want to be there." If you anticipate a theme coming up in your class that's going to be relevant to one of your students, have a conversation with them in advance, or check with your ESL teacher to see if they think it's appropriate for in-class discussion.

11. Show them how to take themselves less seriously...

By modeling the risk-taking that's required to learn a new language, you help students develop the courage to take their own risks, and to have a sense of humor about it. "I tried to say the word 'paint' ( pinta) in Portuguese and instead I said the word for 'penis' ( pinto). They all roared with laughter while I stood there with a What?? look on my face," Yurkosky says. "When they explained what I'd said, I laughed so hard! I told them that laughing was fine because sometimes mistakes are really funny, but ridicule is never okay."

12. ...but always take them seriously.

One of Kim's pet peeves about how teachers interact with English language learners is the way they often see students' efforts as 'cute,' missing the whole point of what the student is trying to say. "A student will be desperate to communicate, and the teacher will get distracted by the delivery and miss the message," she says. "That's painful for me to watch." It bothers her when teachers mistake a lack of language for a lack of intelligence or maturity. When a child can't express themselves as well as they would in their native language, it's far too easy to assume the concepts just aren't in their heads.

"It breaks my heart when I hear teachers say (ELL kids) don't know anything," says Eddington. "These are brilliant kids and they know a lot. They just can't tell us in English yet." Make a conscious effort to see past the accent and the mispronunciations and treat every interaction - every student - with the respect they deserve.

"They're doing twice the job of everybody else in the class," Kim adds, "even though the result looks like half as much." ♦

Further Reading

The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide is one of the highest-rated books on teaching English-language learners available. In addition to offering an overview of the research on second-language learners and best practices in teaching ESL, it also includes a whole section on teaching ESL in the content areas and another specifically geared toward teaching ELL students in mainstream classrooms.
References:
Walker, A., Shafer, J., & Iiams, M. (2004). "Not in my classroom": Teacher attitudes towards English language learners in the mainstream classroom. NABE Journal of Research and Practice, 2(1), 130-160.

Yigzaw, A. (2012). Impact of L1 use in L2 English writing classes. Ethiopian Journal of Education and Sciences, 8(1), 11-27.

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12 Ways to Support English Learners in the Mainstream Classroom

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Advice from three ESL teachers on the things regular classroom teachers can do to help English language learners thrive in mainstream classrooms.

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When I think of supporting my scholar's comprehension in the classroom, I also consider signs that support is needed.  I can clearly recall word problems and certain scholars withdrawing from the conversation.  Some signs that a scholar needs support are:

Little to no interest in reading - I can support this student or students by asking them what they would like to see in reading assignments and perhaps create word problems with subject matters of interest

Inability to answer questions of what we read - I can create graphic organizers with 1-3 fill in sentences to support this scholar, encouraging them to answer questions in a way that helps them comprehend the reading

Challenges following basic instructions - I can be more explicit in my instruction.  This is also something that I desire to do more of.  I am not strong in providing explicit instructions because as a career change educator, I'm so accustomed to instructing adults.  Explicit instruction to adults can be viewed as condescending when providing too much detail.  As I am learning, the feeling of condescendence is not my responsibility.  My responsibility is to provide instruction in a way that is understood, completely.

Challenges summarizing what the word problem is about - As aforementioned, I would create graphic organizers to support this student with summarizing a word problem.  This is step 1 of 3 read close reading where the student is asked to identify what the word problem is about.  A graphic organizer would be helpful here.

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How to Help A Third Grader With Reading Comprehension

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This article is from the Texas Center for Learning Disabilities on comprehension and vocabulary. This particular article deals with the 3 levels of questioning, how to model them and when to teach each questioning technique. It is a great resource for scafolding lessions on vocabulary and comprehension for struggling readers.

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Summer 23 comprehension article questions week 5

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9 components of effective, research-supportive reading instruction-------- Sundra Parker

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9 components of effective, research-supportive reading instruction-------- Sundra Parker

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Although a lot of articles stated the same five components to reading and their concepts, this article discussed nine components that make up effective reading instruction. In addition to the normal five; phonemic awareness phonics fluency vocabulary and comprehension, this article goes on to State how written expression, spelling and handwriting, assessments, and motivation all affect reading instruction in the most positive manners. I absolutely agree that how a student expresses themselves through writing, handwriting, and through tests/assessment can affect reading instruction. I think the most important factor of the additional components is the motivation. When a student is not inspired or encouraged to be a strong reader and when their parents do not express the importance, the student does not see the value and purpose in reading. With apps that read aloud to you, this can be a very slippery slope in my opinion. This article is well-written and very interesting.

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Endnotes

Click the "Endnotes" link above to hide these endnotes.

Adams, M., Treiman, R., & Pressley, M. (1998). Reading, writing and literacy. In I. E. Siegal and K. A. Renniger (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Child psychology in practice (5th ed., Vol. 4, pp. 275-355). New York: Wiley.

Bear, D. Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (1996). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.

Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G. (1991). Conditions of vocabulary acquisition. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.), The Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. 2, pp. 789-814). New York: Longman Press.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Omanson, R. C. (1984). The fertility of some types of vocabulary instruction. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., Hamilton, R. L., & Kucan, L. Getting at the meaning: How to help students unpack difficult text. American Educator, 22, 66-71, 85.

Beck, I. L., McCaslin, E. C., & McKeown, M. G. (1980). The rationale and design of a program to teach vocabulary to fourth-grade students. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center.

Berninger, V., Vaughan, K., Abbott, R., Brooks, A., Abbott, S., Reed, E., Rogan, L., & Graham, S. (1998). Early intervention for spelling problems: Teaching spelling units of varying size within a multiple connections framework. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 587-605.

Berninger, V., Vaughan, K., Abbott, R., Abbott, S., Brooks, A., Rogan, L., Reed, E., & Graham, S. (1997). Treatment of handwriting fluency problems in beginning writing: Transfer from handwriting to composition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 652-666.

Durkin, D. (1993). Teaching them to read (6th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Ehri, L., & Soffer, A. (1999). Graphophonemic awareness: Development in elementary students. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3, 1-30.

Fletcher, J. M., & Lyon, G. R. (1998). Reading: A research-based approach. In W. Evers (Ed.), What's gone wrong in America's classrooms (pp. 49-90). Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

Graham, S., Berninger, V., Abbott, R., Abbott, S., & Whitaker, D. (1997). The role of mechanics in composing of elementary school students: A new methodological approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 170-182.

Learning First Alliance (1998). Every child reading: An action plan. Washington, DC: Author.

Moats, L. C. (1995). The missing foundation in teacher education. American Educator, 19(2), 9, 43-51.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Fluency. Chap. 3 in Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups (pp. 3-1-3-43). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Text comprehension. Part 2 of Chap. 4 in Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups (pp. 4-39-4-118). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Vocabulary instruction. Part 1 of Chap. 4 in Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups (pp. 4-15-4-38). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

Pressley, M. (1998). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching. New York: Guilford Press.

Scarborough, H., Ehri, L., Olson, R., & Fowler, A. (1998). The fate of phonemic awareness beyond the early school years. Scientific Studies of Reading, 2, 115-142.

Snow, C., Burns, S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children (pp. 80-83). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell. New York: Oxford University Press.

In addition to their mention in Every Child Reading: An Action Plan, these components are commonly delineated in documents such as research reviews, state standards on instruction, the Reading Excellence Act funding criteria, curriculum guidelines, and teacher instructional manuals.

Of course, as the National Reading Panel notes, "phonics teaching is a means to an end. . . . In implementing systematic phonics instruction, educators must keep the end in mind and ensure that children understand the purpose of learning letter sounds and that they are able to apply these skills accurately and fluently in their daily reading and writing activities" (Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Health, 2000, p. 10). The panel's report also states that, notwithstanding the fact that explicit, systematic, synthetic phonics is the most effective approach, there remain unanswered questions on how to make this instruction as effective as possible. For example, the panel notes that more research is needed on questions such as how long single instruction sessions should last, how many letter-sound relations should be taught, and how many months or years a phonics program should continue. Moreover, some children will learn and appropriately apply phonics skills quickly and effortlessly, while others must be taught slowly, step by step. The individual variation in any group remains a continual challenge to teacher judgment, resourcefulness, and program management skill.

In the standardization of the Texas Primary Reading Inventory, these subtests combined predict the likelihood of success or failure with about 90 percent accuracy.

The readability of text, as reflected in sentence complexity and frequency of vocabulary, can now be assessed with software. Readability formulas tend to have more validity for children who have attained a reading level above 2nd grade than they do for those who are just beginning to read, and readability does not reflect the extent to which a text is decodable on the basis of what a child has been taught.

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9 Components of Effective, Research-Supported Reading Instruction

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We know from research that an effective reading program must address several aspects of reading. Among others, these aspects include the alphabetic code, fluency, comprehension, and motivation.

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4 Ways to Teach Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension

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4 Ways to Teach Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension

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Angel Johnson
This article discusses specifically four literacy strategies that can simultaneously engage students in active processing, improving progress in both vocabulary and reading comprehension.
It states that research evidence claims that there is a reciprocal relationship between the two and that improving one may improve the other.
It goes on to list four active ways to teach vocabulary and reading comprehension:
1) Read Alouds: Use read alouds to incorporate targeted vocabulary words by pre-teaching the words before reading, and discussing the words by expounding on their meaning during the reading. Then you can extend the lesson after reading by asking students to apply the word and its meaning, and by using vocabulary activities.
2) Graphic Organizers: By using graphic organizers like T-Charts, story maps and the Frayer model, students can incorporate learned vocabulary to recall information and organize their ideas when responding to texts or completing writing tasks.
3) Mental Imagery: Students learn how to make a mental picture of text by drawing the meaning or interpretation of the vocabulary in the text.
4) Questioning Techniques: Students learn how to predict, clarify, question, and summarize through use of rich language and discussion.
I find that all of the strategies listed in this article are practical strategies that teachers can implement to help children improve in vocabulary and comprehension skills.

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Teaching these literacy strategies simultaneously can engage students in active processing, improving performance in both areas.

As a teacher and researcher, I know the importance of vocabulary instruction for improving reading comprehension. There is some evidence that a reciprocal relationship exists between the two and that improving one may improve the other. It is especially important to explicitly and directly teach these skills to our youngest students. Teachers can use evidence-based strategies for delivering vocabulary instruction to improve reading comprehension and vice versa by integrating literacy across content areas. These should engage students in active processing, which is essential to student learning and retention.

I'd like to share four active ways to teach vocabulary and reading comprehension that have worked well for me.

1. Read-Alouds

Teachers can incorporate vocabulary into a read-aloud, first by reading through the book and identifying vocabulary words to be targeted for instruction. Preteach the vocabulary words to the students, and during the read-aloud discuss their meaning by providing brief, student-friendly definitions (for example, if a character is described as anxious, the teacher could add, "That means worried or scared"). Next, review the context of the words within the story. Students should repeat the vocabulary words for correct pronunciation and then visualize the meaning of the word and connect it with a memory.

Using the example of "anxious," students would connect the word to a time they were feeling that way. Provide students with an example where vocabulary words are used differently from how they were used in the story. For example, if the story was about a child who was anxious about going to a new school, provide the students with a scenario like "I was anxious when I had to go to the doctor and get a shot."

Follow up the read-aloud with vocabulary activities and word play: For example, have students provide a sentence using the targeted vocabulary words. One activity could involve having the students act out the meaning of a word ("If you're feeling anxious, how would you look?"). Another possible activity is to display several pictures and have students identify the picture that goes with the given vocabulary word, or students provide the vocabulary word that matches a given picture. This activity targets students' receptive and expressive language skills.

Extend the lesson: This could be accomplished by incorporating questioning techniques. For example, ask the students how or when they might feel anxious, or what they could do when they feel that way. Another extension of the activity is to have students illustrate the vocabulary word or write a sentence that includes the word.

2. Graphic Organizers

Definition: Working together

Characteristics: Helping, sharing, taking turns

Examples: Building a Lego tower with a friend, helping each other clean up toys

Nonexamples: Fighting over a toy, leaving someone out of a game

One way to teach vocabulary is to use graphic organizers, which are useful for both fiction and nonfiction information and for teaching across content areas. Graphic organizers help students to organize their ideas when responding to texts or completing writing tasks. In addition, graphic organizers benefit students with recalling and transferring information. Deciding on which graphic organizer to use can be a personal preference or depend on the task. For example, a story map would be suitable for fictional text, but not necessarily useful with nonfictional text. With nonfiction text, use of a Frayer model or T-chart in optimizing vocabulary instruction makes the most sense.

T-chart: Teachers can use a T-chart for comparison of examples and nonexamples of the vocabulary word through words, pictures, or sentences.

Story map: A story map helps students to understand the elements of a story, such as characters, setting, problem, and solution, or sequential points of the story, such as beginning, middle, and end.

Frayer model: With a Frayer model, teachers help students learn vocabulary words by incorporating a student-friendly definition, characteristics, examples or synonyms, and nonexamples or antonyms. A Frayer model can be used before reading to activate background knowledge, during reading to teach new vocabulary, or after reading to assess understanding of vocabulary. For example, using the word cooperation, we can complete the Frayer model as follows:

3. Mental Imagery

Help students learn how to make a mental picture of text. First, choose text that is very descriptive. Next, read a few sentences, pause, and share your thinking by "drawing" a mental image of the sentences. Be sure to incorporate all the senses (I see..., I hear..., I smell..., etc.). Have the students share their imaginings and note their different mental images.

For more interactive practice, provide a student with an illustration that is rich in imagery and have them describe what is in the illustration, while the other students and teacher make a mental image. Then, have students share their "picture."

4. Questioning Techniques

Teach students how to predict, clarify, question, and summarize. Teacher modeling and student practice will be necessary. The use of rich language and discussion surrounding text and concepts improves children's vocabulary and comprehension.

Predict: Before reading, use the book cover or title to talk about what will happen. During reading, discuss what will happen on the next page or chapter. After reading, ask the students to say what they think will happen if the story continues. Or ask the students to rewrite their own ending.

Clarify: Clarify can be used to explain a decoding strategy or to clarify an idea or unknown meaning of a word. For example, the teacher can model this: "I know the sound of 'ch' and 'st' at the end makes it a closed syllable, so this word must be 'chest.'" An example of clarifying an idea can be modeled as such: "The main character was 'drowsy,' so he went to take a nap. 'Drowsy' must mean 'tired.'"

Question: Model for the students how to question by using the statement "I wonder ..." For example, "I wonder why the character did...," "I wonder why the author wrote this sentence...," or "I wonder why ____ happened."

Summarize: Have the students retell a story in their own words. Completing a graphic organizer, such as a story map, will help them to organize their thoughts and remember the story elements. They can refer to it when retelling the story.

All of these techniques can be modified for use with older students or emergent bilingual students. For example, older students will be able to provide elaborate written responses rather than just drawings. Older students can also be exposed to multiple meanings and tenses of vocabulary words. For emergent bilingual students, the use of gestures, real photos, objects, or drawings may help with understanding of vocabulary words. In addition, teachers can incorporate the vocabulary word in their native language to parallel the word in English.

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4 Ways to Teach Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension

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Connecting vocabulary and reading comprehension simultaneously can engage students in active processing, improving performance in both areas.

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I chose this article because I noticed it provides a lot of guidance on the relationship between orthography and dyslexia. Since I am a special educator, I often need additional resources to support the instruction I am providing for my students. Since dyslexia is under the category of the largest population of students with a disability; Specific Learning Disability, this is a topic I often need to stay abreast of.

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Download the PDF version of this article here.
It looks like I was onto something when I recently posted the following statement:

There is orthographic dyslexia. This occurs when someone has average or above average phonemic awareness, but they can't translate that ability to the written word. I always look at the writing first...it tells me everything I need to know about what the child understands about the written language.

Orthographic Dyslexia

Instead of a dry, boring explanation of what I am referring to as orthographic dyslexia, I'm going to describe a real student who fits the description:

Meet Javier. He's an adorable, engaging, very bright (gifted) and extremely motivated young man who is ten years old. He's attended school consistently, had supportive and attentive parents, stable home life, and no major illnesses or head injuries.

Javier has had an IEP since the third grade for unexpected reading difficulties. Spelling difficulties were evident but not included in the IEP. He remained on that IEP for two years and made no progress. One thing that perplexed the team was his average to above average performance on phonemic awareness tasks. In fact, he scored in the above average range in phonological awareness and phonological memory on the CTOPP-2, but he still struggled to read, and he was spelling entirely phonetically. Interestingly, he was able to spell perfectly phonetic words like brandish, but not the word who. So, could it still be dyslexia if his phonological skills are intact? Yes, yes, yes!

This type of reading difficulty is what I am classifying as orthographic dyslexia. Now, I may use the term a little differently than others. According to the Oxford dictionary, orthography is the conventional spelling system of a language. Understanding English orthography requires that students understand how words are structured which does require a basis in phonology, but if the student is unable to translate their adequate phonological awareness skills to the written word, then it stands to reason that they have an orthographic processing deficit, and the intervention should focus on how the written language is structured. This is orthographic dyslexia. Uta Frith proposed the orthographic stage as the stage during which a reader has adequate phonological skills and begins to use the words stored in their visual word form area to read previously seen words rapidly. I believe dyslexia can occur when a student fails to make the transition from the phonological stage to the orthographic stage. Their difficulty is understanding the language, not the inability to visually memorize words.

In this situation a student should be focusing on the underlying structure of the language and all the 'whys' of spelling which will then transfer to reading. If they are not, it could be because they lack an understanding of the language, not phonological awareness. These readers need to focus explicitly on the structure of written language because if they can spell a word, they can read it, while the converse is often not true.

Let's look at an example. Let's say Javier spells the word every as evry. We've all seen that before, right? This is a great example, because it shows quite perfectly that Javier has great phonological awareness. He has correctly identified that we actually pronounce that word / ĕvrē/, and no one says ev - er - y. So, we know he hears the different phonemes, and he has accurately represented all the phonemes; however, he spelled it wrong. He spelled it incorrectly for two reasons. First, he is under the mistaken impression that words are a perfect representation of spoken phonemes. He is also unaware that words are spelled based on their meaning first and their phonology second. All we have to do with Javier is have a conversation about what every means (and stop over-enunciating - that doesn't help him understand the language). During this conversation he will realize that the base of every is ever and when he adds a suffix <-y> he will get the word every. Then phonology kicks in, he can spell ever based on the grapheme/phoneme correspondences and then add the suffix <-y>, while also identifying what phoneme is represented by the <-y> at the end of a multi-syllabic word. No, Javier will not have to do this with every word in the English language, but each word he does investigate will help him deepen his understanding of orthography. When you add word sums and matrices to the lesson, the multi-sensory techniques play their part as well.

Spelling ability is often tossed-aside and ignored. Technology is usually offered as a way around spelling. which may be an acceptable accommodation, but if you really want to know what a child understands about the English language, take a look at their writing. Their writing is the window to their individual dyslexia. If we spent more time teaching the structure of English instead of teaching that a 'says' /ă/ as in apple (letters don't talk, and a represents many more sounds than the initial sound in apple), our students would walk away with the investigative tools they need to spell and read (pronounce) almost any word they come across, or at least have the knowledge to understand that there is a reason for every spelling. Even if that reason is not immediately apparent, we now know there is no such thing as a sight word...

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Orthographic Dyslexia: Is It Always Phonological Awareness?

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Download the PDF version of this article here. It looks like I was onto something when I recently posted the following statement: There is orthographic dyslexia. This occurs when someone has average or above average phonemic awareness, but they can't translate that ability to the written word.

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Orthography Spelling and Sight Words- Faye Chandler

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Orthography Spelling and Sight Words- Faye Chandler

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This article is informative in that it talks about how spelling accompany pronunciations and meanings of new words to activate OM. I thought it was interesting that teaching students the strategy of pronouncing novel words aloud as they read text silently activates OM and helps them build their vocabularies. The article also reading words aloud is helpful because spelling-sound connections are retained in memory, they impact the processing of phonological constituents and phonological memory for words.

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Summer 23 Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight Word Reading

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What Is Orthographic Mapping in Reading and Why Is It Important?

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What Is Orthographic Mapping in Reading and Why Is It Important?

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Angel Johnson
This article explains orthographic mapping as the cognitive process that we use to store and retrieve words by connecting their pronunciation, spelling, and meaning automatically and effortlessly.  It shares light on explaining the process of orthographic mapping in terms of how students learn to read fluently, spell words, and learn new vocabulary when reading.
This article goes into detail explaining the components of orthographic mapping: the alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness, letter-sound knowledge, morphology and syllabication, and orthographic fluency. It goes on to discuss the elements of orthographic knowledge (pattern, sequence, and position), orthographic fluency and orthographic mapping in spelling.
This article is beneficial for teachers because it discusses why orthographic mapping is important, how long it takes to develop, and instructional implications. I love that it also provides a list of orthographic mapping activities as well as a few visuals that displays orthographic mapping in reading and spelling.

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Why Is Orthographic Mapping Important?

Developing orthographic mapping helps students decode unfamiliar words. When students know "the code," they begin to independently apply the decoding strategy to read new words, which researchers refer to as the self-teaching hypothesis. As word recognition becomes automatic, students can focus more mental energy on comprehension and meaning. Orthographic mapping also aids in vocabulary acquisition, as students are able to secure new vocabulary into memory through connecting their meaning with the words' pronunciations and spellings.

How Long Does Orthographic Mapping Take to Develop?

On average students take one to four exposures to words to store the printed word into memory and instantly recognize the word when they encounter it next. However, for students who exhibit reading difficulties, it can take more than 20 exposures to a word before it's committed to memory. Researchers have found that students with dyslexia differ from other readers during this orthographic processing. Therefore, evidence-based instructional strategies that develop students' orthographic mapping process is vital to enhance students' reading ability and will allow them to read connected text with ease.

Instructional Implications

Effective instruction that helps develop orthographic mapping encompasses explicit, systematic instruction on 1) phonemic awareness skills, 2) letter-sound knowledge, and 3) morphology and syllabication rules, along with 4) adequate practice to develop fluency and automaticity in word recognition. Here are some examples of orthographic mapping activities:

Orthographic Mapping Activities

Phoneme-grapheme mapping using sound boxes

Word sorts focusing on specific orthographic patterns

S pelling lists that are pattern-based rather than content-based

Repeated reading of single words to develop automatic word recognition

Repeated timed reading of word lists with similar grapheme patterns

Repeated reading of connected text using a specific grapheme pattern

Structured approach to spelling instruction-teaching conventional spelling rules, common letter sequences, and syllabication rules

Teaching word study with an attention on morphology (base words, prefixes, suffixes)

Explicitly teaching syllable types and syllable division rules

Additional practice reading and spelling high-frequency irregularly spelled words

These activities apply to all students, especially those exhibiting reading difficulties. Given that striving readers may demonstrate difficulties in the orthographic mapping process, you may want to increase the intensity of the instruction and practice along with providing the targeted lessons in smaller groups.

Teachers can differentiate instruction by adjusting the amount and type of orthographic mapping practice that students receive.

Increase Exposure: Provide additional exposure to the same pattern of words in various contexts through independent reading, audiobooks, and read alouds.

Increase Rehearsal and Practice: Strengthen and support working memory through repeating the words and writing the words in various contexts.

Review Cumulatively with Longer Intervals: Review the words from recent lessons and increase the number of lessons between each review.

Conclusion

When effective reading instruction takes place, research shows that all learners, even those exhibiting reading difficulties, can achieve their reading goals. Neurocognitive studies show that students with dyslexia who once displayed different brain activity patterns than students without dyslexia demonstrated normalized brain activation patterns after evidence-based orthographic instruction, signifying the development of successful orthographic mapping. As with any skill, evidence-based instruction with intentional and adequate practice is vital for the development of orthographic mapping that will form the basis of skillful reading and spelling.
REFERENCES
Ehri, L.C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5-21, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2013.819356

Foorman, B., Coyne, M., Denton, C.A., Dimino, J., Hayes, L., Justice, L., Lewis, W., & Wagner, R. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade: A practice guide (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

Kilpatrick, D.A. (2015). Assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Lyon, G.R. (1998). Overview of reading and literacy initiatives. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

Richards, T.L., Aylward, E.H., Berninger, V.W., Field, K.M., Grimme, A.C., Richards, A.L., & Nagy, W. (2006). Individual fMRI activation in orthographic mapping and morpheme mapping after orthographic or morphological spelling treatment in child dyslexics. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 19(1), 56-86.

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HMH core, intervention, and supplemental programs are rooted in the science of reading. Find out more about our evidence-based approach to teaching a child to read.

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What Is Orthographic Mapping in Reading and Why Is It Important?

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Learn about orthographic mapping, the cognitive process that we use to store and retrieve words by connecting their pronunciation, spelling, and meaning automatically.

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This article is an analysis of the book titled "Reading in the Brain" by Stanislas Dehaene is very enlightening and cohesive with the information that we have been learning about. The author notes several similarities where the brains adaptive process and plasticity are critical to the process of learning to read. Dehaene emphasizes the complexity of reading and the brains' evolution to learn to read. The author gives a thorough explanation of how the information moves through different sections of the brain. What I like most about this article is the discussion about how the author discusses Dyslexia (p227) and the issue those with reading disabilities have likely inherited these complications and language deficits. The information on page 228 noting that dyslexia's most recent studies show it to be a speech processing impairment as opposed to a reading problem, is very interesting. Whether I agree with that or not will take more research on my part.

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I choose this article because my students like learning on the Prodigy website/app and while looking around on the website, I found that they provide several resources for struggling students. The semantic mapping and vocabulary notebook are both resources I can use to support my own teaching.

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7 Creative Strategies for Vocabulary Teaching | Prodigy

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Help students grow and improve vocabulary learning with trusted teaching strategies.

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This article regarding the differences between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness is very enlightening. It gives an accurate summary of each of those subjects and how students are expected to develop but it also provides an umbrella demonstration of how phonemic awareness is underneath the broad span of phonological awareness. This is a good representation of how they both work together in a supportive relationship. The article displays the importance of both the awarenesses; it is short and sweet which makes it easy to explain to others and helpful in teaching it to other people.

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The National Reading Panel identified Phonemic Awareness as one of the five key concepts at the core of every effective foundational reading program. If you are at all familiar with reading instruction, you have most certainly heard the terms "phonological awareness" and "phonemic awareness" used interchangeably. Although similar, these two concepts are not the same (although one is a subset of the other).

Phonological awareness involves noticing and/or manipulating the sound structure of spoken language. This includes identifying individual words in a sentence, recognizing syllables, rhyming, and alliteration. Basic phonological awareness develops from birth throughout kindergarten and is typically mastered by the end of first grade (Kilpatrick, 2015).

A subset of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness is simply noticing and/or manipulating the INDIVIDUAL sounds (also known as phonemes) in spoken languag e. Phonemic awareness tasks include identifying individual sounds, segmenting sounds, blending sounds, and manipulating individual sounds. Phonemic awareness continues to develop through 3rd or 4th grade as children build a sight vocabulary through the process of orthographic mapping.

This image is not exhaustive. Onset/rime, adding, substituting, and deleting sounds are also other PA tasks that could have been included if not for the sake of space and simplicity.
What are phonemes?

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in a spoken language. Even though there are only 26 letters in the English language, there are 44 phonemes. These include all the consonant sounds, digraphs, short vowel sounds, long vowel sounds, diphthongs, and r-controlled vowels.

What about phonics?

Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness both operate in the world of sound. Once we introduce the letter(s) associated with each sound, we have now crossed over into phonics. Phonics explores the connection between spoken words and written words.

Importance of Phonemic Awareness

Phonological and phonemic awareness have been shown to be an integral part of the process of learning to read. Specifically, advanced phonemic awareness has a profound impact on orthographic mapping, the process our brains use to permanently store words for long-term use. This "sight vocabulary" is what allows children to become fluent readers and also allows them to focus on the meaning of the text rather than having to decode every word.

You can rest assured that phonological awareness and phonemic awareness play a central role in Pathways to Reading Homeschool curriculum. Each of our curriculum kits incorporate phonemic awareness instruction to aide our children in orthographic mapping and the development of a strong sight vocabulary!

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What is the difference between Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness? - Pathways to Reading Homeschool

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The National Reading Panel identified Phonemic Awareness as one of the five key concepts at the core of every effective foundational reading program. If you are at all familiar with reading instruction, you have most certainly heard the terms "phonological awareness" and "phonemic awareness" used interchangeably.

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Invented Spelling and Spelling Development

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Invented Spelling and Spelling Development

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Marilou Barquillo
In this article, it discusses how children progress through certain stages of spelling development. Knowing this progression allows teachers to compel action through their instruction. ​​In the past, spelling was usually taught as a separate subject; memorization was considered the key to its mastery. According to this article, there are six stages describes five stages: precommunicative, semiphonetic, phonetic, transitional, and correct. This article shares some strategies that can be used by educators in their classrooms.

According to Read, "Learning to spell is not a matter of memorizing words, but a developmental process that culminates in a much greater understanding of English spelling than simple relationships between speech sounds and their graphic representations."

In my Pre-K classroom, this technique is very helpful because students are still learning how to read some basic words. An awareness of spelling development can help teachers plan instruction. For precommunicative and semiphonetic spellers, teachers may teach alphabet knowledge, letter-sound correspondences, the concept of "wordness," and left-to-right directionality. At the phonetic stage, students might be introduced, in the context of writing, to word families, spelling patterns, phonics, and word structures (Gentry, 1982). Also, students' invented spellings must be seen as opportunities for them to contribute actively to their own learning.

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Invented Spelling and Spelling Development _ Reading Rockets

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Phonological VS Phonemic Awareness: The Ultimate Breakdown

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Phonological VS Phonemic Awareness: The Ultimate Breakdown

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Angel Johnson - This article gives a great perspective from a teacher's point of view on how to explain and know the difference between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. The author, Lauren, explains the definitions in a relatable way for teachers and provides helpful examples, visuals and links for activities. The author discusses how the terms are different, how they are the same and why they matter in teaching reading instruction. The article also provides a "cheat sheet" by providing a downloadable phonological awareness handout for teachers with a diagram called "The Phonological Awareness House", which displays the difference in phonological and phonemic awareness activities. Lastly, this article provides books and resources for teachers to purchase on the subject. I found this article to be a very helpful resource that I have bookmarked for future reference!

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Last updated on March 17, 2023

Phonological awareness vs phonemic awareness: what is the difference really? How do these differences impact instruction and the way new readers learn? If you are asking these questions, read on. We can learn together! I researched it and explained it all here. 👏

Phonological awareness vs phonemic awareness can be very confusing. In teaching, the terms phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are often used interchangeably. It makes sense. Not only do they look and sound similar, they mean something similar, too.

I'm guilty. 🙋🏽‍♀️ I used to use them interchangeably. ? (Tell me I'm not alone here, please!)

But to be honest, once you learn the difference between the two, it's pretty easy to remember! So, let's dive in!
This post contains affiliate links. By purchasing through this link, we get a small commission. Rest assured - we only share links to products that we know and love!

Phonological VS Phonemic Awareness: The Ultimate Breakdown

What is phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate units of sounds in spoken language.

A unit of sound occurs within a word. For example, the word apple.

You hear /ap/ and /ple/. There are two syllables that we hear. Those are units of sound.

If you're able to hear those two sounds (syllables) in the word, you have phonological awareness.

The following are all units of sounds within a word, organized from largest unit of sound to smallest unit of sound.

Note on Manipulating Sounds (for both Phonological and Phonemic Awareness)

Before we get into the difference between phonological and phonemic awareness, I wanted to make sure we were on the same page about what it means to manipulate sounds.

In all of these examples, let's manipulate phonemes for the word dog. When you see / / around a letter, it refers to the letter sound, not the letter name.

Blending Sounds - Put these sounds together /d/ /o/ /g/ >> dog

Segmenting Sounds - Separate these sounds dog >> /d/ /o/ /g/

Adding Sounds - Add /s/ to the end of dog >> dogs

Deleting Sounds - Say dog without /d/ >> og

Substituting Sounds - The word is dog. Instead of /d/, let's say /f/ >> fog.

Examples of phonological awareness activities

Phonological awareness activities include manipulating sounds (see above ??) with syllables, onsets, rimes, and phonemes.

For example:

What is phonemic awareness?

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the smallest unit of sound in spoken language.

The smallest unit of sound in the English language is called a phoneme.

Did you know there are 43 phonemes in the English language?

Confusing when there are only 26 letters, isn't it? Don't worry, in phonemic awareness we are focusing on sounds and not letters.

Examples of phonemic awareness activities

Phonemic awareness activities involve the smallest units of sound only.

For example, being able to hear /c/ and /a/ and /t/ in the word cat requires phonemic awareness.

Another example would being able to hear /sh/ and /a/ and /ck/ in the word shack.

These sounds cannot be any smaller. You cannot break down the /k/ sound. You cannot break down the /sh/ sound. (Even though it has two letters, they only make one sound). The same can be said for /ck/, too.

Phonemic awareness involves being able to hear and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of sound.

How are phonological awareness and phonemic awareness different?

Phonological awareness is about being able to hear and manipulate units of sound in spoken words. That includes syllables, onset, rime, and phonemes.

Phonemic awareness is about the being able to hear and manipulate the smallest unit of sound, a phoneme!

How are phonological awareness and phonemic awareness the same?

Phonemic awareness is a part of phonological awareness.

If phonological awareness was a house 🏠, phonemic awareness would be one of the rooms. I would venture to say that it's the kitchen or family room, because it's usually the area of phonological awareness that we as reading teachers spend the most time in.

For example, counting the number of syllables in a word would be a phonological awareness activity. (We are working with syllables.)

Counting the number of sounds in a word would be a phonemic awareness activity. We are working with phonemes. This means it is also a phonological awareness activity (we are working with a unit of sound).

Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness both focus on the sounds that we hear, and not the letters that we see.

When you think of them, remember that they can be done in the dark.

What does that mean?

They are listening and speaking activities

They don't involve letters (yet!)

Let's think about it: Count the number of syllables in a word in the dark.

Say and clap, cat.

Clap! One syllable. You can do that with the lights off.

You can blend sounds to make a word in the dark.

Put these sounds together: /c/ /a/ /t/. What's the word? Cat! You can listen and blend these sounds together in the dark. It's about what you hear.

Now, in order to read the word cat, students would need to see the letters: c, a, t, and sound them out.

They would need the lights on. ? In this case, we are talking about phonics. It involves letters and sounds. That letter-sound relationship is phonics, not phonological or phonemic awareness.

Now, this doesn't mean it's bad to practice this way.

You still need to practice blending and segmenting sounds in words using letters. But that comes with phonics activities, not phonemic awareness activities.

Before (or while) we learn phonics, we have to build phonological ( and phonemic) awareness!

Why do Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness matter?

Phonological awareness is one of the strongest predictors of reading success.

In other words, students are going to have a very difficult time learning and implementing phonics in reading if they don't have phonological awareness. (Remember, that includes phonemic awareness, too!).

How can a student sound out c-a-t (decode the word) if they can't hear the three individual sounds (phonemes) that make up the word? They can't!

This is why it's so important that students are able to hear, blend, and segment sounds in words before learning to read using phonics.

Phonological awareness VS phonemic awareness cheat sheet

Now, if you accidentally interchange these terms (like I used to do 🙋🏽‍♀️), does it mean that your students won't learn how to read? Of course not! But, does that mean we want to use the terms incorrectly? Also, of course not! 😉

A lot of my resources are tagged with phonemic awareness as the main topic or category because the majority of the instruction/practice involves manipulating phonemes. After all, learning to segment and blend sounds in words is the most important aspect of phonological awareness.

However, when practicing manipulating sounds, it's extremely common to start with words and syllables, and then move to onset and rime, and finally, to phonemes. Why? It's a logical progression! Start big, work your way towards small. This is why you may see (or use) the term phonemic awareness on an activity that has a warm-up involving syllables and/or onset and rimes.

To help you remember the difference between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness, I made you this quick cheat sheet!

Click to the download the Phonological VS Phonemic Awareness Teacher Cheat Sheet!
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Professional Development on Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
Phonological Awareness: From Research to Practice by Gail T. Gillon
Here are some books on phonological and phonemic awareness that I love!
Purposeful Play for Early Childhood Phonological Awareness by Hallie Kay Yopp and Ruth Helen Yopp

Do you have any recommendations? Feel free to share them with us in the comments below! 👇

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Phonological VS Phonemic Awareness: The Ultimate Breakdown

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Last updated on March 17, 2023 Phonological awareness vs phonemic awareness: what is the difference really? How do these differences impact instruction and the way new readers learn? If you are asking these questions, read on. We can learn together! I researched it and explained it all here.

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Phonological Awareness and Rhyme-Faye Chandler

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Phonological Awareness and Rhyme-Faye Chandler

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This lesson Plan from poetry 4 kids is a good illustration of how upper grades and middle school scholars can use their knowledge of rhyme to learn how to identify and create different rhyming schemes.

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This lesson plan uses several poems from Poetry4kids.com to show how to identify the rhyme scheme of a poem. Students will analyze the poems to determine the rhyme schemes of each.

Click here for a printable copy of this lesson plan for use in the classroom .

When a poem has rhyming words at the ends of its lines, these are called "end rhymes." Here is an example of end rhyme:

A "rhyme scheme" is a way of describing the pattern of end rhymes in a poem. Each new sound at the end of a line is given a letter, starting with "A," then "B," and so on. If an end sound repeats the end sound of an earlier line, it gets the same letter as the earlier line.

Here are three slightly different cat poems, each with a different rhyme scheme. The first is AABB, the second is ABAB, and the third is ABCB):
Exercise:

1. Read the following poems by Kenn Nesbitt.

2. For each poem, identify the rhyme scheme and write it below the poem.

Mr. Brown the Circus Clown
Mr. Brown, the circus clown
puts his clothes on upside down.
He wears his hat upon his toes
and socks and shoes upon his nose.

Rhyme scheme: _____________
My Penmanship is Pretty Bad
My penmanship is pretty bad.
My printing's plainly awful.
In truth, my writing looks so sad
it ought to be unlawful.

Rhyme scheme: _____________
All My Great Excuses
I started on my homework
but my pen ran out of ink.
My hamster ate my homework.
My computer's on the blink.

Rhyme scheme: _____________
Today I Had a Rotten Day
Today I had a rotten day.
As I was coming in from play
I accidentally stubbed my toes
and tripped and fell and whacked my nose.

Rhyme scheme: _____________

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This lesson plan uses several poems from Poetry4kids.com to show how to identify the rhyme scheme of a poem. Students will analyze the poems to determine the rhyme schemes of each. Click here for a printable copy of this lesson plan for use in the classroom .

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English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction

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English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction

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Marilou Barquillo

This article provides recommendations and considerations for the instruction of ELLs within each of the Reading First components. This article talks about teaching ELL students the five essential elements of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency, and reading comprehension strategies.

I found this article helpful because 90% of my students are English language learners. In teaching phonemic awareness research suggests that ELLs respond well to meaningful activities such as language games and word walls, especially when the activities are consistent and focus on particular sounds and letters. Songs and poems, with their rhythm and repetition, are easily memorized and can be used to teach phonemic awareness and print concepts to ELLs (Hiebert, et al., 1998). Teaching phonics in ELLs to read in English, teachers can effectively teach phonics and all of the Reading First components if they are armed with knowledge about their students and their native language. Vocabulary development needs to be taught explicitly and be a part of the daily curriculum in addition to learning to read. This can be done through class time devoted strictly to English as a Second Language (ESL) or English Language Development (ELD). In teaching reading fluency there two instructional approaches have typically been used to teach reading fluency. One, guided repeated oral reading, encourages students to read passages out loud with systematic and explicit guidance and feedback from their teacher. The other, independent silent reading, encourages students to read silently on their own, inside and outside the classroom, with little guidance or feedback from their teachers. Lastly, in teaching reading comprehension, Teachers of ELLs must expose their students to quality literature and higher-order thinking skills. This can be done through the use of graphic organizers, modeling "thinking aloud," and stopping often in the text to question and summarize. With all of these strategies, we can better provide support to our students to become successful in their reading.

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English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction _ Reading Rockets

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I can improve student’s comprehension by teaching students to use cognitive strategies when they encounter barriers to understanding what it is that they are reading and aspiring to comprehend.  I can demonstrate this by I do, You do, We do until they have the ability to do this independently.  A few types of instruction that can improve reading comprehension of students are as follows:

Comprehension monitoring - students are aware of understanding the material(s) read

Cooperative learning - where students learn together as peers

Use of graphic and semantic organizers (using story maps) - students make graphic representations of what they’re reading

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What Works in Comprehension Instruction _ Reading Rockets

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The 'Science of Reading' and English-Language Learners: What the Research Says

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The 'Science of Reading' and English-Language Learners: What the Research Says

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In the article "The ‘Science of Reading’ and English-Language Learners: What the Research Says" by Sarah Schwartz, the author explores the relationship between the science of reading and English-language learners (ELLs). The science of reading refers to evidence-based practices for teaching reading that are grounded in research.
Overall, this article highlights the importance of incorporating evidence-based practices from the science of reading into instruction for English-language learners. By doing so, teachers can help ELLs develop their reading skills more effectively.

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As more states and districts are embracing the "science of reading," some educators and advocates have raised the question: Will these methods work for English-language learners?

The "science of reading" has become shorthand in some literacy circles for approaches to early reading instruction that emphasize explicit, systematic teaching.

Some researchers and ELL experts say that's a problem. The National Committee for Effective Literacy, a new advocacy organization formed this year, has argued that states that have taken up these initiatives have narrowed literacy instruction to "a few foundational reading skills" that fail to meet the needs of English learners.

The group's aim, said Martha Hernandez, an NCEL member and the executive director of Californians Together, is to "ensure that the research and policies and practices that address English learner and emergent bilinguals were spotlighted, and are part of the national literacy conversation."

Other early literacy researchers, though, have said that NCEL is misrepresenting some of the changes that states and districts are making to their reading teaching methods-and that a lot of the strategies that work for native English speakers can be effective for English learners, too.

So what are these areas of overlap, and where do English learners need something different?

What do school systems mean when they say the "science of reading"?

States that have recently passed laws aiming to improve reading instruction have mandated that teachers be trained in delivering this kind of foundational skills instruction, or that schools use materials and assessments that support it.

Systematic, explicit instruction in letters and sounds is crucial for beginning readers, especially those with dyslexia or phonological processing problems, said Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, a bilingual speech-language pathologist and an associate research professor at the University of Houston.

Still, she said, "phonology and phonics are one piece of the puzzle. It's not everything that literacy is about."

Teachers need to help students develop a host of early literacy skills, like their ability to express themselves through spoken language, their ability to understand what others are saying to them, and their vocabulary, Cárdenas-Hagan said. Students should have opportunities for practice that integrates listening, speaking, reading, and writing, she added.

While these new state laws mandate certain approaches to foundational skills instruction, they direct schools to prioritize other reading skills, too. Many cite the five components of reading studied in the National Reading Panel in 2000-instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension.

Even so, critics of these laws worry that a more comprehensive focus will be lost in their implementation, and that school systems will be incentivized to double down on foundational skills instruction at the expense of all else.

"When it hits the classroom, when it hits district administration, that's what they look for, that's what they assess," said Laurie Olsen, an NCEL member and the board president of Californians Together.

Still, he said, new state laws often don't specify how much time to spend on different reading skills or how to teach them-nor should they, Goldenberg said: "You can't expect legislation to be curriculum guides." That means, though, that these laws' success or failure lies in implementation, he said.

Does this research apply to English-language learners, too?

In 2002, the U.S. Department of Education convened the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth, tasking it with reviewing the research on best practices for literacy development among ELLs.

The panel's report, published in 2006, found that a lot of what works for kids whose first language is English is also effective for kids who speak a different language at home. Instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension-the five components of reading studied in the National Reading Panel a few years earlier-all had "clear benefits" for ELLs.

But the literature also showed that instruction was most effective when it was tailored to ELLs' specific needs and unique founts of knowledge. And crucially, kids learning English needed more instruction in oral English proficiency than their peers: things like vocabulary knowledge, listening comprehension, and syntax.

The panel found that schools weren't supporting students enough in these areas, and more recent research finds that schools still aren't doing enough to help ELLs develop academic language in English.

With these students, teachers need to discuss the meaning of words constantly-even shorter, simpler words that teachers might not treat as vocabulary words with native English speakers, said Cárdenas-Hagan. In working with students who are learning how to speak a new language, teachers need to be purposeful about developing vocabulary and oral language skills in every lesson.

In part, this is so that students can understand that the words they're sounding out have meaning, said Kathy Escamilla, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an NCEL member. She gave the example of a 1st grade class, where a teacher might ask students to clap out how many sounds are in the word "sofa."

Native English speakers would know that word, but other students might not. If the teacher doesn't help English learners understand the meaning, then it's harder for students to make the connection that these sounds represent word parts, Escamilla said.

And there are other reasons why English learners might need teachers to pay more attention to vocabulary instruction. A word like "run," for example, has multiple meanings in English: You can run a race, but you can also run your finger down a list, or run a computer program. Discussing those multiple meanings as students encounter these words in phonics lessons is a key part of vocabulary instruction for English learners, Cárdenas-Hagan said.

Teachers need to build students' oral vocabulary beyond these words, too, so that they're prepared for the more challenging texts they'll encounter after the earliest grades, said Goldenberg. This is important for all students, but especially so for English learners.

"If the only English-language development that kids are getting in K, 1, 2 are the words they're learning to read, that is an impoverished ELD curriculum," he said.

Research on interventions for Spanish-speaking students who are at risk of reading difficulties has found that successful approaches combine both instruction in the five components of reading identified in the National Reading Panel report, and additional support in developing spoken language skills in English from trained bilingual intervention teachers.

What if students are in bilingual programs and learning to read in two languages?

English learners aren't blank slates. They come into schools with language-and often literacy-skills from the language they speak at home. These skills can support them in developing proficiency in English.

The number of dual-language programs in the United States is growing, but there's still a shortage of certified bilingual teachers-and, as Education Week has reported, English learners often face competition for spots in these programs from affluent, native English-speaking parents who are increasingly seeking out bilingual education for their children.

In its position paper, NCEL outlined best practices for English learners in dual-language programs. Good teaching in a bilingual setting isn't just "repeating the same thing in two languages," they write.

It requires "coordinated and aligned" literacy teaching, with a scope and sequence that makes sense in each language. Students should have access to high-quality materials and assessments in both languages, as well as opportunities to write, have conversations, and deliver presentations in both.

And importantly, they write, dual language programs should celebrate diversity, "including learning about the benefits of bilingualism and explicit efforts to equalize the status of 'minoritized' languages."

But Escamilla says the two goals aren't mutually exclusive. "While it is true that most of the kids who are labeled as English learners are in English programs, that does not mean that we shouldn't advocate or push for the development of bilingual programs."

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The 'Science of Reading' and English-Language Learners: What the Research Says

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As more states embrace certain evidence-based methods, advocates question: Will they work for English learners?

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This article discusses the importance of vocabulary in comprehension and provides strategies for improving vocabulary skills. It mentions that studies have shown a link between vocabulary and comprehension, with students who score high in comprehension also scoring high on vocabulary. The article also highlights three ways the brain constructs meaning when learning new words: relevance, emotion, and patterns/connections. It suggests using direct instruction, repetition, and multiple exposures to teach new words, as well as incorporating them into stories, sentences, drawings, and conversations. Games are also recommended as a way to learn and practice vocabulary in a relaxed setting. Overall, the article emphasizes the importance of vocabulary in comprehension and provides various methods for improving vocabulary skills.

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This article's title alone intrigued me. I was so curious to know exactly how to crack the code regarding literacy. As I read, what stood out (again) to me was how inorganic reading is for us as humans. It's something we must explicitly learn, developing skills for the various parts that reading and literacy entails. Basically, staff members at Horn Elementary changed the approach to reading. They did this by learning all that they could about reading theories. LETRS (Language Essentials for Teaching of Reading and Spelling) was what the staff was trained on. As they are a learning and relationship school, they incorporated these traits in how they approach teaching children reading/literacy. I can learn from their reading instruction in my classroom by doing the following: whole group instruction focusing on phonemic awareness, small group instruction and differentiation where students are working at their own learning level with just a few others, finally I can tap into scholars learning about their brain, I'm sure them knowing that we aren't wired to read will aid in their confidence of actually learning to read and comprehend.

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Cracking the Code_ How and Why Big Horn Elementary School Went All-In with Structured Literacy _ Reading Rockets

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The behaviorist and psycholinguistic approaches were theories discussed in this article. It's important to note the reading pyramid. A reading pyramid has the basic rules of reading starting with comprehension, sentences/phrases, word recognition and finally letters/sound. Now that we are clear on the reading pyramid, the behaviorist theory is known as the "bottom up" approach. From bottom to top you have letters/sounds, word recognition, sentences/phrases, and comprehension last. The 2nd theory is psycholinguistic approach known as the "top down" approach, the very opposite direction of the aforementioned theory. Alphablocks were mentioned and my children love and learn from that animation learning show. I can implement the information in this article by doing the following in the classroom: I would use the behaviorist theory over a longer period of time because it begins with sound of letters and then progresses, breaking it up for young learners to keep their attention; use K5 learning for stories to look at the alphabet (on day 1), words (maybe a song, on day 2), sentence (on day 3), comprehension (probing questions on day 4).

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As I am still processing the fact that we weren't born to read but in need of development, learning, practice and even remediation of literacy, this article supported my surprise to the fact. Reading is indeed a science consisting of many parts such as audible reading of single words, the act of learning to read cognitively, repetition. The information given not only assured me of the complexity of reading but also supported me in that I can taylor lessons and small group plans to provide a simple yet explicit set of directions when it comes to reading. While students may be on grade level, above, or below, there are some basics of phonics that I can incorporate in each learning level. I'm inspired to walk my scholars through the challenge of "reading" despite the complexity of it all.

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Supporting ELL in the Mainstream Classroom

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Supporting ELL in the Mainstream Classroom

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Marilou Barquillo:
This article focuses on strategies that we use to support ESL students. Teaching reading to English language learners (ELLs) may seem daunting, but the good news is that you don't have to learn an entirely new method. You can and should use what you already know to be effective, research-based reading instruction. However, ELLs will need additional support in learning how to read. The strategies below will help you to provide this much-needed assistance in the context of your everyday teaching, particularly for newcomers.

I found this article relevant to my class because 90% of my Pre-K students are ESL. This is their first time attending the school so most of them speak their language and I found myself lost especially at the beginning of the school year. I speak a different language which is Tagalog. The English language is my second language although most of our mode of instruction in my country, the Philippines is also in English. When it comes to this topic, I can relate to and use the strategies I have learned myself to communicate. This article has plenty of strategies that help me in my instruction such as reading to students daily; supporting their comprehension by pointing to the corresponding pictures while I read to them. A graphic organizer is also helpful to show visual illustrations that allow ELLs to better understand the material while learning important vocabulary.

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Supporting ELLs in the Mainstream Classroom_ Reading Instruction _ Reading Rockets

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Marilou Barquillo
This article discusses the importance of vocabulary for English language learners (ELLs). The average native English speaker enters kindergarten knowing at least 5,000 words. The average ELL may know 5,000 words in his or her native language, but very few words in English. While native speakers continue learning new words, ELLs face the double challenge of building that foundation and closing the gap. Knowing vocabulary words is key to reading comprehension. The more words a child knows, the better he or she will understand the text. Using a variety of effective teaching methods will increase the student's ability to learn new words. There are plenty of strategies that I can use with my Pre-k class next year such as pre-teaching the vocabulary. I incorporate this most of the time with my students. I use concrete objects, point to pictures and role-play. I’m also excited to focus on cognates to teach vocabulary to them. I find it helpful to use audiobooks and tablets for them to increase their vocabulary while playing in the HATCH app which we use to support them in literacy.

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Vocabulary Development with ELLs _ Reading Rockets

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This article outlines the difference between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness and the specific skills they encompass. The difference between these two concepts has implications for instruction and how new readers learn. It also outlines how phonological and phonemic awareness develops and how they both help reading and literacy development.  Ways to teach and assess phonological and phonemic awareness are also provided.

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When we talk about foundations of literacy, three "PH" words often come to mind: phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. We see these terms when we view grade level reading standards, reading research, and built into reading lessons found in many core reading series. Both phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are oral and auditory, and the focus is on the sounds in words. Phonics, on the other hand, focuses on the letters that the sounds represent. Phonics involves print, phonological, and phonemic awareness do not. While phonological and phonemic awareness are both oral and auditory, there are differences between these two terms.

What is Phonological Awareness?

"Phonological awareness is the understanding of different ways that oral language can be divided into smaller components and manipulated." (Chard and Dickson, 1999) Phonological awareness refers to the bigger "chunks" or "parts" of language. When we ask students to rhyme, blend small words to make a compound word, break words apart into syllables or onset-rime, we are working at the phonological awareness level. Phonological awareness can be thought of as a big umbrella with the bigger "chunks" of language being the top of the umbrella.

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made of individual sounds called phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound we hear in a word. Phonemic awareness falls underneath the umbrella as a sub-category of phonological awareness. Rather than working with larger units of spoken language, we ask students to listen for the individual sounds or phonemes in a spoken word. When we ask students to blend or segment words into the smallest unit of sound they hear, we are working at the phonemic awareness level. For example, the four sounds /p//l//a//n/ can be blended to make the whole word plan.

How Does Phonemic Awareness Help Reading and Literacy Development?

In their book, "Know Better, Do Better", David and Meredith Liben state "It is not an option to skip or shortchange phonemic awareness! Children without mastery of it will inevitably struggle." While decades of research support this statement, phonemic awareness is still the most common reason students struggle with word reading. When educators consider phonemic awareness and phonics to be interchangeable terms, phonemic awareness is often left out of instruction and the focus shifts to print with phonics.

Failing to provide explicit phonemic awareness instruction leads to many students lacking the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds. Instead, they get the message that words are whole units that need to be visually memorized. While students learn language naturally by listening to speech and words, hearing individual sounds in words is not natural. We don't speak in individual sounds, instead, our speech is co-articulated and we hear whole words in oral language. If we begin our literacy instruction by teaching letters and sounds, without phonemic awareness instruction, phonics does not make sense to students.

Phonemic awareness and phonics do work together when students learn to read and spell. Words are made up of sounds (phonemic awareness) and letters represent these sounds in print (phonics). Without the ability to hear sounds in words, phonemic awareness and phonics cannot engage in this reciprocal relationship. Researcher Wiley Blevins explains, "Phonemic awareness training provides the foundation on which phonics instruction is built. Thus, children need solid phonemic awareness training for phonics instruction to be effective."

It is essential for students to understand that words are made up of individual sounds, and they can blend, segment, and manipulate those sounds. If students can do this work through the air, we can transfer these skills to print, so they can read and spell more words.

How Does Phonological Awareness Develop?

It is important to support and scaffold students through the continuum of phonological awareness to allow them to eventually hear and manipulate those individual sounds in words- the phonemic awareness level. The image of the ladder below shows the continuum of phonological awareness. When providing instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness, we begin at the phonological level. It is much easier to hear the bigger units of language versus the individual sounds in a word. For example, asking children to segment pencil into two-syllables, /pen/ /cil/, is an easier task when compared to segmenting the word pen into three individual sounds, /p/ /e/ /n/.

The largest unit of language is a word. Instruction in phonological awareness begins at the word level when children learn that compound words can be blended, segmented, and manipulated. For example, we can blend the small words class - room together to the compound word classroom. Or the opposite, we can segment compound words into two separate words. We can say the whole word and take it apart into two smaller words: raincoat, rain - coat. We can also substitute one small word in a compound word. Say sunshine, change shine to glasses and the word is sunglasses.

Once students can blend, segment, and manipulate compound words, we narrow the unit of language they hear and do the same work with syllables. For example, we blend the three syllables /cal - en - dar/, to say the whole word calendar. Students can segment a word into syllables: elbow can be segmented into /el/ - /bow/. We can substitute a syllable in a word to make a new word: reading; change /read/ to /talk/ and the word is talking.

We can narrow the unit of language again when we focus on the onset and rime. Onset-rime is breaking apart a syllable. The onset of a word is all the sounds that come before the vowel and the rime is the vowel and all the sounds after. Students blend the onset and rime into a whole word or segment a spoken word into the onset and rime.

For example, students can blend the onset /b/ and the rime /ig/ into the word /b-ig/, big. And if we were to segment the word flip, the onset would be /fl/ and the rime would be /ip/. Onset-rime is the last level of phonological awareness and teaches students to blend and segment two parts into a word. Developing a foundation of understanding in phonological awareness prepares students to hear individual sounds and develop phoneme awareness. The chart below shares examples of tasks and activities at the phonological awareness level

Phonological Awareness Activities

How Does Phonemic Awareness Develop?

When looking at the image of the ladder, the first three rungs on the ladder are phonological awareness and the top rung on the ladder is phonemic awareness. The focus is on hearing individual sounds in spoken words. While instruction begins with phonological awareness, our end goal is phonemic awareness. Students who are phonemically aware are not only able to hear the sounds in words, they are able to isolate the sounds, blend, segment and manipulate sounds in spoken words.

For example, segmenting the word pen into the sounds /p/ /e/ /n/ is an example of a phonemic awareness task. If students can segment the word, they can then spell the word. If they can blend those sounds, they can read the word. Additionally, if students can substitute the /p/ to a /h/, they can make a new word - hen. Phonemic awareness training provides students with the skills necessary to read and spell words when they see these sounds in print.

There are several skills included in phonemic awareness instruction and the chart below shares examples of skills and tasks at the phonemic awareness level.

Phonemic Awareness Activities

Phoneme Isolation

Phoneme isolation is a skill where students hear and isolate a sound at the beginning of a word, middle of a word, and end of a word, often referred to as initial, medial, and final sounds.

The first sound in the word name is /n/.

The final sound in the word bark is /k/.
The medial or vowel sound in the word cup is /u/.

Blending (parts to whole)

Blending is a skill that directly correlates to phonic decoding. Students hear sounds spoken aloud and they blend the sounds to make a word. During instruction, the teacher provides the phonemes and the students blend the phonemes into a whole word.

/s/ /u/ /n/, sun

/b/ /r/ /ā/ /k/, break
/p/ /r/ /i/ /s/, price

Segment (whole to parts)

Segmenting is a skill that directly correlates to encoding or spelling. Students hear a whole word and they segment the word into all the individual sounds they hear. During instruction, a teacher would say a whole word and students segment the word into individual phonemes.

Phoneme Manipulation:

Add

Delete
Substitute
Phoneme manipulation is practiced with adding a phoneme, deleting a phoneme, or substituting a phoneme in spoken words.

Adding an initial sound to make a word: Add /s/ to /-at/ and the word is sat

Deleting an initial sound from a word: Say cup. Without /k/, what's left is, /-up/.

Substituting an initial sound: The word is top. Change /t/ to /m/and the word is, mop.

How Do You Teach Phonological and Phonemic Awareness?

Considering the research and the role phonemic awareness plays in building the foundation of reading, it is clear we owe it to our students to do better. All students benefit from explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness. In most literacy curricula, the amount of time dedicated to phonemic awareness, and the way it is presented, is not effective enough to create phonemically proficient readers. Often just a few minutes are devoted to this instruction, with varying skills taught each day. If we are going to do better for students, our instruction in phonemic awareness needs to be intentional.

For our younger learners, we should begin instruction at the phonological awareness level (compound words, syllables, onset-rime) to allow students the opportunity to blend, segment, and manipulate parts of words first before we have them do that same work with phonemes. With older learners, or struggling readers, our goal is to get to the phoneme level as quickly as possible so they can transfer these skills to reading and spelling.

Phonological and phonemic awareness skills can be divided into 3 levels: early, basic, and advanced. In the past, many educators thought the basic skills of blending and segmenting were enough to create proficient readers as these skills directly corelate to decoding and encoding. However, we now know that providing phonemic awareness instruction to the advanced level is critical.

Phonemic awareness instruction is powerful, but it does not need to take long. Dr. Heggerty created quick, 10-12 minutes lessons to provide students with the practice and repetition they needed to reach phoneme proficiency. Our lessons include all 8 phonological and phonemic awareness skills beginning with compound words and working our way to the phoneme level. Teaching these skills each day will allow our children the repetition and practice they need to hear, blend, segment and manipulate sounds in words.

How Do You Assess Phonological and Phonemic Awareness?

We can assess students' phonemic awareness in many ways. Universal screeners, such as DIBELS or Acadience, assess some skills and can be an indicator that we need to "dig deeper" or learn more about certain students. Other assessments include the PAST or our Heggerty Phonemic Awareness assessments which provide more information by assessing more skills.

Because phonemic awareness is oral and auditory, assessments are completed one-on-one and can be time consuming to administer. A quick and effective way to check in on students' phonemic awareness is listening to their responses during instruction. You can rotate rows when students are sitting on the carpet and have a focus group each week. Once students know most of their letters and sounds, looking at their writing will show you what sounds they are hearing in words as they map those sounds to print. Similarly, listening to students sound out or decode words is a way to assess their ability to blend sounds into words

The Foundation for Literacy Development

In her blog post Of 'Hard Words' and Straw Men: Let's Understand What Reading Science is Really About Louisa Moats notes that, "Perhaps the most critical and least-practiced component of effective early instruction is phoneme awareness. Awareness of the sounds that make up spoken words, facility at manipulating those sounds, and the links between speech and print must be mastered for students to be fluent readers and accurate spellers of an alphabetic writing system like ours."

Both phonological and phonemic awareness focus on the sounds in language. We begin our instruction at the phonological level and narrow the unit of language until we can work at the phoneme level. focuses on teaching students to hear the specific sounds in words and is essential for literacy instruction.

It is important for students to be explicitly taught how to hear sounds in words to help them blend, segment, and manipulate those sounds. When a student has phoneme proficiency, they are able to transfer the oral and auditory skills to print to be able to read and spell words. Phonemic awareness is the necessary foundation for creating proficient readers and writers.

References:

Liben, David & Liben, MeredithKnow Better, Do Better. LIteracy Solutions, 2019.

Blevins, Wiley. Phonics from A to Z. 2017

Moats, Louisa. Of 'Hard Words' and Straw Men: Let's Understand What Reading Science is Really About, Oct 16, 2019

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What are Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness?

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When we talk about foundations of literacy, three "PH" words often come to mind: phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. We see these terms when...

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Understanding the Five Components of Reading Comprehension

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Understanding the Five Components of Reading Comprehension

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Angel Johnson:
In this article, readers are able to take a deep dive into the five components of reading comprehension and how they impact overall reading performance.
This article provides a written description of the five components, along with a visual representation for each, and some interesting links that provide more information or resources for teachers. For example, there is a link to an English alphabetic chart that readers can download to hear phonic sounds and a link for free reading websites through pinterest.  Overall, it discusses how each component is interdependent and plays a critical role in overall reading performance.

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Reading comprehension is an essential skill that helps individuals to understand and analyze written text. It requires the integration of various cognitive and language abilities, including phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and background knowledge. In this article, we'll dive deeper into the five components of reading comprehension and how they impact overall reading performance.

Decoding

Decoding involves translating written text into spoken words. It is a critical component of reading comprehension as it allows individuals to understand the meaning of written words and sentences. Decoding skills are essential for recognizing and pronouncing words accurately, which helps to increase reading fluency and comprehension. Children who struggle with decoding often experience difficulties with understanding the meaning of written text and may require additional support to develop their decoding skills.

Fluency

Fluency refers to the ability to read text accurately, smoothly, and with expression. Fluent readers are able to read text quickly and effortlessly, allowing them to focus on comprehending the meaning of the text. Children who struggle with fluency often have difficulty with decoding and may require additional support to develop their fluency skills. Improving fluency leads to increased reading accuracy and comprehension, as well as increased confidence and motivation in reading.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary refers to an individual's knowledge of words and their meanings. A strong vocabulary is essential for reading comprehension as it enables individuals to understand the meaning of written text. Children who have a limited vocabulary often struggle with understanding written text and may require additional support to develop their vocabulary skills. This can include exposure to a variety of texts, opportunities to learn new words, and explicit instruction in vocabulary building.

Background Knowledge

Background knowledge refers to the information and experiences an individual brings to a reading task. It is an essential component of reading comprehension as it helps individuals to make connections between the text and their prior knowledge, allowing them to understand the meaning of the text more effectively. Children who have limited background knowledge may struggle with understanding complex or abstract concepts in written text and may require additional support to build their background knowledge.

I would like to sum-up that the five components of reading comprehension are phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and background knowledge. Each component is interdependent and plays a critical role in overall reading performance. To support the development of strong reading comprehension skills, it is important to provide opportunities for children to develop and practice each of these components.
MORE: FREE Reading Websites

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Understanding the Five Components of Reading Comprehension - Edutechspot

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Reading comprehension is an essential skill that helps individuals to understand and analyze written text. It requires the integration of various cognitive and language abilities, including phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and background knowledge. In this article, we'll dive deeper into the five components of reading comprehension and how they impact overall reading performance.

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Faye chandler components reading competency

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Faye chandler components reading competency

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This video helps you understand the different domains that children draw from in becoming competent readers. it breaks down how children utilize information from the grapho phonic domain, the syntactic domain, and the semantic domain in order to become competent readers.

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The Role of Orthographic Mapping in Learning to Read

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The Role of Orthographic Mapping in Learning to Read

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This article speaks about how orthographic mapping plays a vital role in reading proficiency by enabling rapid word recognition. Teachers must provide explicit instruction in phonics and phonological awareness skills while offering opportunities for repeated exposure to high-frequency words and varied text types.
The implications for teaching are significant. To support students' orthographic mapping abilities, teachers should provide explicit instruction in phonics and phonological awareness skills. They need to teach students the relationships between letters and sounds systematically, helping them build a solid foundation for word recognition.

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(Note: This post has been updated on April 3, 2022.)

Every word has three forms - its sounds (phonemes), its orthography (spelling), and its meaning. Orthographic mapping is the process that all successful readers use to become fluent readers. Through orthographic mapping, students use the oral language processing part of their brain to map (connect) the sounds of words they already know (the phonemes) to the letters in a word (the spellings). They then permanently store the connected sounds and letters of words (along with their meaning) as instantly recognizable words, described as "sight vocabulary" or "sight words".
Sight Words
A sight word is any word that a reader instantly recognizes and identifies without conscious effort. Adult competent readers have between 30,000 and 60,000 words that have been orthographically mapped in their sight vocabulary. As soon as one of these words is seen, it is unconsciously and instantly recognizable. This is what enables us to be efficient readers, able to focus on the meaning of what we read instead of on word reading. When words are stored as sight vocabulary words in long-term memory, a reader no longer has to decode words one at a time the way beginning readers do. While some orthographic mapping can begin earlier, most children start applying this skill in second and third grade. As we continue to read into adulthood, we continue to use orthographic mapping to grow our sight word vocabularies.

Because some high-frequency words (e.g., the, and, is, was, for, are) are essential to learning how to read, teachers of kindergarten and grade 1 typically provide explicit instruction to help students automatically read some of these words. Students are taught to read them as whole words at the same time that they are being taught how to decode most other words. However, once students are able to orthographically map, they will start to store high-frequency words as sight words on their own.
What is the mental process of orthographic mapping?
With orthographic mapping of a word, the letters we see with our eyes and the sounds we hear in that word get processed together as a sight word and are stored together in the brain. This is not the same as memorizing just the way a word looks. It is also important to remember that orthographic mapping is a mental process used to store and remember words. It is not a skill, teaching technique, or activity you can do with students (Kilpatrick, 2019). What can be taught are phonemic awareness and phonics skills which enable orthographic mapping.

With orthographic mapping, students connect something new with something they already know. Through listening and speaking, young students already know a word's pronunciation and meaning which is stored in their long-term memory. Students turn a written word into a sight word by attaching the phonemes in the word's pronunciation to the letter sequence of the word. The pronunciation of the word has to be broken into its phonemes, which is why having strong phonemic awareness skills is important. The word's letter sequence can become familiar (i.e., become a sight word) because the student can attach it to the already known pronunciation.

Kilpatrick (2019) provides examples similar to the following:

If a student knows the spoken word /bed/, its pronunciation is stored in long-term memory - he knows what it means and what it sounds like. If he has good phonemic awareness skills, he can pull the word apart into its individual sounds (phonemes) /b/ /e/ /d/. Those sounds become the anchoring points for the word's printed sequence. The student can then attach each phoneme to its corresponding letter (spelling). The student is using the power of what he knows (the pronunciation) and attaching it like "superglue" to the printed word bed. This example has all single sound-letter correspondences.

If a student knows the spoken word /sheep/, its pronunciation is stored in long-term memory - he knows what it means and what it sounds like. Using phonemic awareness skills, he can pull the word apart into its individual sounds /sh/ /e/ /p/. The student then attaches each phoneme to its corresponding spelling. In this example, some of the sounds are represented by more than one letter.

In typically developing readers from grade 2 on who have orthographic mapping skills, they only need to see and read printed words one to four times before they become permanently stored as sight words for future instant recall (Reitsma, 1983 as cited in Kilpatrick, 2015). When a word becomes a sight word, as soon as it is seen its sound and meaning are immediately available. Having a significant amount of stored sight words is what enables fluency - quick and accurate reading where the reader is free to focus on making meaning from text.
How does orthographic mapping develop?
Three intersecting skills must be in place to enable orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2014; Kilpatrick, 2015):

Highly proficient phonological and phonemic awareness

Automatic letter-sound correspondence knowledge

The ability to accurately and quickly decode a word by identifying its sounds letter by letter, and blending those sounds to read the word

Here's how Ehri (2014) explains the skills that need to be in place before orthographic mapping can take place:

"To form connections and retain words in memory, readers need some requisite abilities. They must possess phonemic awareness, particularly segmentation and blending. They must know the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences (letter-sound knowledge) of the writing system. Then they need to be able to read unfamiliar words on their own by applying a decoding strategy." Doing so "activates orthographic mapping to retain the words' spellings, pronunciations, and meanings in memory." (p. 7)

Kilpatrick (2015) describes three phases of word-reading development for children in the primary grades that are aligned with corresponding phonological skill development. As noted above in Ehri's quote, the ability to segment and blend phonemes is needed to support decoding and eventually orthographic mapping. Kilpatrick has proposed that advanced phonemic awareness activities focused on practice with phoneme manipulation might be helpful for students who are not able to orthographically map words; however, at this time there is not sufficient research to indicate that instruction focused on advanced phonemic awareness improves orthographic mapping.

Beginning readers in kindergarten and grade 1 are developing their knowledge of letter-sound correspondences and basic phonemic awareness skills, and are beginning to learn phonic decoding. Before a student can orthographically map a word, the word first has to be identified. Young students identify the pronunciation of a word by using their letter-sound knowledge to determine each sound in the word, and then using their phonemic blending skills to blend those sounds to decode (sound out) the word.

Once these skills are proficient, typically by grade 3, orthographic mapping usually develops for the majority of students simply by interacting with letters and words. However, many students with word-reading difficulties do not develop orthographic mapping. They therefore have greater difficulty developing the sight word vocabulary needed for fluent reading and will likely stay disfluent and hesitant readers unless they receive intervention that builds proficiency in phonemic awareness (in particular segmenting and blending) and phonics and decoding skills (Kilpatrick, 2015; Parker, 2019). It is difficult for them to get beyond having to decode most words when they read.
Implications for Teaching: Explicit Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Instruction Leads to Orthographic Mapping
Phonemic awareness and phonics instruction help students use the alphabetic principle to learn relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. As noted in the word-reading development chart above, developing early phonological awareness, including phonemic awareness of initial sounds, should be a focus of PreK and kindergarten instruction to develop basic letter-sound correspondence knowledge. As students move through kindergarten and grade one, a focus on blending and segmenting of phonemes in written words develops phonic decoding skills which must be in place for orthographic mapping. Some kindergarten and grade 1 students may be able to start completing simple phoneme manipulation tasks, such as deleting or substituting initial sounds in words.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCE: After this post first appeared, Joan Sedita presented a webinar titled "The Role of Orthographic Mapping in Learning to Read." It is now a free, archived webinar at the Keys to Literacy website. Click here to access.
References

Ehri, L. C. (1998). Grapheme-phoneme knowledge is essential to learning to read words in English. In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (p. 3-40). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Ehri, L.C. (2014) Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading 18(1).

Kilpatrick, D.A. (2015). Assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Kilpatrick, D.A. (2019). Assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. Online course. Colorado Department of Education. Retrieved from: https://sitesed.cde.state.co.us/course/view.php?id=132#section-1

Parker, S. (2019). Sight words, orthographic mapping, and self-teaching. Stephen Parker blog post, April 22, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.parkerphonics.com/post/sight-words-orthographic-mapping-and-self-teaching

Reitsma, P. (1983). Printed word learning in beginning readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 36, 321-339.

Joan Sedita

Joan Sedita is the founder of Keys to Literacy and author of the Keys to Literacy professional development programs. She is an experienced educator, nationally recognized speaker and teacher trainer. She has worked for over 35 years in the literacy education field and has presented to thousands of teachers and related professionals at schools, colleges, clinics, and professional conferences.

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The Role of Orthographic Mapping in Learning to Read - Keys to Literacy

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Every word has three forms - its sounds (phonemes), its orthography (spelling), and its meaning. Orthographic mapping is the process that all successful readers use to become fluent readers. Through orthographic mapping, students use the oral language processing part of their brain to map (connect) the sounds of words they already know (the phonemes) to the letters in a word (the spellings).

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How to teach the Scarborough Rope Model for reading

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How to teach the Scarborough Rope Model for reading

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Reading is a complex cognitive process that involves several interconnected components. In order to fully comprehend and decode written language, readers must develop proficiency in these various skills. One prominent model used to explain the components of reading is known as Scarborough's Rope. This article aims to provide an overview of the different aspects involved in reading and how they relate to Scarborough's Rope model.
Scarborough's Rope model emphasizes that these two strands work together during reading, with reciprocal influences. For instance, strong word recognition skills facilitate comprehension, while a rich vocabulary aids in accurate decoding.

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The Scarborough Rope Model has been one of the standard measures of a child's phonological awareness for about two decades. It was developed by Dr. Hollis Scarborough, and the idea of the test is based on the premise that a child's ability to segment words into phonemes is directly related to their reading fluency.

What is Scarborough's Reading Rope Model

Scarborough's Reading Rope Model is a framework, or rather a metaphor, that allows for a comprehensive view of a child's phonological awareness skills and their progress towards desirable language comprehension skills and literacy knowledge.

The model is presented as a rope that represents the learner's progress, with knots standing for different levels of phonemic awareness and skills. Those skills range from the simple ability to recognize and replicate rhyming sequences to more complex processes of segmenting and manipulating word and syllable parts.

Why is Scarborough's reading Rope useful to literacy development?

Scarborough's rope metaphor is extremely useful as it demonstrates the fluidity of reading skills and the continuous progress students make while working on their language decoding skills, especially those dealing with reading difficulties.

The model also illustrates how each of the literacy skills is woven with other aspects of the written language and thus offers a more nuanced than the simple view of reading competence that we are used to.

Thanks to its reliance on metaphors of slow but constantly evolving and intertwining language comprehension strands, the model allows those offering reading instructions to identify those areas where each child might struggle and adjust their approach as necessary.

The two main components of Scarborough's reading Rope

The two main strands in Scarborough's model are Language Comprehension and Word Recognition. These two concepts are closely related in the science of reading, and each consists of sub-strands representing further reading skills.

1. Language Comprehension: This strand of the rope refers to our ability to understand what is being said or written. That includes the broader meaning and idea of the discourse, details that require inference, and aspects of the language that demand we rely on semantics and background knowledge to make connections between speech and phenomena we encounter in our lives.

2. Word Recognition: The word recognition strand represents our ability to identify and understand individual words as they are presented to us. That includes sight word recognition, alphabetic decoding, understanding affixes, etc.

Both language comprehension and word recognition are important aspects of language, and they are crucial for developing early literacy. Teaching reading and writing requires that we focus on the connections between the written word and spoken language if we want our students to leave the classroom as skilled readers.

Tips for teaching language comprehension using the Scarborough rope model for educators

The Rope Model is, ultimately, a tool. A useful tool, but a tool nonetheless. That means its efficiency will, in some ways, depend on how you employ it, especially if you're trying to accommodate students with reading disabilities.

Below, we have a list of five tips to help you make the most out of your sessions.

Use assistive technology

Relying on some assistive technology to supplement the reading Rope Model approach is one of the best ways to ensure quicker progress in learners of all ages.

Text to speech programs, for example, allow the learners to hear, edit, and later imitate sounds and learn proper enunciation.

Speechify is especially helpful in that regard, as it was developed specifically for those struggling with reading problems. You can use the app to help dyslexic students practice listening and reading comprehension and teach them phonics, as it can turn any piece of text into an audio file.

Letting them rely on the app will encourage independent reading, too, allowing for more language immersion and increased language comprehension and word recognition skills.

Create more opportunities for your students to practice and work on all strands of Scarborough models

Practice is key. The more we do something, the better we get at it. The same goes for language. You need to provide your students with plenty of opportunities to practice what they have learned. Ideally, they will do it independently, too. So, provide them with appropriate homework material and encourage group activities that will let them immerse themselves in the language more.

Teach your students how to think about their progress

With independent practice should come independent thinking and reasoning. In other words, it would be helpful to slowly introduce your students to some self-assessment and self-reflection strategies that will allow them to think about reading in a more objective, meta way. Teach them how to ask questions about any given text, how to create summaries of their reading materials, and how to analyze other aspects of the English language, such as syntax. In addition, teach them about verbal reasoning and explain to them that skilled reading requires more than just sight recognition and subvocalizing.

Present reading as more than an academic task

Reading doesn't have to be just a meaningless drill or a classroom activity. There is a whole world of literature out there, too. You should encourage your students to see reading as something done for pleasure, too. That will help them develop both the lower (more nuanced) and upper strands of the Rope model we described. You can turn pleasurable reading activities into homework assignments and encourage in-class discussion, too.

Vary your teaching materials

The International Dyslexia Association often recommends varying teaching materials to accommodate those with learning and reading disabilities. You can do that with students of all kinds since variety prevents boredom and increases engagement levels. Make sure you assign reading material relevant to everyone's interests and use infographics to monitor how each student responds to different kinds of reading material.

Keep track of everyone's progress

Monitoring and assessing each learner is crucial. Relying on the same approach over and over again without any results is counterproductive, so be sure to always be in the know in regard to every learner's progress. When necessary, try making adjustments to your approach and come up with appropriate intervention strategies depending on the language structures you are teaching.

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How To Teach The Scarborough Rope Model For Reading

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The Scarborough Rope Model is a classic framework of a child's phonological awareness. Here's how we understand and apply it.

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Marilou Barquillo
In this article, they discussed the difference between phonological and phonemic awareness and how they are related. Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of individual speech sounds, or phonemes. A child's skill in phonological and phonemic awareness is a good predictor of later reading success or difficulty. Phonological awareness is made up of a group of skills. Examples include being able to identify words that rhyme, counting the number of syllables in a name, recognizing alliteration, segmenting a sentence into words, and identifying the syllables in a word. The most sophisticated — and last to develop — is called phonemic awareness.

This is very helpful in my class because Phonological awareness skills are best taught in kindergarten and early Grade 1 so they can be applied to sounding out words as phonics instruction begins. These interventions that were discussed in this article are helpful to better help the students. The activities for teaching phonological awareness intervention are the same as teaching it to pre-readers, although children who need intervention may require much greater intensity of the instruction (e.g., smaller group size, more practice opportunities) to develop phonological awareness. For children who are old enough for formal reading instruction (i.e., kindergarten and up), phonological awareness instruction should generally be integrated with phonics instruction.

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Phonological and Phonemic Awareness _ Reading Rockets

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What is the Science of Reading? How the Human Brain Learns to Read

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What is the Science of Reading? How the Human Brain Learns to Read

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Shawndell Jones-Smith:
This article reminds us that learning to read is not innate and children will not master reading without instruction. It also explains how different parts of the brain are repurposed during reading. More importantly, it speaks to the Science of Reading and how this knowledge proves that every child can read proficiently if they are given explicit instruction in the

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What is the Science of Reading_ How the Human Brain Learns to Read _ Lexia

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HOW THE BRAIN LEARNS TO READ by Joan Sedita - Review by Angel Johnson

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HOW THE BRAIN LEARNS TO READ by Joan Sedita - Review by Angel Johnson

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Article Link: https://keystoliteracy.com/blog/how-the-brain-learns-to-read/

As a teacher, it is important to know that reading involves multiple processes that tap into different regions of the brain. This article discusses how the brain changes as one learns to read, what brain imaging reveals about struggling readers, and if it is possible to rewire the brain through instruction.

I chose this article because I found it interesting to learn about the different parts of the brain that process word analysis, and sounding out words (the parietal-temporal region), letter-word recognition, automaticity, and language comprehension (the occipital-temporal region), and processing speech sounds as we listen and speak (the frontal region).

This article also confirmed my stance that everyone can learn to read, regardless of their challenges as struggling readers or even dyslexia through deliberate instruction and intense interventions that addresses those challenges and helps to train or "rewire" reading processes.

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What Is Phonological Awareness and Why Is It Important?

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What Is Phonological Awareness and Why Is It Important?

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Natalie Barnes:
This article describes the difference between phonological and phonemic awareness.  Phonemic awareness is the ability to work with individual sounds within a word. Phonological awareness is recognizing how words are made up of different sounds and identifying rhyming words and syllables.  The article details the various aspects of these two concepts, including comparing and contrasting them.  It also explains why they are both foundational to reading.  Students who cannot identify the sounds cannot read and write new words. The article then provides step-by-step directives for phases that can be used to teach phonological awareness. It begins with rhyming, then syllables, and lastly sound segmentation.  Activity suggestions are provided for each step.

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What is Phonological Awareness - Difference with Phonemic Awareness

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Phonological awareness is the ability to work with sounds in spoken language. Learn what phonological awareness and phonemic awareness is.

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5 Effective ELL Strategies Teachers Should Consider

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5 Effective ELL Strategies Teachers Should Consider

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Natalie Barnes:
This guide is based on a webinar, which is linked in the fourth paragraph.  The article begins by describing how challenging it can be to be an English Language Learner (ELL) in an American classroom, yet how common this experience is.  By 2025, it is estimated that 25% of students will be ELLs. There are so many different ways to support these students; it can be challenging to know where to start. This article details five specific strategies to support ELLs. The third idea, increasing comprehensible input and language output, stood out to me.  These strategies are not very common in most math classrooms I see, but they would benefit all students.

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If you've ever tried to master another language, you know just how challenging it can be. Perhaps you've ordered a meal at a restaurant and felt your face flush as you fumble over a simple phrase, sighing in relief when the server nods and doesn't ask a follow-up question.

Now imagine feeling like this all day, Monday through Friday, while trying to adapt to a new culture, make friends and learn the fundamentals of science, math, social studies, art and literature. This is the reality for millions of K-12 English language learners (ELLs) in the United States.

According to the National Education Association, ELL students will make up about 25 percent of the children in American classrooms by 2025. Teachers are tasked with helping these students develop English proficiency and meet the grade-level content requirements, in addition to all their other duties. Thankfully, there are many practical strategies for teaching English language learners that benefit the entire class.

To help you enhance your lessons, we created this guide based on a recent webinar presented by Dr. Nicole Schneider, associate professor at UMass Global. Keep reading to learn how to tailor instruction and ensure accessibility for English as a Second Language (ESL) scholars.

What is ESL/ESOL?

While the term "ESL" was the standard for years, many educators today prefer "ESOL", which stands for English for Speakers of Other Languages. This phrase is more inclusive and accurately represents the fact that for many ELLs, English is their third or even fourth language.

ESL and ESOL classes are designed to develop language and comprehension skills for non-native English speakers. In practice, this is very different from teaching students who grew up hearing and communicating English from the moment they were born.

Some ESL programs teach students separately until they reach a certain proficiency level and can join mainstream classes, while other schools integrate ELL into classrooms from the get-go. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that Spanish is by far the most common home language, representing 75 percent of all K-12 ELL students. Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese and Portuguese round out the top five languages spoken in American public schools.

5 effective ELL strategies teachers should consider

While there are many ways for educators to tailor classroom instruction and support toward English language learners, Dr. Schneider recommends starting with the following five tips.

1. Focus on academic language, literacy and vocabulary

Reading, writing and vocabulary exercises are essential building blocks for developing language fluency, but it is only part of what is needed. Students who appear fully fluent in English may nonetheless struggle to express themselves effectively in academic settings, as they lack the words and phrases needed to connect their ideas and discuss them with others.

Dr. Schneider emphasizes the importance of teaching students how to talk about what they know. This is called "academic language," and while some learners adopt this naturally over time, many students - native English speakers included - need reinforcement to develop this skill. She points out that,

If we teach our students the content but never provide them with the language scaffolding that they need to share about it, it's like we're giving them the bricks but we're not giving them the mortar to hold it all together.

This extra help could come in the form of semi-structured small group discussions, adding visuals to a lesson, having students keep a journal and providing instruction in their native language, when possible.

2. Link background knowledge and culture to learning

Numerous studies show that students perform better when their home culture and background knowledge are incorporated into the academic environment. When children and their families are represented and respected in the classroom, they are much more likely to be engaged and successful.

Allowing students to express themselves in a safe environment and learn from one another is also a wonderful social-emotional learning opportunity that benefits the entire class, especially students of color.

Educators should consider implementing the following tactics in their practice:

Become familiar with your students' backgrounds

Use examples that connect to their lives

Represent students' cultures with art, music and literature

Encourage students to tell stories in a variety of mediums: drawing, poetry, visual art, drama, essays, etc.

Ask students to speak and write about their lives regularly in casual, low-stress ways without forcing them to share

Allow students to use their native language and/or translation apps

Dr. Schneider acknowledges that some instructors, particularly high school teachers, may not have enough wiggle room in their schedule to allow for daily sharing in this way. "Think about maybe doing this once a week for 15 minutes," she suggests. "Even though it takes away instructional time, you get so much more from it, that I think it's worth it in the long run."

3. Increase comprehensible input and language output

English language learners learn both through the language they encounter (input) and the language they produce (output). Students should also be given ample opportunities to produce language, and they should receive direct feedback to increase their comprehension and improve their language skills.

Dr. Schneider remarks that the increased use of digital technology in education has opened up many additional opportunities for teachers to supplement lesson plans. Strategies for increasing comprehensible input include:

Read out loud or play audio versions of texts

Front load vocabulary and key concepts before reading

Provide a similar text in the student's first language

Go beyond the textbook and include artwork, videos, guest speakers, stories

Slow down your speech

Use graphs and visuals when presenting

Give students an outline of the information

Use closed captioning for videos

10/2 rule: For every 10 minutes of lecture, stop for 2 minutes of student engagement

In order for students to deepen their understanding, and clarify and negotiate for meaning, they must talk about what they are learning. Strategies for increasing language output include:

Provide multiple opportunities for structured and unstructured talk

Opportunities for students to collaborate with each other

Include open-ended questions in your lessons

Provide daily low-stakes writing opportunities in all content areas

4. Promote classroom interaction

When teaching English language learners, keep in mind that vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation develop faster when there are opportunities for interaction in the classroom using the language being learned. But many new teachers make the mistake of simply presenting a lesson and then pairing students up to discuss without providing guidance, as was the case for Dr. Schneider.

She recommends that teachers explicitly model and practice academic language so that students can more fully engage with one another. This could take the form of question prompts, such as:

Teachers should also provide ample opportunities for more structured classroom interactions with a clear purpose and goal. There are hundreds of activities to consider, but here are a few ideas to get you started:

5. Stimulate higher-order thinking skills and use of learning strategies

Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) are essentially critical-thinking abilities that go beyond rote memorization, concept formation and reading comprehension. Mastering HOTS is the ultimate goal of the learning process, as these competencies are needed to become an independent and creative thinker.

Teachers can encourage the development of HOTS in their students by modeling and providing language scaffolding such as:

An example of a high school-level lesson plan that emphasizes HOTS might be having students learn about garment factory work in Cambodia, and then pairing them up to do the following:

Discuss what it might be like to sew their own clothes

Review a video about the experience of a Cambodian garment worker

Compose a list of the advantages and disadvantages based on the video

Embrace ELL strategies to maximize student achievement

As an educator, you work hard to make sure everyone in your class has what they need to learn and thrive. Implementing some of these innovative strategies for teaching English language learners is a great way to make content accessible for all students, regardless of language ability.

Looking for more information on how to make your classroom more welcoming for all students? Read our article "How to foster an inclusive classroom environment: Advice for educators. "

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Innovative strategies for teaching English language learners | UMass Global

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A guide to practical strategies for teaching English language learners in mainstream classrooms.

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Natalie Barnes:
This article explains why a strong vocabulary is important and then details eight specific strategies to strengthen vocabulary.  It also includes a podcast if listening would be helpful and many cited resources for further exploration as desired.  Vocabulary knowledge predicts reading comprehension later in schooling so building vocabulary across all content areas is beneficial to student understanding and success.  The eight strategies include a variety of ideas for students of all ages.  Some of the strategies are ways to teach new words and others are games to play or resources to use. I liked the TIP chart (Strategy 3) and Word Talks (Strategy 7) and plan to use both of these ideas within my classroom this next school year.

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Listen to the interview with Angela Peery:
Sponsored by Google for Education's Applied Digital Skills and fastIEP

I've been an educator for 36 years, and if there's one thing I think every educator can agree on, it's that increasing the number of words our students know is a good thing. Period.

This is supported by decades of research:

A rich vocabulary supports content knowledge in all disciplines. Conceptual understanding, along with both general and specific word knowledge, impacts learning at every age level, starting with oral language development in preschool. When older students know the meaning of specific words and are able to put related words together during a unit of study, they can connect to new content more readily and remember more (Marzano & Simms, 2013).

Word knowledge is key for reading comprehension. Kindergarten students' word knowledge predicts reading comprehension in second grade (Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 1999; Roth, Speece, & Cooper, 2002), and this persists through fourth grade (Wagner, Muse, & Tannenbaum, 2007). Even more surprisingly, Cunningham and Stanovich (1997) find that first-grade students' vocabulary knowledge predicts their reading comprehension level much later, in the eleventh grade.

Students who are deficient in vocabulary face numerous obstacles, including having much lower reading comprehension. Their reading range is thus limited, their writing lacks specificity and voice, and their spoken language lacks range of word choice. They risk reading less (both in volume and frequency), not understanding content-area texts or concepts well, writing lackluster essays and reports, and not being able to express themselves as well verbally.

This is why all teachers should address vocabulary instruction head-on.

But what words should be taught? In English language arts/reading classrooms, explicit vocabulary instruction should focus on general academic words (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2013). These words cut across disciplines and help students speak, read, and write well in all the academic settings in which they'll find themselves. In every discipline, there are also domain-specific terms students need to understand and learn.

8 Vocabulary-Building Strategies

Good vocabulary instruction can and should happen throughout the school day. This can happen through incidental learning, when students talk with and listen to others, watch videos, play games, and read independently, through explicit instruction, which are more structured activities, or with the help of digital tools.

The strategies that follow, most of which require very little preparation time, come from three of my books, shown below:

Strategy 1: Informal Conversations

One of the most powerful things teachers (and adults in the home) can do is to have rich conversations with children. Recent research on conversational turns (LENA, 2017) indicates that the more turns a young child takes in conversation with an adult, the more they grow their vocabulary and verbal acuity in general.

So asking questions of a student, receiving their responses, adding information, and asking them to reflect or add more information-in other words, keeping the conversation going-is important in vocabulary development. This idea has great potential for non-instructional segments of the preschool elementary day like snack time, lining up to go to lunch, and restroom breaks. It also has potential for older students.

Strategy 2: Anchored Word Learning

Anchored Word Learning (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002) is ideal to use with elementary students where read-alouds are typically part of the daily routine. It can also be used in the upper grades, especially with complex text that is being read aloud and discussed together as a whole class.

For young children, picture books provide excellent sources of higher-level, sophisticated words that are important for expanding vocabulary. They expose students to words they would not typically read within leveled books or on their own. For older children, excerpts from novels, nonfiction texts of various types, and content-area texts can all be used for anchored word learning.

Isabel Beck suggests selecting three general academic words each time the teacher reads aloud a picture book or trade book; these should not be esoteric or archaic terms, but words likely to come up in other academic texts. Older students may be able to handle more words during a read-aloud and class discussion, but teachers are cautioned not to select too many words for one lesson. Three to five words is usually sufficient.

Prior to reading, teachers need to complete three simple preparation steps:

1. Select a read-aloud. Choose from books by favorite authors, recommended books, new books, old favorites, picture books, trade books, and content-area texts that impart critical information.

2. Identify three to five words for direct instruction. Select words which will expand students' vocabulary and will likely appear in varied contexts-or focus on words critically important to the content being taught. "Nice to know" words don't have a place here. The idea is to teach important words that are likely to appear in various contexts or words you really want students to know.

3. Mark the words in the text with a sticky note or with a highlighter and annotations if the text is on paper.

Once this preparation is complete, follow these steps with students:

1. Read the entire text aloud. Don't stop in the first reading to discuss the words at length. Students need to hear complex texts being read aloud fluently-especially a first reading-so they can start to process the story itself or the complicated ideas present in many nonfiction and content-specific texts.

2. After reading the text through once, go back and bring attention to each targeted word. You may want to reread the sentences and/or paragraphs in which each word appears.

3. Have students say each word aloud.

4. Write each word so it's visible to students. You may want to have students write the words down as well (or use their fingers and "write" the words in the air or in the palms of their hands). With younger students, spell the word as you write it. Call attention to any interesting spelling feature, such as double letters, silent E, prefixes, etc.

5. Provide a student-friendly definition of each word. You may want to repeat this several times.

6. Provide examples for each word beyond the context of the text. Encourage children to provide examples of their own so they personalize the word, relating it to their own context. This is a great time to use think-pair-share or turn-and-talk.

7. If desired, post these words on your academic word wall. If you're an ELA/reading teacher, you may want to have a section of the word wall dedicated to words from read-alouds.

Strategy 3: TIP Chart

This adaptation of a word wall features a visual in addition to a brief definition. TIP stands for term, information, and picture. Basically, a TIP Chart (Rollins, 2014) is a three-column poster displayed so students can quickly use it to remind them of the meaning of an important content-area ( tier three) word. In essence, it's a vocabulary anchor chart.

Unlike the well-known Frayer Model, the TIP Chart is useful for words that are fairly straightforward in meaning-not ones with heavy conceptual weight. Once completed, the TIP Chart serves as an "at a glance" reference for important disciplinary terms; this purpose must be kept in mind if the strategy is to be most beneficial.

TIP charts are displayed prominently for the whole class to see, but students can also keep personal TIP charts in their notebooks or digital files as well. The teacher can first model how to create the chart, and later, students can be involved in deciding what information to record and what picture to draw to go with each word.

The best time to use the strategy is when beginning a new chunk of instruction, like a chapter or unit. With the chart ready, announce the first word and call students' attention to the importance of this word in the current segment of instruction. Write the word in column one. Then share the formal and full definition, which ideally would also be printed in the text or on a screen or board in the classroom. Along with students, from this full definition, develop a short, student-friendly definition or a brief list that you write in the middle column. Do not write the full, formal definition in column two. Lastly, provide or co-create a simple visual in column three.

So, for the term soliloquy in my 9 th grade English class, I would first give the formal definition: A long, usually serious speech that a character in a play makes to an audience and that reveals the character's thoughts. We might talk for a minute about the fact that playwrights use soliloquies so the audience understands what a character is thinking. So, in the middle column, we might write the student-friendly, casual definition: When someone in the play thinks out loud. And, to emphasize the fact that this kind of speech is usually given with the character standing alone on the stage, I might then draw a single stick figure with lines or a speech bubble emanating from its face to indicate that he or she is speaking.

The TIP Chart in my class might look something like this:

Here's a social studies example. For the term "monopoly," the full definition might be "the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service." It is assumed that the teacher is also teaching the term "commodity" along with "monopoly." In column two for "monopoly," the teacher may write "control of a product or service." In the third column, he or she might draw a large square that surrounds smaller squares, thus showing the dominance of the one provider. Students might also suggest something that symbolizes a monopoly to them, like an iPhone surrounded by other types of cell phones, but the iPhone appears much larger or more prominent, or the other phones are crossed out.

Teachers can gradually do less in whole-class fashion with TIP charts and encourage students to create their own in hard-copy notebooks or digital notebooks using Google Docs, LiveBinders, or OneNote. Students might preview the first part of each chapter or unit (in any class) and try to complete a personal TIP chart to be kept in their organizational system. They could also collaborate with other students to create TIP charts, so that if any individual is confused about a word, they can get ideas from others. This is a portable strategy students can use with any content area and any textbook from elementary school well into college.

Strategy 4: Save the Last Word for Me

Save the Last Word for Me (Beers, 2003) is an ideal strategy to promote peer conversation, increase engagement, and promote deeper processing about vocabulary and content. Although it's usually applied to conversations about literature, its clearly defined structure is perfect for reviewing vocabulary and gaining deeper understanding of specific terms.

It is fairly typical for teachers to provide guided review activities before a unit test, midterm, or final exam. Let's say the instructional unit includes about 25 terms which students must recognize and understand how to use correctly within context. Save the Last Word for Me serves as an engaging vehicle for students to practice doing so in preparation for an assessment.

The steps for employing this strategy are as follows; the first three need to be completed ahead of time:

1. Print multiple sets of cards with a target word on one side and the definition on the reverse side (one set for each group of students).

2. Print the directions for the activity (see below).

3. Place the printed directions and terms in a plastic bag or manila envelope for each group of students.

4. Divide students into groups of three to five. It's important that groups are small so each student has an opportunity to discuss. The goal is for students to review and deepen understanding about concepts and specific terms, so making sure they clarify their thinking aloud is important.

To begin, one student draws a card from the deck and another student defines the term. Moving around the circle, each student adds to the definition, refining and adding examples along the way. The person who draws the cards gets the "last word" and can add to the definition or revise it before students agree upon a definition. You may want to model the process in whole-class fashion first or by having a small group model the process as the rest of the class watches.

Sometimes, if the bank of terms is large, I suggest simply printing one master deck of cards and place five or six cards in each bag. After a few minutes, signal the groups to trade bags of terms and, in so doing, each group gets new terms to review.

While Save the Last Word for Me is low-tech, sometimes simpler is better. It delivers by supporting interaction and engagement, deeper conversations, and higher-level processing.
Student Directions for Save the Last Word for Me

One student selects a card from the deck and says the term aloud with the other group members.

On a piece of paper, each student jots down what they know about the term. (This can also be "in your head" and each person takes about 30 seconds to think about what they know about the meaning.)

When everyone is finished, each person takes a turn sharing their reflections/responses. As each participant shares their thoughts, other students can share thoughts and responses.

The student who drew the card gets the last word by sharing their reflections/reactions or by stating a fresh view if the responses of others have altered their original thinking.

If students are unsure or need clarification, they refer to the text, notes, and/or handouts for clarification.

Another student draws a new card, and the process is repeated.

Strategy 5: SNAP Minilessons

Setting aside specific time daily, weekly, or periodically to explicitly teach general academic vocabulary through minilessons (of 5 to 15 minutes each) is another way you can provide explicit instruction.

Each minilesson in my books contains four core components or steps, which the acronym SNAP in the title represents:

S: Seeing and saying each word

N: Naming a category or group each word belongs to or noticing connections to related words or word families

A: Acting on the words (engaging in a brief task or conversation about the words)

P: Producing an individual, original application of the words

The example below is intended for secondary students.

Click here to see this lesson in a Google Doc.

Strategy 6: Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy

The primary purpose of the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS) (Haggard, 1986) is to help students generate a list of words to be learned based on their prior knowledge and experience with reading and texts. This strategy can stimulate word growth and independence as students read texts and select vocabulary which they deem important to understanding the content.

VSS includes the following steps:

Selecting words

Defining words

Finalizing word lists

Extending word knowledge

The strategy can be used to support general word learning from one's environment or to support vocabulary learning from assigned and self-selected texts.

A colleague of mine routinely used this strategy to support general word learning with college freshmen. Every week, students "collected" three words from their environment (watching, listening, and reading) that they thought important to learn. For each word, students included the following information

An accurate definition

Where they heard or read the word including a bit of the context

A justification for why they thought the word was important to learn

Words were shared and discussed in class at an established time each week. Students also recorded their words in personal vocabulary notebooks. VSS engaged students in lively discussions and specifically raised word consciousness, a critical goal of word learning.

Another way VSS can be implemented is to specifically support word acquisition from content-area text. To support content learning, students can work in cooperative groups and read a chapter from a textbook (or any text). As they read, they identify words they think should be studied and mastered. During class discussion, groups then share their words and why they think the terms are important to mastering content. Additional steps can include developing a class list that contains one word from each group, creating TIP charts with the words, and having students teach minilessons focused on the words to each other.

Strategy 7: Word Talks

Word talks were derived from a similar strategy called book talks, in which students give a brief (less than five minutes) presentation about a book they recommend to their peers for independent reading. Word talks are similar in that they require a student to give a brief presentation on one or several words that they feel are important for their peers to know. This strategy is, like some others in this chapter, excellent for general academic words, not highly specialized, domain-specific words. Also, it can be easily combined with the Vocabulary Self-Collection strategy discussed earlier.

Some teachers who use word talks schedule a certain day a week or a certain day per month on which several students get up and do their word talks. Other teachers schedule a rotation so that a few times a week, one student is doing a word talk that day. Because the word talks consist of a student teaching their peers, it's important to make time for this, because students tend to find the periods in which their classmates are leading discussion much more memorable than when the teacher is; students often have a way of saying something that "clicks" with their peers just because it's said in a kid-friendly way.

What kind of words should students share in word talks? Many students share from their independent reading and their media and technology use. Teachers can ask students to provide a rationale for each word chosen if they like, but they can also allow students to share any word that might be interesting. I find myself thinking of the character Sam in the Netflix series Atypical as a high school student. He would have certainly loved to share words related to penguins and Antarctica in word talks.

In a word talk in one of my high school classes, a student selected the following words to share: ascent, descent, decompression, and recompression. Can you tell what the student was learning to do outside of school? Scuba diving. This student was studying for her initial scuba certification and thought these words would be good to share because although they have scuba-specific meanings, they also have application to non-scuba situations.

Word talks are great opportunities for some students to showcase their interests and expertise, but most importantly, they make clear that continual word learning is important.

Strategy 8: Digital Tools for Independent Practice

The following websites/programs offer support for you as a teacher as well as independent practice activities for students:

Flocabulary
This robust program includes hip-hop type videos to help students learn new terminology.

Freerice
This site has an addictive vocabulary game with five difficulty levels, with levels one and two being appropriate for students in grades three and up.

Vocabador
This game allows students to study SAT vocabulary words, choose an avatar, and "get into the ring" to play against other virtual wrestlers.

There's nothing negative that comes about when anyone grows their vocabulary-and for students, there are many, many positives. By adding even a few of these strategies to your repertoire, you'll help students build vocabularies that will support them no matter what path they choose to pursue.
References
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

Beers, K. (2003). When kids can't read, what teachers can do: A guide for teachers 6-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Catts, H. W., Fey, M. E., Zhang, X., & Tomblin, J. B. (1999). Language basis of reading and reading disabilities: Evidence from a longitudinal investigation. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3(4), 331-361.

Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1997). Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later. Developmental Psychology, 33(6), 934-945.

Haggard, M. R. (1986). The vocabulary self-collection strategy: Using student interest and world knowledge to enhance vocabulary growth. Journal of Reading, 29(7), 634-642.

LENA. 2017. Proving the Power of Talk: 10 Years of Research on the Impact of Language on Young Children. Available at https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/3975639/Research_Summary.pdf?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lena.org%2F.

Marzano, R. J., & Simms, J. A. (2013). Vocabulary for the Common Core. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research.

Rollins, S. P. (2014). Learning in the fast lane: 8 ways to put all students on the road to academic success. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Wagner, R. K., Muse, A. E., & Tannenbaum, K. R. (Eds.). (2007). Vocabulary acquisition: Implications for reading comprehension. New York: Guilford Press.

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By adding even a few of these strategies to your repertoire, you'll help students build vocabularies that will support them no matter what path they choose to pursue.

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What is Orthography? Why Does It Matter?

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What is Orthography? Why Does It Matter?

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Natalie Barnes:
This article is written by a former reading teacher and tutor who now homeschools her children.  She describes what orthography is--the correct spelling of words--and why it matters. Given that English is a combination of so many other languages, correct spelling is very challenging. Nonetheless, she asserts that orthography is vital for skilled readers.  Their knowledge of spelling allows them to not only sound out unknown words but also to create “maps” of the sound spellings.  These orthographic mappings allow learners to see and break down new and familiar words into parts and sounds rather than memorizing words as a whole. She concludes by sharing seven practical ways that can be used to explicitly teach orthography  She cites many books and links to other resources, including many activities.

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What is orthography? Why does it even matter? That's what we're going to talk about in today's post!

You'll like like our Orthographic Mapping Puzzles Bundle.

My goal is to take this scary sounding word and break it down for you. I want to explore what orthography is but more importantly why it even matters for our learners. Whether you're a homeschooling parent, a tutor, or a classroom teacher, I hope this post will be helpful for you!

What is Orthography?

Put in the simplest of terms, orthography is the correct spelling of words. Literally, it's what the word means. The prefix ortho means "proper" or "correct," while graph means "writing." So, orthography means "correct writing."

For example, the correct orthography of the flower is ROSE, not ROWS. The correct spelling of the home you live in in HOUSE, not HOWSE.

The issue {or "problem"} with English is that it is a compilation of many different languages. We have many root words from Greek and Latin not to mention all the words we've assimilated into our language like ballet or taco. We've also changed the pronunciation of some words over time like been and said.

What this means is that the spelling of certain phonics sounds can be ambiguous and confusing at times. Just think about the long u sound. It can be spelled u_e, oo, ew, ui, ou, and ue. That's not confusing at all, right? Ha!

Since English can be ambiguous at times, does this mean we shouldn't focus on orthography? NO! Orthography matters!

*I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Click on the links below to find them on Amazon.

Helpful Books for Teaching Orthography
These are the main resources I reference to write this post:
Why Does Orthography Matter?

One of the things we can see, based on observations done on skilled readers and readers who struggle, is that skilled readers use their awareness of orthography not only to help them sound through unknown words, but to "map" words by their sound-spellings so they can easily store them for the next time they see the words.

This process is called orthographic mapping. So, instead of trying to learn or memorize words as a whole, skilled learners take the words they see and break them down into their sounds and spellings. They seem to do this pretty automatically as they read.

For example, cat would map or break down like this: C-A-T. The word cat is an easy one because it has a completely transparent mapping, with every sound mapping to every letter. A word like sheep would be a little bit trickier because two letters are used to make the /sh/ sound: sh and two letters make the long e sound: ee. Still, sheep can be mapped like this: SH-EE-P.

A high frequency word like said would be even trickier because part of the word doesn't follow the phonics rules we know, namely ai = long a. So while the s and d map transparently, the ai does not. So a skilled reader would map or break apart said like this: S-AI-D.

At the same time, they may also say to themselves, "Hmm...the ai doesn't make the sound I would expect it to make. I'll make a mental note of that."

Struggling readers, on the other hand do not automatically think about orthography and sound-spellings. For them, it's often the survival motto of "any clue will do" when they don't know a word. They rely mainly on context and other guessing games. Can they use the picture? Can they use the first letter and just guess the word? What would make sense?

Struggling readers need explicit instruction in orthography. They need us to point out how map words into their sound-spelling relationships.

Practical Ways to Teach Orthography

That sounds great and all, but what about when the rubber meets the road. How do we even teach orthography? Here are some practical ways:

Enjoy teaching!
~Becky
You'll Also Like:

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What is Orthography? Why Does it Matter? - This Reading Mama

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What is orthography? Why does it even matter? That's what we're going to talk about in today's post! You'll like like our Orthographic Mapping Puzzles Bundle. My goal is to take this scary sounding word and break it down for you. I want to explore what orthography is but more importantly why it even matters ...

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The 5 Key Components of Effective Reading Instruction (Esp. of Older Students)

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The 5 Key Components of Effective Reading Instruction (Esp. of Older Students)

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Natalie Barnes:
This article describes the five key components of effective reading instruction but is geared toward teaching older students (upper elementary or older).  I found it particularly helpful because I am working with older students who are either still struggling due to disabilities or gaps in their instruction and/or English language learners.  It details the five critical components of effective reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.  Then it provides examples of how to teach these skills, including ideas geared toward older learners. I found the ideas to build fluency very helpful and plan to utilize choral reading in my math class.  The article does emphasize that it is important that accuracy is solid before focusing too much on fluency.  Vocabulary is vital to any course and the strategies here also link to other articles that dig into this topic more thoroughly.

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These days, there's a lot of conversation about teaching reading. In fact, some have argued that we're seeing a resurgence of the Reading Wars that were so heated in the 1980s and 1990s. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, it's important that all of us understand the foundational components of reading. That's because while there is still some disagreement about the best way to teach reading, most experts agree that there are five essential pieces to effective reading instruction:

1. Phonemic awareness

2. Phonics

3. Fluency

4. Vocabulary

5. Comprehension

Whether you're new to teaching or just trying to brush up on the basics, here's a quick overview of each of these five components and some basics of what they might look like when you are teaching them to upper elementary learners.

Teaching Reading in Upper Elementary and Beyond - the 5 Core Parts of Every Lesson

When teaching reading in upper elementary, you'll want to ensure that your instruction contains all five of these essential components. While the balance may shift depending on what you're working on in a particular lesson, all five should be represented every time. Let's take a closer look at each one.

1. Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken language is made up of smaller units of sound called phonemes. These skills include identifying and producing individual sounds (phonemes), blending sounds together to make words, and segmenting words into their individual sounds.

Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness helps students understand that spoken words are made up of small units of sound and lays the foundation for later phonics instruction. This instruction is typically low-prep and easy to incorporate into your lesson plan because it is done orally and should only take a few minutes at most.

While often considered important at the primary level, phonemic awareness is also a critical component of reading instruction for older struggling readers and ESL students. Many research studies have shown that explicit phonemic awareness instruction can improve reading skills for these groups of students.

Meaningful Phonemic Awareness Activities for Older Learners:

Say a word. Have students repeat this word. Then have them repeat it again, but delete or replace a phoneme. For example, early in the year might say something like. "Say tray. Now say tray again but without the /t/."

Later on, this task can be made more complex by having students substitute vowel sounds or work with multisyllabic words.

2. Phonics

Phonics is the relationship between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. Students who receive explicit instruction in phonics learn how to decode unfamiliar words by sounding them out. A strong foundation in phonics is essential for young readers as it enables them to read independently. Phonics is also a foundational piece of the puzzle for advancing readers as they work to tackle more difficult texts filled with multi-syllable words.

Initially, phonics begins with the basics of short and long vowels. As students progress, they learn about more advanced concepts such as blends, digraphs, and diphthongs. In later grades, syllable division is a core part of phonics instruction to help students decode multi-syllable words.

Phonics Activities for Older Learners:

Have students sort words by the phonics principle you are working on, or have them practice sorting words by syllable type. This can include coding words for vowels and consonants to help identify open and closed syllables.

3. Fluency

Fluency is the ability to read text quickly, accurately, and with appropriate expression. When students are fluent readers, they can focus their attention on comprehension rather than decoding each word individually. Fluency, therefore, is developed in concert with strong decoding skills.

Fluency instruction typically begins in the primary grades with students learning basic strategies such as reading with expression and using a finger to keep track of words as they read. As students become more proficient readers, they can move beyond these basic strategies and develop more sophisticated fluency skills such as rereading difficult sections and self-monitoring for errors.

Fluency-Building Activities for Older Learners:

To help students develop fluency, provide them with opportunities to read aloud regularly. Choral reading, partner reading, and repeated reading are great ways to improve fluency.

However, when targeting fluency, it is always important to be sure accuracy is solid first. This means students shouldn't be working on fluency before they have the pre-requisite decoding skills necessary to read the given text. A diagnostic assessment can be a great tool to gather more data if unsure.

4. Vocabulary

A student's vocabulary knowledge has a direct impact on their reading comprehension. Students with a large vocabulary can understand and process what they read more effectively than students with a limited vocabulary.

Not surprisingly, vocabulary is often a barrier to student success in reading and academics. To close the vocabulary gap, students need direct and explicit instruction in vocabulary development. This instruction should include opportunities for students to learn about word meanings, study morphology, practice using new words in context, and play word games.

To build students' vocabulary knowledge, provide them with opportunities to hear and see new words in various contexts. Reading aloud frequently, using picture books, and discussing new words during class are also all great ways to expose students to new vocabulary. However, most students will need more explicit instruction to master these words.

Vocabulary Boosting Activities for Upper Elementary & Beyond:

There are many great ways to incorporate vocabulary instruction into your lessons. One of the most important things your learners need is multiple exposures to the same word.

Word sorts, dictionary work, and creating word walls are all great activities that help students learn new words. However, they'll only work when paired with targeted vocabulary instruction that moves students from recognition toward actually using these words in context.

5. Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the ability to understand and make meaning from what you read. Good comprehenders are active readers who use a variety of strategies to interact with the text they are reading. Reading comprehension can only occur when students have strong decoding skills and at least some fluency. However, listening comprehension can be developed independently of these skills.

There are a variety of comprehension strategies that students can use to understand their reading better. These include making predictions, questioning, visualizing, determining importance, and synthesizing information. To help students develop these skills, provide them with opportunities to practice using each strategy through modeled, guided, and independent reading experiences.

Supporting Students in Developing Reading Comprehension Skills:

To help students develop reading comprehension, provide your learners opportunities to practice using strategies using authentic fiction and nonfiction texts, such as timely articles or developmentally appropriate novels.

Question stems, modeling these strategies for students, and giving them ample time to practice using them will help them internalize the strategies. This, in turn, will help them automatically apply them to independent reading.

In addition, provide opportunities for students to practice these strategies independently or in small groups by completing graphic organizers or writing summaries after they finish reading a text. You can plan these activities into a book club or novel study.

Effective reading instruction makes a world of difference for all readers.

However, it is especially critical for those who struggle. Research suggests that quality reading instruction can close the achievement gap for struggling readers. But what does quality reading instruction look like?

In my opinion, it's quite clear! Following the Science of Reading is important for all students, but it can change the academic picture for those at risk for reading difficulties. Effective reading instruction includes explicit and direct instruction in the five essential components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

By incorporating all five components into your reading instruction-phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary development, and comprehension-you will set ALL students up for success!

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The 5 Key Components of Effective Reading Instruction

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These days, there's a lot of conversation about teaching reading. In fact, some have argued that we're seeing a resurgence of the Reading Wars that were so heated in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Faye Chandler-   "How To Use Music To Strengthen Neural Pathways And Optimize Your Brain Function"

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Faye Chandler-   "How To Use Music To Strengthen Neural Pathways And Optimize Your Brain Function"

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Faye Chandler-   "How To Use Music To Strengthen Neural Pathways And Optimize Your Brain Function"

https://youtu.be/ElCRvtZFowQ

This video talks about a creative way in which music therapy is used to strengthen neural pathways to the brain. It also describes how using different sound frequencies can be used to strengthen the way the brain processes in various scenarios. In particular I think this video is relative to what we are learning about literacy acquisition and the brain because of the neurological pathways that must be strengthen when someone is learning to read. The video shares that since reading is an auditory based skill, using music therapy to help improve a student’s ability to process information can help with phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension (9:56-10:15).

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How To Use Music To Strengthen Neural Pathways And Optimize Your Brain Function

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Marilou Barquillo

This article is about  Developmental dyslexia and how it relates to brain function are complicated topics that researchers have been studying since dyslexia was first described over a hundred years ago.

Almost every teacher in the United States has at least one student who could fit the same description.  This situation leads many school personnel to wonder why their articulate, clearly bright student has so many problems with what appears to be a simple task – reading a text that everyone else seems to comprehend easily.

Having information about the likely explanation for and potential cause of the student's difficulties often relieves teachers' fears and uncertainties about how to teach the student and how to think about providing relevant and effective instruction.

The purpose of this article is to explain the answers to these questions and provide foundational knowledge that will lead to a firmer understanding of the underlying characteristics of students with dyslexia. A greater understanding of the current brain research and how it relates to students with dyslexia is important in education and will help teachers understand and evaluate possible instructional interventions to help their students succeed in the classroom. Our goal as a teacher is to provide students with dyslexia with some possible instructional interventions to help their students succeed in the classroom.

As a teacher here are some recommendations that we can use in our classrooms:

1. It is vital to begin using screening and progress monitoring procedures early on to measure children's understanding of sounds in speech, letter sounds in words, and fluent word recognition. Using such assessment in an ongoing way throughout a child's school career can help teachers know what skills to teach and whether a child is developing these skills.

2. Explicit, intense, systematic instruction in the sound structure of language (phonemic awareness) and in how sounds relate to letters (phonics) is needed for readers with dyslexia.

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Dyslexia and the Brain_ What Does Current Research Tell Us_ _ Reading Rockets

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How reading changes the brain (in general and in people with dyslexia)

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How reading changes the brain (in general and in people with dyslexia)

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Natalie Barnes:
This article describes how reading actually changes various parts of our brains.  Our brains are built for oral language so this change is necessary in order to learn to read.  The temporo-parietal cortex helps us understand sounds and the meaning of words; this area is repurposed to decode unfamiliar words and sounds out words.  The occipito-temporal cortex recognizes objects and faces, which allows us to recognize words.  The inferior frontal cortex helps form the sounds, so it is used to pronounce words.  Researchers have found that in people with dyslexia, their brains function differently -- their anatomy, chemistry, and waves are different.  In studies examining the brains of people with dyslexia before and after interventions, the researchers found that all aspects of their brain change.  More research is needed to see which brain differences cause dyslexia versus differences that are a result of dyslexia.
(Also linked https://www.understood.org/en/articles/how-reading-changes-the-brain)