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the body of words used in a particular language.

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: a list or collection of words or of words and phrases usually alphabetically arranged and explained or defined :

The vocabulary for the week is posted online every Monday.

: a sum or stock of words employed by a language, group, individual, or work or in a field of knowledge

a writer known for employing a rich vocabulary

: a list or collection of terms or codes available for use (as in an indexing system)

... the oldest Sumerian cuneiform writing could not render normal prose but was a mere telegraphic shorthand, whose vocabulary was restricted to names, numerals, units of measure, words for objects counted, and a few adjectives. - Jared Diamon

: a supply of expressive techniques or devices (as of an art form)

Did you know?

For many people, the word vocabulary is primarily associated with the number of words that a person knows; one either has a large or a small vocabulary. But the word has many shades of meaning and is nicely representative of the nuanced and multi-hued nature of so much of the English lexicon.

Vocabulary may indeed refer to the collection of words known by an individual or by a large group of people. It may also signify the body of specialized terms in a field of study or activity ("the vocabulary of science"). It may designate a physical object, such as a book, in which a collection of (usually alphabetized) words is defined or explained. And it may name things other than words, such as "a list or collection of terms or codes available for use," "a set or list of nonverbal symbols" (such as marine alphabet flag signals), and "a set of expressive forms used in an art" (as in "the vocabulary of dance").

Synonyms

Example Sentences

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'vocabulary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle French vocabulaire, probably from Medieval Latin vocabularium, from neuter of vocabularius verbal, from Latin vocabulum

1532, in the meaning defined at sense 1

The first known use of vocabulary was in 1532

Dictionary Entries Near vocabulary

Cite this Entry

"Vocabulary." Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vocabulary. Accessed 26 May. 2023.

More from Merriam-Webster on vocabulary

- Updated example sentences

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Merriam-Webster unabridged

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a list or collection of words or of words and phrases usually alphabetically arranged and explained or defined : lexicon; a sum or stock of words employed by a language, group, individual, or work or in a field of knowledge... See the full definition

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the area of reading instruction that deals with the relationships between letters and sounds.

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As an educator, you have probably already heard of phonics. But chances are that no one has ever sat down with you to explain exactly what phonics instruction is. That's where we come in - with the help of phonics expert Wiley Blevins, we have compiled the basic information that you need to know before teaching phonics.

What is phonics?

Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and their spellings. The goal of phonics instruction is to teach students the most common sound-spelling relationships so that they can decode, or sound out, words. This decoding ability is a crucial element in reading success.

Why is phonics instruction important?

Most poor readers tend to rely so heavily on one reading strategy, such as the use of context and picture clues, that they exclude other strategies that might be more appropriate. To become skilled, fluent readers, children need to have a repertoire of strategies to draw on. These strategies include using a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships - in other words, an understanding of phonics. In addition, research has shown that skilled readers attend to almost every word in a sentence and process the letters that compose each of these words.

Therefore, phonics instruction plays a key role in helping students comprehend text. It helps the student map sounds onto spellings, thus enabling them to decode words. Decoding words aids in the development of word recognition, which in turn increases reading fluency. Reading fluency improves reading comprehension because as students are no longer struggling with decoding words, they can concentrate on making meaning from the text.

In addition, phonics instruction improves spelling ability because it emphasizes spelling patterns that become familiar from reading. Studies show that half of all English words can be spelled with phonics rules that relate to one letter to one sound.

How should you structure phonics instruction?

Phonics instruction should be explicit rather than implicit. Implicit instruction relies on readers "discovering" clues about sound-spelling relationships; good readers can do this, but poor readers are not likely to do so. Explicit instruction is the most effective type of phonics instruction, especially for children at risk for reading difficulties.

A good phonics lesson begins with an explicit explanation of the sound-spelling being taught along with guided opportunities for students to blend, or sound out, words using the new sound-spelling. These exercises should be followed by guided and independent reading practice in text that contains words with the new sound-spelling. This portion of phonics instruction is key. Therefore, phonics instruction should focus on applying learned sound-spelling relationships to actual reading, with smaller amounts of time spent on the initial task of learning phonics rules. That way, you can plan phonics lessons that are appropriate for all students, even if some have higher levels of phonics mastery than others.

How is phonics different from phonemic awareness?

Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols, whereas phonemic awareness involves sounds in spoken words. Therefore, phonics instruction focuses on teaching sound-spelling relationships and is associated with print. Most phonemic awareness tasks are oral.

Despite these different focuses, phonics instruction and phonemic awareness instruction are connected. In fact, phonemic awareness is necessary for phonics instruction to be effective. Before students can use a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships to decode written words, they must understand that words (whether written or spoken) are made up of sounds. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that a word is made up of a series of discrete sounds. Without this insight, phonics instruction will not make sense to students.

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As an educator, you have probably already heard of phonics. But chances are that no one has ever sat down with you to explain exactly what phonics instruction is. That's where we come in - with the help of phonics expert Wiley Blevins, we have compiled the basic information that you need to know before teaching phonics.

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a child’s evolving ability to hear, discriminate, segment, and manipulate the phonemes in words, helps pave the way for the critical insight that words are made up of sounds

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the insight that spoken words are composed of somewhat separable sounds

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When we think about young children becoming readers, we often picture alphabet charts, kids' books, and the challenging process of "sounding out" words on a page. The English language is complex, and no small feat to master! But building a strong foundation for literacy success can begin long before children learn to read, with a skill called phonemic awareness.

What is phonemic (and phonological) awareness?

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and work with sound structures in spoken words. People with phonological awareness can notice and produce rhymes ( can and man); identify and blend syllables in words ("tea...cher...teacher"); and pinpoint individual sounds in words ("tub .../t/ /u/ /b/") as well as manipulate them ("Change the /b/ to a /g/...now the word is tug ").

Phonemic awareness can refer specifically to this last skill: the ability to hear and manipulate individual speech sounds, called phonemes, in spoken words. For example, a phonemic awareness exercise might ask a child to change a single sound in a word to make a new word ("rug" with a /n/ at the end becomes "run"). Phonemic awareness can also refer to the other skills described above, and is often used interchangeably with phonological awareness. (In this article, we use "phonemic awareness" to refer to skills associated with both phonemic awareness and phonological awareness.)

Young children need strong phonemic awareness to become strong readers. However, phonemic awareness skills can be learned before kids are taught to read or write-no pencil or paper required! They can also be taught alongside literacy instruction.

How learners develop phonemic awareness

Developing phonemic awareness skillsis a different process for each child. Some learners begin developing phonemic awareness organically, by singing songs, learning nursery rhymes, and having rhyming books read aloud to them-think "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," "Hickory Dickory Dock," and anything by Dr. Seuss.

This is a start, but many learners also require systematic and explicit phonemic awareness instruction to develop the skills they need to get ready for reading.

Five levels of phonemic awareness

To help explain the order in which children develop phonemic awareness, Marilyn Jager Adams created a widely used definition of the term in 1990, focused on specific phonemic awareness skills in five levels:

1. Ability to hear rhymes ("cat, bat") and alliteration (repeated initial sounds in words, e.g. "red rooster")

2. Ability to identify similarities and differences in rhyme and alliteration across and between words

3. Ability to blend and segment syllables ("af-ter...after," "chicken..chick-en")

4. Ability to split a spoken word into phonemes ("map...m-a-p")

5. Ability toidentify and manipulate the sounds in words (e.g. "Say pig. Now change the last sound to a /t/. What do you have now?")

Why is phonemic awareness important?

Phonemic awarenessis the single best predictor of reading development in young children. It sets them up to master spelling-sound relationships, which means they can more easily connect letters ("A") with the sounds they make ("/A/" as in apple). This is how literacy instruction begins in elementary school (and sometimes earlier), and leads directly to early decoding: reading written words based on the sounds each letter makes.

Since reading skills and spelling skills go hand in hand, phonemic awareness will help kids become stronger spellers and writers. When kids enter school with strong phonemic awareness skills, like the ability to heareach sound in the word dog, they have a higher chance of being able to read and write the word dog when literacy instruction begins.

Phonemic awareness at each grade level

How do you know your child is on the right track to develop strong phonemic awareness? Let's take a look at the ages at which most children master phonemic awareness skills:

At the beginning of preschool, learners should be enjoying and imitating rhymes and alliteration. Their eyes light up when they hear the title of "Fox in Socks," and they giggle at themselves when saying "yummy yogurt!"

By the end of preschool, learners should be able to clap and count syllables (one clap for bus, two claps for taxi), as well as recognize when a word in a group does not rhyme ("hat, mat...mop?") and when a familiar word has been altered ("Twinkle, twinkle, little...car?").

At the beginning of kindergarten, learners can produce rhymes, match the first sounds in words, and blend onset (first sound) and rime (word ending) to say a complete word ("c-ap...cap").

By the end of kindergarten, learners are typically blending sounds in two- or three-phoneme words ("a-t...at," "h-a-t...hat") as well as segmenting them ("at...a-t," "hat...h-a-t") and deleting syllables and compound word components (elbow without el, raincoat without rain).

In 1st grade, learners segment longer words, substitute phonemes to make new words ("Change the /p/ sound inin map to /n/"), and delete sounds at the beginning and end of simple words (fan with the /f/, book without the /k/).

In 2nd grade, learners use their expanded phonemic awareness to tackle words with blends-two consonants in a row that make two distinct sounds (such as fr in from). They are able to delete the first sound in words that begin with blends (stop without the /s/).

In 3rd grade, learners are able to extend this deletion skill to individual phonemes in blends that occur in the medial (middle) and final (end) positions of words: spoon without the /p/, bark without the /r/.

Help your learner develop phonemic awareness with Outschool's live online classes.

How to teach phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness instruction is fun for teachers, caregivers, and learners alike. Even structured instruction can be delivered through games, songs, and developmentally appropriate activities that kids love.

Figure out where to start. Determining what skills to teach depends on a child's age and prior phonemic awareness skills. If a 1st grader is struggling with skills typically learned in preschool, such as clapping syllables, that is the place to begin! Phonemic awareness skillsbuild on each other and cannot be learned in isolation.

Get moving. Incorporating hand and body movements into phonemic awareness activities keeps kids engaged, and this kinesthetic learning component helps them retain knowledge for longer.

Keep it playful. Even the trickiest phonemic awareness activities can be turned into a game. When kids learn joyfully, they feel less anxious and more motivated to keep going.

Teaching phonemic awareness doesn't need to be a struggle; it can be just as fun as it is valuable. By understanding and supporting the growth of phonemic awareness skills, we can help kids get a head start on their literacy journey, or give struggling readersand writers the tools they need to catch up.

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What Is Phonemic Awareness? A Complete Guide

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When we think about young children becoming readers, we often picture alphabet charts, kids' books, and the challenging process of "sounding out" words on a page. The English language is complex, and no small feat to master! But building a strong foundation for literacy success can begin long before children learn to read, with a skill called phonemic awareness.

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ability to do things immediately and without conscious attention

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emphasizes that reading is a process in which the reader actively searches for meaning in what he reads.

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Cognitivist teaching methods aim to assist students in assimilating new information to existing knowledge, as well as enabling them to make the appropriate modifications to their existing intellectual framework to accommodate that information.

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a child’s growth in acquiring and using the grammatical relationships within language, paves the way to understanding the growing complexity of sentences in the language of books.

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Although babies learn how to speak at different rates, almost all little ones learn how to form words and sentences in a similar order, beginning with single syllables and graduating to more complex ideas like tense. In just a few short years, a child goes from no language at all to forming cohesive sentences following grammatical rules. This process is called syntactic development.

General Information

Syntax refers to the rules used to combine words to make sentences; syntactic development is the way children learn these rules. Syntactic development is measured using MLU, or mean length of utterance, which is basically the average length of a child's sentence; this increases as a child gets older. According to Jean Berko Gleason's book, "The Development of Language," kids go through five stages of syntactic development which were identified by Roger Brown in 1973. Children automatically develop syntactic rules without explicit instruction; they learn it simply by listening to others speak around them.

Stage I

According to Gleason, these primitive sentences mostly consist of nouns, verbs and adjectives with a lack of important grammatical elements.

Stage II

As children move through the five stages of syntactic development, their sentences grow in length. According to speech language pathologist Caroline Bowen, kids begin to learn grammatical elements in Stage II, usually between 28 and 36 months. Most toddlers acquire these elements in the same order, beginning with the present progressive -ing, then the prepositions in and on.

Stage III

Bowen writes that Stage III includes the acquisition of irregular past tense words, such as:

"is." This stage usually occurs between 36
* 42 months.

Stage IV

For example, a toddler will often say "goed" or "foots" before he says, "went" or "feet." But this shows understanding of the rules; it's another automatically learned phenomenon.

Stage V

From 42 months on, children reach Stage V, which includes using contractions, such as:

combining them with other verbs

forming contractions with them

According to Bowen, kids have usually mastered all of these stages by 52 months and should be able to form four to five word sentences around age 4.

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Although babies learn how to speak at different rates, almost all little ones learn how to form words and sentences in a similar order, beginning with single syllables and graduating to more complex ideas like tense. In just a few short years, a child goes from no language at all to forming cohesive sentences following grammatical rules.

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emphasizes the idea that comprehending a text is very much an active process.

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a  reader processing all the letter-sound associations simultaneously or recognizing the word as a whole unit.

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2.1.1 Bilingual Word Recognition

Studies of bilingual word recognition have asked whether words or lexical features associated with the language not in use are activated when recognizing a word in one language alone out of context (e.g., Dijkstra, 2005; Kroll et al., 2006). The research strategy has been to exploit the presence of similar features in each language to determine whether the two languages can be processed independently in a selective manner. Many languages contain translation equivalents that are cognates, with similar orthography and/or phonology in both languages (e.g., in Dutch and English, the word hotel is spelled identically and pronounced similarly although the phonology is almost never precisely the same). But the same languages often also include words that are false friends or interlexical homographs, with similar orthography and/or phonology but different meanings (e.g., the word room appears in both Dutch and English but means cream in Dutch). Both cognates and homographs are at least momentarily ambiguous with respect to language membership when presented out of context, so it is possible to compare word-recognition performance for these special words relative to words that unambiguously belong to one language or the other. The results of a now impressive number of studies show that bilinguals process language-ambiguous words differently than language-unambiguous words and that monolinguals are insensitive to these differences. The monolingual comparison is critical to rule out the contribution of correlated lexical features that might otherwise differentiate the two types of words.

To illustrate, when bilinguals perform a visual lexical decision task in which they have to decide whether a letter string is a real word, they are faster when the letter string is a cognate translation than an unambiguous control word (e.g., Dijkstra, Van Jaarsveld, & Ten Brinke, 1998). When the letter string is an interlexical homograph, bilinguals are typically slower relative to control words but response speed and accuracy also depends on the mix of conditions (e.g., De Groot, Delmaar, & Lupker, 2000; Von Studnitz & Green, 2002). The data for both the processing of cognates and interlingual homographs suggest that the bilingual is activating information about the other language. For cognates, the convergence of lexical form and meaning produces facilitation. For homographs, there is interference generated by the conflict in meaning across the two languages unless the task can exploit the presence of cross-language tokens (e.g., see Dijkstra et al., 1998, Experiment 3). The difference across these conditions is not only apparent in behavioral data but also in electrophysiological studies that map out the early time course of these processes in the brain (e.g., Midgley, Holcomb, & Grainger, 2009) and in fMRI studies that identify brain activity (e.g., Van Heuven, Schriefers, Dijkstra, & Hagoort, 2008).

One might wonder whether the lexical decision task or other binary decision tasks which do not require the phonology of the word to be specified, encourage the engagement of the language not in use. But similar results are obtained when the task is changed to simple word naming, where there is generally facilitation for cognates and interference for interlexical homographs (e.g., Jared & Szucs, 2002; Schwartz, Kroll, & Diaz, 2007). In word naming, the phonology of the target language must be specified to enable the bilingual to produce the word in the intended language but the results are largely the same as those for lexical decision. Likewise, one might ask whether the activation of the language not in use only occurs when the bilingual is recognizing words in the L2. For all but the most proficient and balanced bilinguals, the processing of L2 is typically slower than the processing of L1, so perhaps it is not surprising to see effects of the more dominant and skilled L1 on the less dominant and slower L2. Although it is easier to find effects of the L1 on the L2 than the reverse, there is solid evidence that once individuals are relatively proficient in the L2, there are similar effects of the L2 on the L1, even in experiments in which the bilingual is unaware of the relevance of L2 and in which the L2 is not explicitly engaged (e.g., Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002; Van Wijnendaele & Brysbaert, 2002).

Perhaps the most surprising result of all is that the parallel activation of the bilingual's two languages is not eliminated when language-ambiguous words are placed in sentence context (e.g., Duyck, Van Assche, Drieghe, & Hartsuiker 2007; Libben & Titone, 2009; Schwartz & Kroll, 2006; Van Hell & De Groot, 2008). One might think that the out-of-context nature of word-recognition paradigms would increase cross-language ambiguity in the absence of syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic information that might otherwise bias lexical access towards the target language. To the contrary, the evidence on word recognition in sentence context shows that it is very difficult to eliminate the parallel activation of the two languages even in the presence of multiple cues to the language in use. Most of the experiments that have investigated this issue have examined cognate effects. The question is whether the cognate facilitation typically observed in out-of-context word recognition is reduced or eliminated in sentence context. The finding is that the cognate effect disappears only when the sentence context is highly constrained semantically (e.g., Schwartz & Kroll, 2006; Van Hell & De Groot, 2008; but see Van Assche, Dreighe, Duyck, Welvaert, & Hartsuiker, 2011). In low-constraint sentence contexts, the cognate effects are as robust as in the out-of-context word-recognition studies. What is notable is that in these low-constraint sentences, the language of the sentence is blocked so that the bilingual is fully engaged in processing in one language alone. Furthermore, like the earlier results on out-of-context word recognition, there is evidence that the activation of both languages can be seen even when the sentence is processed in the more dominant L1 (e.g., Van Assche, Duyck, Hartsuiker, & Diependaele, 2009). The results suggest that bilinguals are not able to easily exploit the language of the sentence context to selectively process the target language.

The parallel activation of the two languages appears to be a feature of the system itself rather than a consequence of particular experimental conditions. Cross-language interactions are observed both within and outside of sentence context and for both the L1 and the L2. Additional support for the idea that the high level of interaction between the bilingual's two languages reflects the design of the system rather than a strategy imposed by experimental conditions comes from studies that have examined these issues in bilinguals for whom there is less obvious cross-language ambiguity. Languages such as Dutch and English share the same writing system and the opportunity for ambiguity is high when a word is presented in print. But many languages differ in the form of their lexical representation and again, in theory, these differences might be expected to function as cues to allow bilinguals to separate their two languages more easily. Studies on cross-script bilinguals who speak Chinese and English or Hebrew and English show the same sort of interactions that have been reported for same-script bilinguals (e.g., Gollan, Forster, & Frost, 1997; Jiang, 1999; Thierry & Wu, 2007; Wu & Thierry, 2010). Because the orthographic representation of a word's written form is not shared, the cross-script results suggest that the activation of overlapping phonology may be sufficient to engage the language not in use. But a recent study of deaf readers who are bilingual in American Sign Language (ASL) and written English (Morford et al., 2011) shows that when they read in English alone, the translations of the ASL signs are activated. In this context, there is neither orthographic nor phonological overlap across the two languages. The finding that ASL is active when deaf readers process written English suggests that cross-language interactions are a common feature when more than one language is used and although structural differences across languages may modulate the form of possible transfer, they do not determine its presence or absence.

The studies we have reviewed show that there is parallel activation of the bilingual's two languages even under circumstances that, in theory, should allow processing to be restricted selectively to one language alone. The examples we discussed were drawn from the literature on visual word recognition. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to review this work in greater detail but we note that evidence for language nonselectivity has also been reported for spoken word recognition in and out of sentence context (e.g., Chambers & Cooke, 2009; Marian & Spivey, 2003). There is a suggestion in the research on spoken recognition that it may be possible to more easily enable selective access when listening to speech than when reading printed text (e.g., Ju & Luce, 2004; Weber & Cutler, 2004), but the majority of studies suggest the same sort of cross-language interactions observed in the visual domain. A recent paper by Lagrou, Hartsuiker, and Duyck (2011) shows that even when words are spoken in accented speech that should provide a cue to the listener, there is evidence for nonselective access.

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Studies of bilingual word recognition have asked whether words or lexical features associated with the language not in use are activated when recognizing a word in one language alone out of context (e.g., Dijkstra, 2005; Kroll et al., 2006).

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the action or capability of understanding something

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: the act or action of grasping with the intellect : understanding

What the artist actually needs is comprehension of his aims and ideals by men he respects ... - H. L. Mencken

: the capacity for understanding fully

Synonyms

Example Sentences

The students showed excellent reading the president's comprehension. comprehension of the current situation in the Middle East

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'comprehension.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle French & Latin; Middle French, from Latin comprehension-, comprehensio, from comprehendere to understand, comprise

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

The first known use of comprehension was in the 15th century

Dictionary Entries Near comprehension

Cite this Entry

"Comprehension." Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprehension. Accessed 25 May. 2023.

More from Merriam-Webster on comprehension

- Updated example sentences

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search-ad free!

Merriam-Webster unabridged

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the act or action of grasping with the intellect : understanding What the artist actually needs is comprehension of his aims and ideals by men he respects ... - H. L. Mencken : the capacity for understanding fully The students showed excellent reading the president's comprehension.

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a child’s growth in vocabulary, contributes an ever-increasing understanding of the meanings of words, which fuels the engine of all language growth.

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Words are produced from the age of about 1 year. New words are added slowly in the first year, so that by the age of 18-24 months the child has a vocabulary of about 50 words. Nelson (1973) examined the first 10 words produced by children and found that the categories most commonly referred to were important person names, animals, food, and toys. Greenfield and Smith (1976) found that early words may refer to many different roles, not just objects, and further proposed that the first utterances may always name roles. Clark and Clark (1977) argued that, in the very earliest stages of development, the child must start with two assumptions about the purpose of language: language is for communication, and language makes sense in context.

Linguistic development must follow cognitive development. The first words emerge out of situations where an exemplar of the category referred to by the word is present in the view of parent and child model of learning the first words (Quine, 1960). Ostensive means pointing-this conveys the idea of acquiring simple words by a parent pointing at a dog and saying "dog", and the child then simply attaching the name to the object. The problem is simply that the child does not know which attribute of input is being labelled. This is often called the mapping problem.

The developing child makes use of a number of lexical principles to help to establish the meaning of a new word (Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Bailey, & Wenger, 1992; Golinkoff, Mervis, & Hirsh-Pasek, 1994). The idea of lexical principles as general constraints on how children attach names to objects and their properties is an important one. Four main constraints have been proposed. First, the cognitive system may be constrained so that it tends to treat ostensive definitions as labels for whole objects. The taxonomic constraint is that a word refers to a category of similar things. A third possible constraint is mutual exclusivity assumption, whereby each object can only have one label (Markman & Wachtel, 1988): that is, (unilingual) children do not usually like more than one name for things. Fourth, as children acquire words, new strategies become available.

First, there might be an innate basis to the hypotheses children make (Fodor, 1981). Joint attention between adult and infant is an important factor in early word learning. The problem of labelling objects would be greatly simplified if the adult and child establish through any available communicative means that the discourse is focusing on a particular dimension of an object. Taxonomic hierarchies begin to develop only after the constraint biasing children to acquire basic-level terms weakens. Finally, there are syntactic cues to word meaning. Brown (1958) first proposed that children may use part-of-speech as a cue to meaning. The general capacity to use syntax to infer meaning is called syntactic bootstrapping (Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985), after the idea of trying to lift yourself up by your bootstraps.

Approaches that make use of constraints on how children relate words to the world have some problems. First, we are still faced with the problem of where these constraints themselves come from. Second, they are biases rather than constraints, as children sometimes go against them (Nelson, 1988, 1990). The constraints only appear to come into operation around 18 months, which is difficult to explain if they are indeed innate or a component of the language acquisition device. Third, whereas it is relatively easy to think of constraints that apply to concrete objects and substances, it is less easy to do so for abstract objects and actions.

One useful way of finding out how children acquire meaning is to examine the errors children make. Children's early meanings overlap with adult meanings in four ways: the early meaning might be exactly the same as the adult meaning; it might overlap but go beyond it; it might be too restricted; or there might be no overlap at all.

Over-extensions are when a child uses a word in a broader way than the adult usage. Under-extensions occur when words are used more specifically than their meaning-such as using the word "round" to refer only to balls.

Three types of theory. They are the semantic feature hypothesis, the functional core hypothesis, and the prototype hypothesis. The semantic feature hypothesis (E.Clark, 1973) is based on a decompositional theory of lexical semantics. This approach states that the meaning of a word can be specified in terms of a set of smaller units of meaning, called semantic featuresIn Nelson's (1914) functional core hypothesis, generalization is not restricted to perceptual similarity; instead, functional features are also stressed. The prototype hypothesis (Bowerman, 1978) states that lexical development consists of acquiring a prototype that corresponds to the adult version. A prototype is an average member of a category.

The contrastive hypothesis is a pragmatic principle that simply says that different words have different meanings. It is very similar to the lexical constraint of mutual exclusivity.

one principle is operating in semantic development. On the one hand, children have to learn appropriate contrasts between words, but they must not learn inappropriate or too many contrasts. As this is just the sort of domain where the learning of regularities and the relation between many complex inputs and outputs is important, we might expect connectionism to make a useful contribution here.

Later semantic development sees much interplay between lexical and syntactic factors. Quite often contextual cues are strong enough for the child to get the gist of an utterance without perhaps being able to understand the details. even when a child starts producing a word or structure, it might not be used in the same way as an adult would use it.

Baca: Pengertian, Unsur, dan Jenis Semantik

Harley, Trevor A. (2001). The Psychology of Language From Data to Theory. USA and Canada: Psychology Press Ltd

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Words are produced from the age of about 1 year. New words are added slowly in the first year, so that by the age of 18-24 months the child has a vocabulary of about 50 words. Nelson (1973) examined the first 10 words produced by children and found that the categories most commonly referred to were important person names, animals, food, and toys.

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the reader comprehends sentences and then links ideas from one sentence to another.

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An overview of construction-integration model: a theory of comprehension as a foundation for a new cognitive architecture

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The Construction-Integration Model is a theory of discourse comprehension that is being used as the foundation for a new Integrated Intelligent Architecture. It is a hybrid model, combining symboli...

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the process of using prior knowledge to expand and interpret the meaning the author has put on the pages.

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the ability to mentally step outside of themselves and view their own reading.

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Cite this guide: Chick, N. (2013). Metacognition. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/.

Thinking about One's Thinking | Putting Metacognition into Practice

Thinking about One's Thinking

Metacognition is, put simply, thinking about one's thinking. More precisely, it refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one's understanding and performance. Metacognition includes a critical awareness of a) one's thinking and learning and b) oneself as a thinker and learner.

Initially studied for its development in young children (Baker & Brown, 1984; Flavell, 1985), researchers soon began to look at how experts display metacognitive thinking and how, then, these thought processes can be taught to novices to improve their learning (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986). In How People Learn, the National Academy of Sciences' synthesis of decades of research on the science of learning, one of the three key findings of this work is the effectiveness of a "'metacognitive' approach to instruction" (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 18).

Metacognitive practices increase students' abilities to transfer or adapt their learning to new contexts and tasks (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, p. 12; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Scardamalia et al., 1984; Schoenfeld, 1983, 1985, 1991). They do this by gaining a level of awareness above the subject matter: they also think about the tasks and contexts of different learning situations and themselves as learners in these different contexts. When Pintrich (2002) asserts that "Students who know about the different kinds of strategies for learning, thinking, and problem solving will be more likely to use them" (p. 222), notice the students must "know about" these strategies, not just practice them. As Zohar and David (2009) explain, there must be a " conscious meta-strategic level of H[igher] O[rder] T[hinking]" (p. 179).

Metacognitive practices help students become aware of their strengths and weaknesses as learners, writers, readers, test-takers, group members, etc. A key element is recognizing the limit of one's knowledge or ability and then figuring out how to expand that knowledge or extend the ability. Those who know their strengths and weaknesses in these areas will be more likely to "actively monitor their learning strategies and resources and assess their readiness for particular tasks and performances" (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, p. 67).

The absence of metacognition connects to the research by Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, and Kruger on "Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence" (2003). They found that "people tend to be blissfully unaware of their incompetence," lacking "insight about deficiencies in their intellectual and social skills." They identified this pattern across domains-from test-taking, writing grammatically, thinking logically, to recognizing humor, to hunters' knowledge about firearms and medical lab technicians' knowledge of medical terminology and problem-solving skills (p. 83-84). In short, "if people lack the skills to produce correct answers, they are also cursed with an inability to know when their answers, or anyone else's, are right or wrong" (p. 85). This research suggests that increased metacognitive abilities-to learn specific (and correct) skills, how to recognize them, and how to practice them-is needed in many contexts.

Putting Metacognition into Practice

In " Promoting Student Metacognition," Tanner (2012) offers a handful of specific activities for biology classes, but they can be adapted to any discipline. She first describes four assignments for explicit instruction (p. 116):

Preassessments-Encouraging Students to Examine Their Current Thinking: "What do I already know about this topic that could guide my learning?"

The Muddiest Point-Giving Students Practice in Identifying Confusions: "What was most confusing to me about the material explored in class today?"

Retrospective Postassessments-Pushing Students to Recognize Conceptual Change: "Before this course, I thought evolution was... Now I think that evolution is ...." or "How is my thinking changing (or not changing) over time?"

Reflective Journals-Providing a Forum in Which Students Monitor Their Own Thinking: "What about my exam preparation worked well that I should remember to do next time? What did not work so well that I should not do next time or that I should change?"

Next are recommendations for developing a "classroom culture grounded in metacognition" (p. 116-118):

Giving Students License to Identify Confusions within the Classroom Culture: ask students what they find confusing, acknowledge the difficulties

Integrating Reflection into Credited Course Work: integrate short reflection (oral or written) that ask students what they found challenging or what questions arose during an assignment/exam/project

Metacognitive Modeling by the Instructor for Students: model the thinking processes involved in your field and sought in your course by being explicit about "how you start, how you decide what to do first and then next, how you check your work, how you know when you are done" (p. 118)

To facilitate these activities, she also offers three useful tables:

Questions for students to ask themselves as they plan, monitor, and evaluate their thinking within four learning contexts-in class, assignments, quizzes/exams, and the course as a whole (p. 115)

Prompts for integrating metacognition into discussions of pairs during clicker activities, assignments, and quiz or exam preparation (p. 117)

Questions to help faculty metacognitively assess their own teaching (p. 119)

Weimer's " Deep Learning vs. Surface Learning: Getting Students to Understand the Difference " (2012) offers additional recommendations for developing students' metacognitive awareness and improvement of their study skills:

"[I]t is terribly important that in explicit and concerted ways we make students aware of themselves as learners. We must regularly ask, not only 'What are you learning?' but 'How are you learning?' We must confront them with the effectiveness (more often ineffectiveness) of their approaches. We must offer alternatives and then challenge students to test the efficacy of those approaches." (emphasis added)

She points to a tool developed by Stanger-Hall (2012, p. 297) for her students to identify their study strategies, which she divided into " cognitively passive" ("I previewed the reading before class," "I came to class," "I read the assigned text," "I highlighted the text," et al) and " cognitively active study behaviors" ("I asked myself: 'How does it work?' and 'Why does it work this way?'" "I wrote my own study questions," "I fit all the facts into a bigger picture," "I closed my notes and tested how much I remembered," et al). The specific focus of Stanger-Hall's study is tangential to this discussion, ¹ but imagine giving students lists like hers adapted to your course and then, after a major assignment, having students discuss which ones worked and which types of behaviors led to higher grades. Even further, follow Lovett's advice (2013) by assigning "exam wrappers," which include students reflecting on their previous exam-preparation strategies, assessing those strategies and then looking ahead to the next exam, and writing an action plan for a revised approach to studying. A common assignment in English composition courses is the self-assessment essay in which students apply course criteria to articulate their strengths and weaknesses within single papers or over the course of the semester. These activities can be adapted to assignments other than exams or essays, such as projects, speeches, discussions, and the like.

As these examples illustrate, for students to become more metacognitive, they must be taught the concept and its language explicitly (Pintrich, 2002; Tanner, 2012), though not in a content-delivery model (simply a reading or a lecture) and not in one lesson. Instead, the explicit instruction should be "designed according to a knowledge construction approach," or students need to recognize, assess, and connect new skills to old ones, "and it needs to take place over an extended period of time" (Zohar & David, p. 187). This kind of explicit instruction will help students expand or replace existing learning strategies with new and more effective ones, give students a way to talk about learning and thinking, compare strategies with their classmates' and make more informed choices, and render learning "less opaque to students, rather than being something that happens mysteriously or that some students 'get' and learn and others struggle and don't learn" (Pintrich, 2002, p. 223).

Metacognition instruction should also be embedded with the content and activities about which students are thinking. Why? Metacognition is "not generic" (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, p. 19) but instead is most effective when it is adapted to reflect the specific learning contexts of a specific topic, course, or discipline (Zohar & David, 2009). In explicitly connecting a learning context to its relevant processes, learners will be more able to adapt strategies to new contexts, rather than assume that learning is the same everywhere and every time. For instance, students' abilities to read disciplinary texts in discipline-appropriate ways would also benefit from metacognitive practice. A literature professor may read a passage of a novel aloud in class, while also talking about what she's thinking as she reads: how she makes sense of specific words and phrases, what connections she makes, how she approaches difficult passages, etc. This kind of modeling is a good practice in metacognition instruction, as suggested by Tanner above. Concepción's " Reading Philosophy with Background Knowledge and Metacognition " (2004) includes his detailed "How to Read Philosophy" handout (pp. 358-367), which includes the following components:

What to Expect (when reading philosophy)

The Ultimate Goal (of reading philosophy)

Basic Good Reading Behaviors

Important Background Information, or discipline- and course-specific reading practices, such as "reading for enlightenment" rather than information, and "problem-based classes" rather than historical or figure-based classes

A Three-Part Reading Process (pre-reading, understanding, and evaluating)

Flagging, or annotating the reading

Linear vs. Dialogical Writing (Philosophical writing is rarely straightforward but instead "a monologue that contains a dialogue" [p. 365].)

What would such a handout look like for your discipline?

Students can even be metacognitively prepared (and then prepare themselves) for the overarching learning experiences expected in specific contexts. Salvatori and Donahue's The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty (2004) encourages students to embrace difficult texts (and tasks) as part of deep learning, rather than an obstacle. Their "difficulty paper" assignment helps students reflect on and articulate the nature of the difficulty and work through their responses to it (p. 9). Similarly, in courses with sensitive subject matter, a different kind of learning occurs, one that involves complex emotional responses. In " Learning from Their Own Learning: How Metacognitive and Meta-affective Reflections Enhance Learning in Race-Related Courses" (Chick, Karis, & Kernahan, 2009), students were informed about the common reactions to learning about racial inequality (Helms, 1995; Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 1997; see student handout, Chick, Karis, & Kernahan, p. 23-24) and then regularly wrote about their cognitive and affective responses to specific racialized situations. The students with the most developed metacognitive and meta-affective practices at the end of the semester were able to "clear the obstacles and move away from" oversimplified thinking about race and racism "to places of greater questioning, acknowledging the complexities of identity, and redefining the world in racial terms" (p. 14).

Ultimately, metacognition requires students to "externalize mental events" (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, p. 67), such as what it means to learn, awareness of one's strengths and weaknesses with specific skills or in a given learning context, plan what's required to accomplish a specific learning goal or activity, identifying and correcting errors, and preparing ahead for learning processes.

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1 Students who were tested with short answer in addition to multiple-choice questions on their exams reported more cognitively active behaviors than those tested with just multiple-choice questions, and these active behaviors led to improved performance on the final exam.
References

Adams, Maurianne, Bell, Lee Ann, and Griffin, Pat. (1997). Teaching for diversity and social justice: A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.

Bransford, John D., Brown Ann L., and Cocking Rodney R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Baker, Linda, and Brown, Ann L. (1984). Metacognitive skills and reading. In Paul David Pearson, Michael L. Kamil, Rebecca Barr, & Peter Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of research in reading: Volume III (pp. 353-395). New York: Longman.

Brown, Ann L. (1980). Metacognitive development and reading. In Rand J. Spiro, Bertram C. Bruce, and William F. Brewer, (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension: Perspectives from cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and education (pp. 453-482). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Chick, Nancy, Karis, Terri, and Kernahan, Cyndi. (2009). Learning from their own learning: how metacognitive and meta-affective reflections enhance learning in race-related courses . International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 3(1). 1-28.

Flavell, John H. (1985). Cognitive development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Hatano, Giyoo and Inagaki, Kayoko. (1986). Two courses of expertise. In Harold Stevenson, Azuma, Horishi, and Hakuta, Kinji (Eds.), Child development and education in Japan, New York: W.H. Freeman.

Lovett, Marsha C. (2013). Make exams worth more than the grade. In Matthew Kaplan, Naomi Silver, Danielle LaVague-Manty, and Deborah Meizlish (Eds.), Using reflection and metacognition to improve student learning: Across the disciplines, across the academy. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Salvatori, Mariolina Rizzi, and Donahue, Patricia. (2004). The Elements (and pleasures) of difficulty. New York: Pearson-Longman.

Schoenfeld, Alan H. (1991). On mathematics as sense making: An informal attack on the fortunate divorce of formal and informal mathematics. In James F. Voss, David N. Perkins, and Judith W. Segal (Eds.), Informal reasoning and education (pp. 311-344). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Weimer, Maryellen. (2012, November 19). Deep learning vs. surface learning: Getting students to understand the difference. Retrieved from the Teaching Professor Blog from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/deep-learning-vs-surface-learning-getting-students-to-understand-the-difference/.

This teaching guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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by Nancy Chick Print Version Cite this guide: Chick, N. (2013). Metacognition. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/. Thinking about One's Thinking | Putting Metacognition into Practice Thinking about One's Thinking Metacognition is, put simply, thinking about one's thinking. More precisely, it refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess...

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a child’s ability to perceive and use the social-cultural “rules” of language in its natural contexts.

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LIN3716 CAP Presentation: Brianna Mati & Emma Horvath

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are based on objective measures that consider two characteristics of a text and yield a grade-level equivalent score. Readability formulas considers are vocabulary difficulty and syntactic complexity.

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The SMOG[1] formula is a recommended[2] and tested[3] method for grading the readability of written materials. The method is quick, simple to use and particularly useful for shorter materials, e.g., a study's information pamphlet or consent form. To calculate the SMOG reading level, begin with the entire written work being assessed and follow these steps:

1. Count off 10 consecutive sentences near the beginning, in the middle, and near the end of the text. If the text has fewer than 30 sentences, use as many as are provided.

2. Count the number of words containing 3 or more syllables (polysyllabic), including repetitions of the same word.

3. Look up the approximate grade level on the SMOG conversion table below:

When using the SMOG formula:

A sentence is defined as a string of words punctuated with a period, an exclamation mark, or a question mark. Consider long sentences with a semi-colon as two sentences.

Hyphenated words are considered as one word.

Numbers which are written should be counted. If written in numeric form, they should be pronounced to determine if they are polysyllabic.

Proper nouns, if polysyllabic, should be counted.

Abbreviations should be read as though unabbreviated to determine if they are polysyllabic. However, abbreviations should be avoided unless commonly known.

If the written piece being graded is shorter than 30 sentences, approach it as follows:

Count all of the polysyllabic words in the test.

Count the number of sentences.

Find the average number of polysyllabic words per sentence, i.e.:
Total # of polysyllabic words
Average = Total # of sentences

Multiply that average by the average number of sentences short of 30.

Add that figure on to the total number of polysyllabic words.

Compare the number of polysyllabic words in the SMOG conversion table.

Spanish Readability Formulas

Crawford, A.N. (March 1984). A Spanish language Fry type readability procedure: Elementary level. Los Angeles: Bilingual Education Paper Series, Evaluation Dissemination and Assessment Center, California State University, Los Angeles, 7:1-17.

Garcia, W.F. (1976). Assessing readability for Spanish as a second language: The Fry graph and cloze procedure. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Gilliam, B., Pena, S.C., and Mountain, L. (1980). "The Fry graph applied to Spanish readability." The Reading Teacher, 33:426-430.

Spaulding, S. (1956). "A Spanish Readability formula." The Modern Language Journal. 40:433-441.

Spaulding, S. (1951). "Two formulas for estimating the reading difficulty of Spanish." Educational Research Bulletin, 30:117-124

Acknowledgment
Thanks to Dr. Mary S. Neumann, DHAP, NCHSTP, for her research of SMOG and her assistance based on her wide use of the method to improve the readability of materials produced by CDC or through CDC grant support. Thanks also for her research of the Spanish language formulas which appear in the guide "Developing Effective Educational Print Materials" which she authored with the TEB, DSTDP, NCHSTP.

Readable Replacement Words/Phrases for Polysyllabic Terms Common to CDC Consent Forms

Common Polysyllabic
Terms in CDC Consents

Possible Replacement
Words/Phrases

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index:

While the SMOG Readability Formula is an easy way to determine readability, another option is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index. This test is automatically calculated on your Microsoft Word documents. After Microsoft Word completes a grammar check (under tools in the tool bar), readability statistics are displayed.

One of the formulas that is similar to the SMOG formula is the Flesch-Kincaid formula. This index computes readability based on the average number of syllables per word and the average number of words per sentence. The score in this case indicates a grade-school level. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader would understand the document. Standard writing approximately equates to the seventh- to eighth-grade level.

1. Developed by Harold C. McGraw, Office of Educational Research, Baltimore County Schools, Towson, MD.

2. Doak, Cecilia C., Leonard G. Doak, and Jane H. Root (1995). Teaching Patients with Low Literacy Skills. New York: J.B. Lippincott Co. 36-59.

3. Ibid: page 59 cites a 1979-81 test of the method conducted by Patient Learning Associates, Inc., of Potomac, Maryland, in which the SMOG formula performed exceptionally when used to grade materials presented to 291 individuals graded by accepted methods as having reading levels between the 4th and 16th grades.

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The SMOG[1] formula is a recommended[2] and tested[3] method for grading the readability of written materials. The method is quick, simple to use and particularly useful for shorter materials, e.g., a study's information pamphlet or consent form.

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the ability to read rapidly, smoothly, without many errors, and with appropriate expression.

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Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression.Fluent reading builds stamina for reading lengthy or complex texts. Reading fluency serves as a bridge between word recognition and comprehension.

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is the insight that spoken sounds can be represented by written letters.

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Concepts and Research

What is the Alphabetic Principle?

The alphabetic principle is composed of two parts:

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

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

Regular Word Reading

A regular word is a word in which all the letters represent their most common sounds. Regular words are words that can be decoded (phonologically recoded).

Because our language is alphabetic, decoding is an essential and primary means of recognizing words. There are simply too many words in the English language to rely on memorization as a primary word identification strategy (Bay Area Reading Task Force, 1997, see References).

Beginning decoding ("phonological recoding") is the ability to:

read from left to right, simple, unfamiliar regular words.

generate the sounds for all letters.

blend sounds into recognizable words.

Beginning spelling is the ability to:

translate speech to print using phonemic awareness and knowledge of letter-sounds.

Progression of Regular Word Reading

Sounding Out
(saying each individual sound out loud)

Saying the Whole Word
(saying each individual sound and pronouncing the whole word)

Sight Word Reading
(sounding out the word in your head, if necessary, and saying the whole word)

Automatic Word Reading
(reading the word without sounding it out)

Simple Regular Words - Listed According to Difficulty

Word Type

Reason for Relative Ease/Difficulty

Examples

Irregular Word Reading

Although decoding is a highly reliable strategy for a majority of words, some irregular words in the English language do not conform to word-analysis instruction (e.g., the, was, night). Those words are referred to as irregular words.

Irregular Word: A word that cannot be decoded because either (a) the sounds of the letters are unique to that word or a few words, or (b) the student has not yet learned the letter-sound correspondences in the word (Carnine, Silbert & Kame'enui, 1997; see References).

Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts, 1998; see References

In beginning reading there will be passages that contain words that are "decodable" yet the letter sound correspondences in those words may not yet be familiar to students. In this case, we also teach these words as irregular words.

To strengthen students' reliance on the decoding strategy and communicate the utility of that strategy, we recommend not introducing irregular words until students can reliably decode words at a rate of one letter-sound per second. At this point, irregular words may be introduced, but on a limited scale.

The key to irregular word recognition is not how to teach them. The teaching procedure is simple. The critical design considerations are how many to introduce and how many to review.

Advanced Word Analysis

Advanced word analysis involves being skilled at phonological processing (recognizing and producing the speech sounds in words) and having an awareness of letter-sound correspondences in words.

Advanced word analysis skills include:

Knowledge of common letter combinations and the sounds they make

Identification of VCe pattern words and their derivatives

Knolwedge of prefixes, suffixes, and roots, and how to use them to "chunk" word parts within a larger word to gain access to meaning.

Knowledge of advanced word analysis skills is essential if students are to progress in their knowledge of the alphabetic writing system and gain the ability to read fluently and broadly.

Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts, 1998; see References
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Definitions of key Alphabetic Principle terminology:

Alphabetic Awareness: Knowledge of letters of the alphabet coupled with the understanding that the alphabet represents the sounds of spoken language and the correspondence of spoken sounds to written language.

Alphabetic Understanding: Understanding that the left-to-right spellings of printed words represent their phonemes from first to last.

Continuous Sound: A sound that can be prolonged (stretched out) without distortion (e.g., r, s, a, m).

Decodable Text: Text in which the majority of words can be identified using their most common sounds. Reading materials in which a high percentage of words are linked to phonics lessons using letter-sound correspondences children have been taught. Decodable text is an intermediate step between reading words in isolation and authentic literature. These texts are used to help students focus their attention on the sound-symbol relationships they are learning. Effective decodable texts contain some sight words that allow for the development of more interesting stories.

Decoding: The process of using letter-sound correspondences to recognize words.

Grapheme: The individual letter or sequence of written symbols (e.g., a, b, c) and the multiletter units (e.g., ch, sh, th) that are used to represent a single phoneme.

Irregular Word: A word that cannot be decoded because either (a) the sounds of the letters are unique to that word or a few words, or (b) the student has not yet learned the letter-sound correspondences in the word.

Letter Combination: A group of consecutive letters that represents a particular sound(s) in the majority of words in which it appears.

Letter-Sound Correspondence: A phoneme (sound) associated with a letter.

Most Common Sound: The sound a letter most frequently makes in a short, one syllable word, (e.g., red, blast). Click here to see a list of the most common sounds of single letters.

Nonsense or Pseudoword: A word in which the letters make their most common sounds but the word has no commonly recognized meaning (e.g., tist, lof).

Orthography: A system of symbols for spelling.

Phonological Recoding: Translation of letters to sounds to words to gain lexical access to the word.

Regular Word: A word in which all the letters represent their most common sound.

Sight Word Reading: The process of reading words at a regular rate without vocalizing the individual sounds in a word (i.e., reading words the fast way).

Sounding Out: The process of saying each sound that represents a letter in a word without stopping between sounds.

Stop Sound: A sound that cannot be prolonged (stretched out) without distortion. A short, plosive sound (e.g., p, t, k).

VCe Pattern Word: Word pattern in which a single vowel is followed by a consonant, which, in turn, is followed by a final e (i.e., lake, stripe, and smile).

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Alphabetic Principle Skills

To develop the alphabetic principle across grades K-3, students need to learn two essential skills:

Letter-sound correspondences: comprised initially of individual letter sounds and progresses to more complex letter combinations.

Word reading: comprised initially of reading simple CVC words and progresses to compound words, multisyllabic words, and sight words.

Kindergarten Skills

Letter-sound correspondence: identifies and produces the most common sound associated with individual letters.

Decoding: blends the sounds of individual letters to read one-syllable words.
When presented with the word fan the student will say "/fffaaannn/, fan."

Sight word reading: Recognizes and reads words by sight (e.g., I, was, the, of).

First Grade Skills

Letter-sound and letter-combination knowledge: produces the sounds of the most common letter sounds and combinations (e.g., th, sh, ch, ing).

Decoding: sounds out and reads words with increasing automaticity, including words with consonant blends (e.g., mask, slip, play), letter combinations (e.g., fish, chin, bath), monosyllabic words, and common word parts (e.g., ing, all, ike).

Sight words: Reads the most common sight words automatically (e.g., very, some, even, there).

2nd and 3rd Grade Skills

Letter-Sound Knowledge: produces the sounds that correspond to frequently used vowel diphthongs (e.g., ou, oy, ie) and digraphs (e.g., sh, th, ea).

Decoding and Word Recognition:

applies advanced phonic elements (digraphs and diphthongs), special vowel spellings, and word endings to read words.

Reads compound words, contractions, possessives, and words with inflectional word endings.

Uses word context and order to confirm or correct word reading efforts (e.g., does it make sense?).

Reads multisyllabic words using syllabication and word structure (e.g. base/root word, prefixes, and suffixes) in word reading.

Sight word reading: increasing number of words read accurately and automatically.

What Teachers Should Know

What Teachers Should Be Able to Do

Components and definition of alphabetic principle.

The relation of phonemic awareness & decoding.

The critical stages in learning to decode words.

Features that influence the difficulty of word recognition.

Critical differences between regular and irregular words.

Terminology (alphabetic principle, orthography, grapheme, phonological recoding)

Sequence letter-sound correspondences to enhance word recognition.

Assess & diagnose decoding skills.

Select examples according to complexity of word type and letter sounds.

Explicitly teach letter sounds, blending, sight word, and connected text reading.

Give corrective feedback.

Evaluate design of materials.

(modified from Moats, 1999; see References)

What Does the Lack of Alphabetic Understanding Look Like?

Children who lack alphabetic understanding cannot:

Understand that words are composed of letters.

Associate an alphabetic character (i.e., letter) with its corresponding phoneme or sound.

Identify a word based on a sequence of letter-sound correspondences (e.g., that "mat" is made up of three letter-sound correspondences /m/ /a/ /t/).

Blend letter-sound correspondences to identify decodable words.

Use knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to identify words in which letters represent their most common sound.

Identify and manipulate letter-sound correspondences within words.

Read pseudowords (e.g., "tup", with reasonable speed).

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Alphabetic Principle Research Says:

Letter-sound knowledge is prerequisite to effective word identification. A primary difference between good and poor readers is the ability to use letter-sound correspondence to identify words (Juel, 1991; see References).

Students who acquire and apply the alphabetic principle early in their reading careers reap long-term benefits (Stanovich, 1986; see References).

Teaching students to phonologically recode words is a difficult, demanding, yet achievable goal with long-lasting effects (Liberman & Liberman, 1990; see References).

The combination of instruction in phonological awareness and letter-sounds appears to be the most favorable for successful early reading (Haskell, Foorman, & Swank, 1992; see References).

Good readers must have a strategy to phonologically recode words (Ehri, 1991; NRP, 2000; see References).

During the alphabetic phase, reading must have lots of practice phonologically recoding the same words to become familiar with spelling patterns (Ehri, 1991; see References).

Awareness of the relation between sounds and the alphabet can be taught (Liberman & Liberman, 1990; see References).

Because our language is alphabetic, decoding is an essential and primary means of recognizing words. There are simply too many words in the English language to rely on memorization as a primary word identification strategy (Bay Area Reading Task Force, 1996; see References).

The table below illustrates the important correlation between the ability to decode words and reading comprehension.
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University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning

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Alphabetic Principle: Concepts and Research

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Concepts and Research The alphabetic principle is composed of two parts: Alphabetic Understanding: Words are composed of letters that represent sounds. Phonological Recoding: Using systematic relationships between letters and phonemes (letter-sound correspondence) to retrieve the pronunciation of an unknown printed string or to spell words.

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a child’s acquisition and use of the smallest units of meaning

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The rate of Morphological development in a child may differ, there seems to be some degree in the regularity in the stages that the children go through as they acquire different morphemes such as plural and past tense. At first children may produce correct morphological words because they are mainly repeating words like a parrot. As the child begins to recognize in the input that it is receiving and tries to work out the systematic fashion. As they begin to relies they may be making morphological errors which were previously correct. In these instances children are applying a particular pattern to a word that is in fact an exception to the rule. It is likely that they produce forms that they would not have heard from their surrounding environments.

With nouns, children usually learn to use the singular form in a noun first. Both in context when the noun is singular and where it is plural. For example saying the phrases ,'one shoe two shoe and three shoe'. In places where the plural form is irregular in adult speech, the child may hear the irregular form but not recognize that the word is in it's irregular plural form. The child may use it in place of the singular or use as a variant of the singular form. For example, 'one mice or one feet'.

Roger Brown was an eminent social psychologist, best known for his studies in early linguistic development of children. In his stages he describes five stages of child language acquisition, based on the mean length in utterances (MLU), which is the number of morphemes (smallest unit of meaning) toddlers can produce.From 12 months of age to 26 months, children will be able to connect a subject with a verb and a action with an object, for example, 'dad walk or give juice'. at this age the child is also able to name a series of objects with out connectors. From 22 months of age to 26 months, children can complete subject-verb-object sentences, they are also able to use the present progressive -ing, to say 'mam cooking' for example. Prepositions in and on can also appear in the child's speech.Between 35 months of age and 40, double auxiliary verbs will appear in declarative sentences. Children will use such verbs in negative sentences too, while adding isn't, aren't, doesn't and didn't to their vocabulary. In interrogative sentences, they will be able to ask yes/no questions. Between 41 and 46 months of age, the indirect object will make its appearance in sentences. Children will start using wasn't, wouldn't, couldn't and shouldn't. Tag questions will start appear, such as "He is tall, isn't he?" Children will start using relative clauses to connect very simple sentences, while three clause declarative will appear. By now the regular third person and the irregular third person will be easily used.

Between 27 and 30 months of age, children learn how to use gonna, wanna and other embedding. Words such as don't and can't start appearing in negative sentences Children would have fully learned how to use in and on in sentences, while during this stage they will start learning how to use regular plurals, as well as irregular past, such as fell and ran.

Between the age of 31 and 34 months, children will start using the auxiliary verbs both in declarative and interrogative questions. Children will start using conjunctions such as if, so, or and but. Possessives, articles and regular past should have been used regularly by kids at this stage.

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The rate of Morphological development in a child may differ, there seems to be some degree in the regularity in the stages that the children go through as they acquire different morphemes such as plural and past tense. At first children may produce correct morphological words because they are mainly repeating words like a parrot.

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smallest unit of sound

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the repetition of initial consonant sounds used in many nursery rhymes

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the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables (such as wild and woolly, thrifty and thriving) —called also head rhyme, initial rhyme… See the full definition

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the students and the teacher discuss the story and the words as the teacher reads the story aloud

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The basics of teaching reading with an Interactive Read Aloud

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how the child learns that his or her writing system represents oral language

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a classroom that abounds with opportunities to read, write, listen, and talk

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the initial consonant or consonants

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Let's Make Words | Phonics Song for Kids | Onsets & Rimes | Jack Hartmann

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is the vowel and any consonants that follows the onset

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Rime Time!  Word Family Tutorial 19:  "ose"

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the ability to blend and segment words.

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Most kids don't need to be taught phonological awareness. They pick it up by being exposed to a rich language environment. But some kids need to learn the skills through explicit instruction and practice.

Many teachers teach phonemic awareness in kindergarten and early first grade. The best way to teach these skills is by using structured literacy instruction. This type of step-by-step instruction teaches skills in a logical order.

Kids start by rhyming and identifying beginning sounds in words. They end by learning to add, subtract, and substitute sounds to make new words.

Learn more about structured literacy .

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Most kids don't need to be taught phonological awareness. They pick it up by being exposed to a rich language environment. But some kids need to learn the skills through explicit instruction and practice. Many teachers teach phonemic awareness in kindergarten and early first grade.

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the basic phonological unit of speech

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What is a Syllable? | Open and Closed Syllables | Kids Academy

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are made when the air leaving your lungs is vibrated in the larynx but then has a clear passage from the larynx to outside your mouth.

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Baby Shark - Pinkfong Kids’ Songs & Stories

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The Vowel Family | Super Phonics | Pinkfong Songs for Children

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speech sounds that are made when the airflow is obstructed in some way in your mouth.

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Trick To Remember Vowels And Consonants | English Grammar For Kids with Elvis | #1

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rimes that share the same spellings.

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Chart of Basic Phonograms identified by Logic of English

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are the smallest meaning units into which a word can be divided.

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is placed before a root to form a word with a meaning different from that of the root.

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get students ready both cognitively and affectively to read a selection.

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is placed after a root to form a word with a different meaning or a different grammatical function.

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(ENGLISH) What is a Suffix? | #iQuestionPH

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make a word plural or indicate tense.

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alter a word’s meaning and its grammatical function.

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English Vocabulary: Derivational Suffix '-en'

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is when students read independently a wide range of text over an extended period of time to gain knowledge.

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a style of reading in which the reader pays close attention to the ideas in the text and minimizes the role prior knowledge plays—if this is possible—in the construction of meaning.

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an instructional strategy where users are required to fill in the blanks within a passage with correct words from a word bank.

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Utilizing a Cloze Activity to Promote Decoding | Literacy for Students with Cognitive Disabilities

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is whole class instruction in which teacher and students read the same text. The teacher uses the experience to build word knowledge, text structure knowledge, or model comprehension strategies.

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Language Arts

This site gives teachers some ideas for using shared reading with younger students and less skilled readers. See example ›

Science

This site offers several examples of how activities related to learning about science topics can be centered around the shared reading strategy. Downloads of several different poems are provided. See example ›

Social Studies

This site provides five examples of shared reading lessons based upon the book Map It! by Elspeth Leacock. See example ›

Shared Reading Booklists

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Shared Reading is an interactive reading experience that occurs when students join in or share the reading of a book or other text while guided and supported by a teacher. The teacher explicitly models the skills of proficient readers, including reading with fluency and expression.

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encourage students to do something with the material they have just read, to think—critically, logically, and creatively—about the information and ideas that emerge from their reading, to respond to what they have read, and sometimes to transform their thinking into actions.

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Post-reading activities help students understand texts further, through critically analyzing what they have read and these are carried out after you have implemented successfully Pre-Reading Activities and While-Reading Activities

Pre-reading. while-reading and post-reading activities make up the three important stages for reaching a reading lesson

Post or After Reading activities are helpful for several reasons:

It helps students use the newly learned words.

It promotes the use of the language in creative ways.

13 Examples of Post-Reading Activities

Remember that post-reading activities are freer activities that tend to focus mainly in two skills:

These are 13 examples of post-reading activities that you should check out.

1. Creative Writing

Ask students to choose 10-15 words from the text. You can provide categories for the words e.g. the most interesting words / the most important words. Students then write a text using the words.

This text could be a story, poem or newsreport.

2. Areas of Interest

Ask students to say which part of the text is the most important/interesting and which part is not interesting or important.

3. Creative Discussions

Prepare four or five simple questions and ask students to talk about those question for 3 minutes and after that ask one member of each pair to go and talk to another person of the group.

4. Quiz Your Classmates

This activity can help us determine how much students learn during the reading.

Ask your students to prepare 5 questions about what they read, once they have them ready, you can tell the students to make groups of 4 and then they can ask those questions to each other.

5. Finding Related News

After students have finished reading, they can browse on the internet for a new related to something they read

For example: if they read something about moral and values, they can find examples of altruism on the web and they can share that information with their classmates.

They can report the information they found orally or write some comments about it.

6. Prepare a Survey

Students can prepare a survey about the information they just read.

Using again the example of the moral and values reading, students can prepare questions such as:

1. What would you do if you found a wallet near to your house?

2. What would you do if you found a five dollars bill in the classroom?

They can prepare the survey in class and ask the survey to their classmates or they can go home and bring the results and report them during next class.

I recommend creating surveys using Google Forms or Microsoft forms so they can use their mobile devices as part of their learning.

7. Parts of the Speech

Ask students to spot the different parts of the speech from the reading, then they quiz their classmates asking questions such as:

why type of word is moral? How would you use that word in a sentence?

If you need to know more about the parts of the speech in preparation for the class. The Parts of the Speech website can help you with that.

8. Questions from Pictures

Teachers shows a collage and ask student to look at the collage carefully and how some of the pictures relate to the reading they did.

There are plenty of websites and apps that can help learners create a collage.

Using websites and apps such as the ones to create collages reduce the time the students spend on the task and integrate mobiles devices in the learning process.

9. Character Analysis

If you read a story, there must be one or two characters involved, analyze those characters and prepare a set of question that you would like to make them.

When all classmates have prepared their questions, ask them to give you their answers and then as a group try to answer the questions.

10. A Graphic organizer

(also known as a concept map or mind map) is usually a one-page form with blank areas for learners to complete with ideas and information which are connected in some way.'
How can Graphic Organizers Improve Learning?

1. can help convey large chunks of information concisely.

2. encourage strategic thinking: describing, comparing and contrasting, classifying, sequencing, identifying cause and effect,etc

3. can be used to aid reading comprehension, students can brainstorm around a topic, summarize texts and do other learning activities, such as organizing and storing vocabulary, planning research, writing projects, etc

4. are easy to use with all levels and ages

5. are non-linear and thus allow for multiple connections between ideas

#11 Questioning the Author of the Book or story

Ask learners to prepare a set of questions that they would make to the author of the book or story

#12 The End of the Story

Another post-reading activity is asking learners to change the end of the story. Changing the ending of a story to something unpredictable requires some thinking.

#13 Designing a Poster to Advertise the Book

This activity could easily linked to the use of technology in the classroom. Simply ask learners to create a poster using a tool like Piktochart or Canva

Final Thoughts

Remember that teacher must start a reading lesson with a warm-up followed by pre-reading activities and while-reading activities, finally he or she must apply some of the techniques featured in this post to end that reading successfully.

What after-reading strategies do you like to use in your classroom?

Do you have favorites that work well in your classroom?

Please share with us in the comment section below, we would love to hear your thoughts.

English Teaching Related Posts

Make sure that you check some of these posts before you go

These are some posts related to teaching listening:

These are some posts for teaching methodology:

These are some assessment related posts

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13 Examples of Post-Reading Activities - EnglishPost.org

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Post-reading activities help students understand texts further, through critically analyzing what they have read and these are carried out after you have implemented successfully Pre-Reading Activities and While-Reading Activities Pre-reading. while-reading and post-reading activities make up the three important stages for reaching a reading lesson Post or After Reading activities...

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is when the teacher works with small groups of students to develop their comprehension.

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Guided Reading | Word Work for Emergent Readers (Levels A, B and C)

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reading a sequence of texts and lessons that develop students’ skills, strategies, and knowledge.

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Basal reading instruction differs from a guided reading program in that it uses texts that are written to teach reading, as opposed to using written texts to teach reading. This type of program is sometimes referred to as a scientifically-based reading program.

Simply put, this means that the program has been specifically designed to teach skills that have been proven to be helpful in learning to read, such as phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, text comprehension (including decoding and word attack skills) and prosody.

What Basal Reading Programs Look Like

Basal readers are usually a grade-leveled series of textbooks produced by an educational publisher. They focus on teaching reading either by a code-emphasis approach or a meaning-emphasis approach.﻿﻿

A code emphasis approach relies heavily on phonemic awareness and decoding and word attack skills. These types of series will often have accompanying spelling programs, flashcards, and sentence strips to go with them.

A meaning-emphasis program, on the other hand, tends to stress the concept of "reading for understanding" and the accompanying workbooks have questions about the stories read, vocabulary lessons, and lessons encouraging students to write about what they have read.

Do Teachers Use Basal Reading?

Many teachers have moved away from using basal readers in favor of using a whole language approach, using guided reading as its core and incorporating all types of books to include language in lessons throughout the curriculum.

In response to this, many basal reading series, like McGraw-Hill's Open Court and Scott Forseman's Reading Street, have changed their textbooks to be more whole-language-friendly. The programs now have books for grades PreK to eight and include excerpts of chapter books, poems, and entire picture books.

Advantages

Basal reading programs have some advantages over other programs. A few of the more notable advantages are:

It's systematic and follows a logical sequence.

The levels progress from emergent reader to advanced reader with smooth transitions and consistency.

Teachers are provided with the tools they need to evaluate students' knowledge and progress, as well as guidance as to how to teach and extend each lesson.﻿﻿

Disadvantages

Like any packaged program, there are disadvantages to a basal reading program. In fact, some educators would argue that the things some people consider to be advantages are exactly what is wrong with such a program. That systematic learning system which distills reading a textbook can feel rigid and limited to a teacher.﻿﻿ It's designed for groups of readers, which makes it difficult to teach the gifted or self-taught reader and just as difficult to modify for the student who has learning disabilities in reading.

A Word From Verywell

While in some circles, basal reading programs may have a bad rap, the program can be useful in a classroom in which a teacher knows how to supplement the program, either by using other types of reading instruction in the classroom or by bringing in other materials to for extension.

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How the Basal Reading Instruction Program Works

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Learn about Basal Reading Instruction, which uses texts that are written to teach reading, as opposed to using written texts to teach reading.

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a process that enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal [that] would be beyond his unassisted efforts

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When you earn an education degree, you learn how to teach successfully. Part of this process is discovering that students learn in many ways. As a teacher, you strive to develop practices that help students understand and interact with new information.

Scaffolding is one such educational practice-a powerful one-that helps students retain and apply new knowledge. Scaffolding is a teaching technique that helps students acclimate to new learning. Continue reading to learn more about scaffolding in education and how to apply it as you earn your education degree.
In This Blog:
What Is Scaffolding?

Scaffolding refers to a method where teachers offer a particular kind of support to students as they learn and develop a new concept or skill. In the instructional scaffolding model, a teacher may share new information or demonstrate how to solve a problem. The teacher then gradually steps back and lets students practice on their own. It also can involve group practice.

The model of instructional scaffolding is also sometimes described as "I do. We do. You do." In other words, the teacher shows how something is done, then the class practices together and, finally, students work individually.

Benefits of Implementing Scaffolding Strategies in the Classroom

Your education degree program will introduce you to many theories of education. Among them, the term "scaffolding" was coined in the 1970s. ¹ The word itself originates from construction and refers to the temporary platform that is set up for builders to stand on while they put up new walls and floors. In education, scaffolding is a way for teachers to provide support while students master new concepts and skills.

At the beginning of the scaffolding process, the teacher provides a lot of support. That support is then removed in stages. This gradual decrease in the level of support is what constitutes the scaffolding process. Step by step, this process imparts confidence and facility with the new concept or skill.

Instructional scaffolding is tied to the work of the psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who is well known for several important contributions to educational theory. ² Vygotsky coined the term, "zone of proximal development," which is based on a student's current developmental level and potential developmental level. To help a student learn a new task or concept, the teacher targets the student's zone of proximal development and provides support that eventually tapers off as the student grows in knowledge and independence.

The Instructional Scaffolding Process

In order to present information to be scaffolded, a teacher must assess what students already know; then the teacher considers the learning objectives and what the students should learn. Finally, they can draw up a plan to advance the students from the current knowledge to mastering the learning goals.

The first steps in the instructional scaffolding process may include explaining the concept at the students' current level. The teacher can model the problem-solving process or present an approach for accomplishing a task. After this, the scaffolding begins. The teacher then supports students by:

Breaking the directions into small chunks

Talking students through the task while they complete it

Grouping students together to talk through the task and support each other

Referring to models of the task where students can gather additional information

Giving students tips and tricks while they are working

Six Specific Instructional Scaffolding Strategies

Implementing scaffolding strategies in the classroom becomes second nature to most teachers. Your education degree program is likely to introduce you to a variety of scaffolding practices. Some of these methods of scaffolding are especially fun and engaging for students. Consider these six examples:

1. Model

Teaching students how to do something by showing them how to do it can be an effective way to scaffold learning. Try to problem-solve by walking students through the steps or by talking them through the process. You can also have some students model for their classmates.

Modeling can be used at any grade level and in any subject area. For example, an elementary school teacher might model how to solve a division problem using grouping. The teacher could draw circles on the board and talk to students as they draw checkmarks in each circle to show how one number can be divided into another.

2. Use Prior Knowledge

Students are not blank slates; they come to class with knowledge of-and experience with-many different topics. Teachers who connect new learning to prior life experiences help students integrate information more quickly. Students understand and retain new information more readily when they can connect it to something they already know.

For example, high school history teachers use prior knowledge as instructional scaffolding when they ask students to connect current events to historical events.

3. Talk About It

Students need time to reflect on their learning, so it can be beneficial to give them opportunities to absorb what they have just seen before they apply the knowledge to their independent work. Sometimes this kind of reflection is facilitated by putting students in pairs or small groups to talk to each other.

Think-Pair-Share is a popular instructional scaffolding technique that can be used in all classrooms. As the name implies, students first think about the topic, then they pair up with a classmate and discuss the topic and, finally, the pair shares key details of their conversation with the class.

Socratic seminars are another scaffolding tool that work well with older students. In a Socratic seminar, students do a close read of a text and are given time to prepare their ideas about what they have read. They then respond to open-ended questions about the text. The purpose is not to debate the text, but to understand more deeply what the ideas in it represent.

4. Share Important Vocabulary

One area where students may need extra instructional scaffolding is reading. Before approaching a particularly complex text, a teacher can share specific vocabulary words or phrases that may pose challenges.

A common practice in vocabulary instruction is to assign tiers to the vocabulary. Tier-one words are basic words that most students pick up in everyday life, such as baby or clock. These words usually do not need to be a part of instruction. Tier-three words are domain-specific; that is, they are usually taught in a specific subject area and are often defined within a text, such as isthmus or parabola.

Tier-two words are where the most impactful vocabulary instruction, and this is where scaffolding can take place. These are words that appear across subject areas but are likely not used on a daily basis. Knowledge of tier-two words like coincidence or interpret can add to students' understanding of texts and question prompts. ³

5. Show What You Mean

Graphic organizers can be extremely important in instructional scaffolding. These tools help students organize their thinking about complex or interrelated pieces of information using visual aids. Graphic organizers can also guide students through a new process or task and translate abstract ideas into concrete ways of thinking.

As part of the instructional scaffolding process, teachers can use graphic organizers to support learning in all three stages-I do, we do and you do. When presenting information, teachers should introduce the graphic organizer and explain how it will be used, what will go in each section and how it can support learning. Then, the teacher models how to fill out the graphic organizer.

For example, if the learning objective is to compare and contrast two events in history, the teacher may display a Venn diagram and fill out one common attribute and one contrasting attribute. The teacher may then ask students to look through their texts and find two more examples to share with everyone. Once students feel confident in both the assignment and with the topic, they can complete their own graphic organizers that can later be used to create a presentation or write an essay.

6. Use Technology

Technology can be a wonderful tool to help simplify the scaffolding process for educators. Teachers can make playlists of lecture videos for students to watch before the class lesson, allowing students to preview the material and be ready to engage with the content in class. They can also provide links to websites that have different ways to engage with the content, such as videos, games, articles or demonstrations.

Many online curriculum programs are adaptive, meaning they can assess what a student knows and what information they need next, allowing them to follow a personalized learning path toward meeting learning objectives.

Grand Canyon University's College of Education is pleased to offer a variety of education degrees to suit your career goals, including undergraduate degrees such as a Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Education and a Bachelor of Science in Educational Studies along with master's-level degrees such as a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction. Click on Request Info at the top of your screen to learn more about your options at GCU today.
Retrieved from: 1 Simply Psychology, Bruner - Learning Theory in Education in December 2021 2 Exceptional Lives, Scaffolding in Teaching: A Simple Explanation in December 2021 3 Reading Rockets, Choosing Words to Teach in December 2021

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When you earn an education degree, you learn how to teach successfully. Part of this process is discovering that students learn in many ways. As a teacher, you strive to develop practices that help students understand and interact with new information. Scaffolding is one such educational practice-a powerful one-that helps students retain and apply new knowledge.

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include both tasks that students do themselves as they are reading and actions that you do to assist them—activities that facilitate or enhance the actual reading process.