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Morphology is the study of meaningful units of a language. Pre-fixes and suffixes are examples of morphemes that are bound, meaning they must be connected to another morpheme to form a word. The English language is morphological and phonological. This means we spell by sound and with morphemes. By teaching students morphology they will have a 1 in 3 chance of having a word part they have encountered before. I want my students o have the highest chance for success. Exposing my students to new words daily will be a fun and important strategy to build their morphological awareness. I was a struggling reader and having an emphasis on word recognition would have helped me grow as a student. Below is a link to a website that reiterates how important structured literacy teaching is for all students especially those with dyslexia.
https://dyslexiaida.org/what-is-structured-literacy/

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There are 6/7 syllable types in the English language. These include closed syllables, open syllables, VCe syllables, vowel team syllables, r-controlled syllables,  and consonant & le syllables. About 50% of English syllables are closed. Growing up, I was never taught about syllable types. This would have benefited me as a struggling reader. Learning these now, I will make sure to explicitly teach the syllable types in my classroom to all students. It will not only help their reading skills, but it will also build strong spelling skills. Below is a link to an article that describes why the teaching of syllables will be effective for all learners.
https://specialedresource.com/importance-of-syllable-types-in-reading-success

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Vowels are in every single English word and every syllable. There are 5 main vowels, a,e, i,o, and u. The letters "y" and "w" can also function as vowels. A breve is used to notate when a vowel is functioning as its short sound. The long vowel sounds are when they say their name, like in the words "acorn" and "feel". Because vowels are such a big part of the English language, it is very important to ensure our students fully understand their sounds. I remember learning a vowel song in kindergarten where we would replace the vowel sounds in the words "apples and bananas." Linked below is that song. It is a fun and memorable way to introduce or practice the different vowel sounds.
https://youtu.be/r5WLXZspD1M

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Complex consonants are letters that are combined and pronounced as a single sound. An example of this would be consonant digraphs such as s-h which together makes /sh/ and t-h which makes/th/. These can be difficult for students to understand because they have already learned the sounds each letter makes on its own and now these complex consonants create new sounds with those letters. It is also important to stress the difference between complex consonants and consonant blends, two or more consonants that blend together but can be separated into their distinct sounds. For example in the word "black." You have the b-l which keeps its own original sounds and the c-k which only makes the /k/ sound. B-l is the blend and c-k is the digraph. Linked below is a short and fun digraph song that can be played to help those musical learners with consonant digraph sounds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK8_Tvu6bJk

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Phonics is the system of phoneme-grapheme (sound-symbol) correspondences that are the basic structure of an alphabetic orthography (a writing system for representing language). It is an essential component of effective reading instruction. Decoding falls under phonics as well, and it is the ability to translate a word from print to speech using those phoneme-grapheme correspondences mentioned above. We learned that there are two approaches to phonics instruction. The first is the synthetic approach, which is direct and explicit instruction. For example, teaching letter names and the sounds those letters stand for. This approach is recommended by the Science of Reading. The second approach is the analytic approach. This is more indirect and implicit instruction. Using this method you would let the child explore similarities between words and then have a short discussion. After learning about these two approaches, I definitely want to use more explicit and direct instruction as the synthetic approach teaches. I think it is more beneficial for students and will stick with them throughout their life. Below is a link to some fun online phonics games that can be used for some fun practice!
https://www.education.com/games/phonological-awareness/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAx6ugBhCcARIsAGNmMbiDTIGYufAE1cq5tOnMDl_dgK2W-ac1A3oIWfknm2iw9r4FdPUaZ_saAijoEALw_wcB

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Phonological awareness is an overall awareness of sounds in spoken language. It is a big umbrella term that houses many other parts such as the previous post, phonemic awareness. It also includes learning about rhyming, syllables, alliteration, and onset and rime. Onset and rime were new words for me. The onset of a word is the letters before the vowel and the rime is all the letters after the vowel and including the vowel. Phonological awareness is something that we start building on from a very young age. I want to teach 1st grade so a lot of my students may struggle with some of these concepts. Above is a graphic I created and a resource linked underneath the title to help educators work with students who are struggling with some of the components of phonological awareness. Below is a link to understanding the causes of dyslexia.
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/understanding-causes-dyslexia-effective-intervention-martha-burns

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Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate phonemes (or individual sounds) in spoken words. Examples of manipulation of phonemes are segmenting, or breaking apart words, and blending, putting sounds together to make a word. This is important for students to learn because it eventually relates to reading. Phonemic awareness paired with phonics are part of our foundational standards for reading and writing. I have loved learning about this topic because of how little time you have to spend on this each day in class, but yet is is so important for students to develop. Below is a link that will take you to activities that can be used in elementary classrooms to help make building phonemic awareness more fun!
https://fcrr.org/student-center-activities

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Coming into this class, I had never heard of the "Science of Reading." I learned that it includes reading comprehension which is based on a formula of "decoding x linguistic comprehension= reading comprehension" (UFLI). The University of Florida Literacy Institute goes on to say that the science of reading is a mixture of psychology, education, linguistics, and neuroscience. Mrs. Maydew also informed us that about 1 in 5 children or about 20% of our students will have some form of dyslexia. This is something that educators are really starting to take more seriously and I am excited to see the new strategies that they come up with along the way.
Below is the link to a very informative and in depth article as to what the science of reading is and how we use it in the classroom.
https://www.reallygreatreading.com/what-is-the-science-of-reading-and-phonics