Strategies to Develop Phonics Skills

This article discusses numerous strategies on how to work through the struggle of learning unknown words. It includes actual discussions that a teacher could have with a student that is working through the strategies listed. In one section of the article it even discusses how you can combine multiple strategies to help children in different ways. This article can be a helpful tool to go along with this chapter so go to the link below and check it out!

Strategies to Help Children Figure Out Words

 I chose to do two resources for this chapter.  Both of these sources offer valuable information, the first website includes strategies for teaching beginning readers. Some of these line up with strategies also found in chapter 5, but there are some that are different.  This is a small chunk of information which is why I chose a second resource.  The second website I really like because it has fun activities to do with children that help students decode words using phonics.  These activities could very easily be used in a classroom, I suggest checking these out!

Reading A to Z 

Reading Instructional Resources Database

Word Decoding and Phonics

I found this website(Reading Rockets) helpful because it tells you what the problem looks like and how to help from three perspectives: the students, the teachers, and at home. I also liked how at the bottom of the page it gives you even more links if you want more information on word decoding and phonics.

Skills Children Need to Figure Words Out

This article discusses the importance of things children need before they are ready to figure out words. This is a great resource for not only teachers but also for future parents. This article gives strategies and advice for future teachers since learning words is so critical for children. When children are beginning to learn words we want to address the appropriate strategy to them in order for them to succeed. This article reflects the topics and strategies in the book as well as some new ones that were not addressed. The article can be found HERE.

Ch.5 - Strategies to Figure Out Words

Before I even read this chapter, I flipped through all of the pages in it. Needless to say, I was a bit overwhelmed by it! The first idea that struck me was from Mrs. James’s class. Her students were studying nutrition, so she had set up a dramatic play area where the children could walk around and interact with the food items while still being able to learn about letter names and sound-symbol relationships. I enjoyed this idea because the teacher was not just writing or explaining letter names or sound-symbol relationships on a chalkboard- she was making the lesson interactive, and I think teachers sometimes forget to make it interesting like that.  “Children differ in their rates of literacy achievement; they must not be pressured into accomplishing tasks or placed on a predetermined time schedule.” I could not agree more with this statement. I know that we have all heard that numerous times, but I do not think it sinks in with everyone. Every child will be different and learn at a different pace. This will greatly affect our teaching. What do you think about this statement? Do you agree or disagree? Out of the teaching strategies for figuring out words, which ones did you find most appealing? Unappealing? Who agrees that every single one should be used? Or not used? My favorite strategy that was discussed in this chapter was using environmental print. I liked this one because it seems simple, but it proves to be successful in learning words, sounds, and sights. “When very young children associate the McDonald’s logo with the word McDonald’s and try to read it, they are learning that a group of letters makes up a word that can be read.” I believe it is important for children to learn this way because it is all about their surroundings and senses. I believe that once they learn 

the words, they can associate those words with other things around them. For those of you participating in the child study project, which assessments have you done so far? Which ones will you choose to do? What have your experiences been like so far with this project?

Figuring Out Words

Environment print and learning the alphabet are two areas I am intrigued by. When thinking about emergent development of young children, I do not think as parents and teachers we realize the different symbols our children are exposed to so often. The main example we usually see in text, is how students recognize the word McDonald’s because of its logo. Our text gives a quote “Parents can make children aware of environmental print from the first year of life.” When I think about this and then think about how in the last chapter we learn a baby is programmed to listen to and learn the language they have heard by the first year of his/her life I realize first year of life is a big deal and very crucial to development. What do you guys think are some environmental prints a child recognizes at a young age? Do you think the environmental print they recognize at such a young age has an impact later in life?

The most eye opening experience was in class when we were “learning to read.” I NEVER knew the importance of knowing the alphabet until that day; I guess I just have taken the knowledge of knowing letters for granted all these years. It brought back some serious anxiety, now I am older and know how process that anxiety it makes me feel so sorry for those children who experience it everyday in school. I am curious to know what you guys thought during that lesson in class? This brings me to the section in the book about learning the alphabet. Here is a quote from our text, “It is not necessary to be able to identify and name the letters of the alphabet in order to develop an initial sight-reading vocabulary.” When it came to learning to read those symbols in class, how do you think this quote applies?

I am a huge supporter of learning through play. I fully believe when children play they make experiences meaningful to them which results in learning. I like how our text has a whole paragraph on how children explore, play, and then identify with letters. They offer many suggestions such as finger painting, shaping out of clay and their bodies, and using food to associate with letters. I was wondering if anyone has other ideas where children can learn and begin to identify letters through play?

Beginning Literacy

"Becoming literate is a process that begins at birth and continues throughout life." I really like this quote because it is so very true. No one is so literate that they can not continue to learn and expand their knowledge.

This chapter seemed to repeat and repeat itself and I actually had a time reading it :( But I did find a number of things that I found interesting. That children learn that print has functions as a first step in reading and writing and the three developmental levels in word recognition I was interested in.

After children learn print has functions, they become interested in forms of print, and then conventions of print.  I've seen this but didn't realize that there was a pattern; and that because a child can name 10 letters today and only 6 the next doesn't really mean a lot. They will generally take a step forward and one back.

The "Three developmental levels" again had known, just didn't know it had an official name. First identify words through context; use letter-sound cues, and finally rely on sounding out words. To me it all goes back to learning phonics.

This chapter was (I felt) very heavy in phonics and the pieces of it. How important is phonics and why should we bother trying to teach it? Very important and children should learn phonics to help decode words along with learning sight words. There are many phonics programs out there and my favorite is "Sing, Spell, Read, and Write" by Pearson. It incorporates music, letter sounds, vowel sounds, and blends together. We still sing some of the songs and we haven't used the program in at 12/13 years. 

One of the classroom ideas that I'd like to incorporate is the "Very Own Word" box. By doing this children will learn their favorite words by sight and it increases not only their reading vocabulary but their classmates as well when they talk about them to each other.

What idea(s) did you like or dislike? Planning to incorporate any in your classroom?

Figuring Out Words

Chapter 5 discusses how children "figure out words." According to the author, children learn words in three steps. These steps are achieved by children in no particular order, because it all depends on the individual child. One step that children learn is that print has functions. Functions refer to the meaning that goes along with words, like family member's names and names of fast food restaurants. Next, children become interested in forms of print, like the details that go into letters and sounds that form words. Lastly, children learn the conventions of print, which is the process of reading from left to right, and taking note of punctuation when reading. Have any of you had experience with young children learning to read for the first time? Have you noticed any of these steps being learned with the child you observed?

Before today, I did not think much about the ways my younger cousin was learning to read, but now I am able to recognize one of the steps that she took. A few years ago, I would listen to my cousin Ava read picture books on my lap. She was not at the point of reading the words yet, so she just made up words based on the pictures on each page. I would find her it funny, and correct her to help her learn the actual word. Now, I realize that Ava was just learning the functions of words! She was using her resources by trying to figure out what the words were saying about each picture. I think it is very important to acknowledge these steps that children take when learning to speak and read, because they are very meaningful to their language development. Although it can be difficult for adults to recognize the significance of a child's reading habits, every steps towards reading that a child takes should be valued.

Going along with this is the use of environmental print when children are first learning words. Environmental print refers to children using their surroundings to develop their vocabulary. Children as young as two years old can learn the names of road signs, restaurants, and stores just by associating them with a sign or logo. When followed by praise, the ability of a child to read this way gives them a sense of accomplishment. In the classroom, environmental print can be providing by labeling things around the room that are important. As the year progresses, you could add more labels to further your students' vocabulary even more.

Overall, it is very important to address the different and unusual ways that children learn to read words. What are other ways that you think children can learn words besides through their environment?

It's More Than Just Print

In chapter 5 there is a lot of new information that is covered. It focuses on strategies to help children learn about print in direct, meaningful and functional ways. Which seems to be a common theme in this textbook. Making connections to a child’s experiences helps make new information like phonics, which involves learning letter sounds and combination of letter sounds more meaningful to them.  In my English 311 class we are also learning how the goal of language processes is making meaning. I think that as teachers it is our job to draw connections and interests from our students lives and incorporate these things so that when they are reading, writing, or learning about another subjects they can make meaning out of it.

Teaching a child to read is not an easy task and there are many word-study skills and standards that need to be covered. I also noticed quickly how this chapter also relates a lot to the reading horizons program that we have been working on. It talks about blends, digraphs, consonants, vowels and other phonics aspects.  Combining what we have learned in reading horizon with a combined analytic-synthetic lesson I think would be beneficial to students.

If I were a parent I would want my child to go into school being as prepared as possible and the book mentions things like pointing out words in the environment, encouraging children to write in their own way, and seeing how print is tracked from left to right across the page are all things that parents as well as teachers can do to help children learn about print. How important do you think these parent involvement activities as well as other mentioned in this chapter really are for children? I know that all throughout college I have learned that parent involvement is very important and is more likely to succeed academically.

I was a little surprised that physical development (large motor development and fine motor development) played a roll in reading readiness and literacy development. For me when I think about reading I often forget the many precursors that must come before picking up a book or looking at letters. What are your thoughts on this?

The section about using environmental print in particular stood out to me. In todays world if you are not able to recognize the various prints that surround us, you will have trouble functioning in the world. It is impossible to walk outside or be driving on the highway without seeing some sort of sign or visual representation that producers expect you to understand. And if you cannot pick up details to help you understand these billboards, magazines, posters, road signs, food labels, and logos then you probably did not have a teacher that explained the many different ways that you can thinks about these images and what they are portraying by looking at the picture as well as looking at the print. Tying back into parental involvement, parents can help their children by pointing out these environmental prints even from the first year of their child’s life!

Check This Out!

Badass Teachers Association was created to give voice to every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality through education. BAT members refuse to accept assessments, tests and evaluations created and imposed by corporate driven entities that have contempt for authentic teaching and learning.

Check out their blog here!

Enhancing the Language Development of Young Children

This article reminds me of the chapter of the book.  It talks about the different theorists and theories. It even questions if there are steps to language acquisition.  I really liked this article because it gives different view points than what the book gives.  It also gives more references at the end of the article to take a look at, which I did and they were great too.

How Children Learn Language

I found the portion of this chapter that talked about the ways that humans initially learn to speak the english language very interesting. I have a niece who has began the beginning stages of speaking. She babbles and can say "ma ma ma", and " da da da". She can also apparently say "no" now. So, I searched for a resource that explained the process in simpler terms with general summaries. I found a three minute video by a Harvard professor that really sums up this portion of the chapter.

Assistive Technology

I chose to post this resource to demonstrate that there are many resources out there to assist in the language development of students. Using some technology like the ones presented on this website could really make differentiating instruction easier for the teachers and more enjoyable for the students. With most classrooms using iPads on a regular basis I think these types of resources will become more and more common.

Helping ELLs

https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2013/10/25/strategies-for-ell-instruction/

This chapter really got me thinking about the best ways to help English Language Learners progress in the classroom. I came across this website with an instructional video and steps to provide a positive learning environment for ELL students. I really enjoyed how knowledgeable this article was and i could see myself using these steps in my classroom in order to support growth and learning for all students.

Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development

After reading about some of the interesting techniques used in encouraging language development for children, I wanted to look into further activities that both parents and teachers could do to promote correct speech.  This resource gives a great list of various activities that can be done for the different ages of children. I particularly liked how the author gives an in depth explanation, and organizes the information very well. I hope you all find this as helpful as I did!

http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/Parent-Stim-Activities.htm

Behaviorist theory

While reading chapter 4 the idea that the language that you learn as a child can affect the way that you talk and interact as an adult. This whole thought really gets my mind thinking about the things that we as teachers need to present and teach them. The things that we are teaching the student about language can either help them in the long run or really hurt them. This really makes me kind of nervous because I want all of my students to have success and I want all of my students to have a fair chance. I don't know what you all think but this makes me pretty nervous.

Another part of the chapter that really stood out to me was the behaviorist theory. On page 98 of the book Skinner defined language as the observed and produced speech that occurs in the interaction of speaker and listener. Also on page 98 Skinner defines thinking as the internal process of language; both language and thought are initiated through interactions in the environment, such as those between parent and child. The reason why I though this was so interesting was the thought of language and thinking. Put yourself in one of your young students shoes and you are just starting to learn about reading and new vocabulary words. These students really have to take their time to think about what they are going to say, unlike adults sometimes we say things before we think about saying them. To understand language students have to be able to think and process what is being said to them. children learn language through imitation but they really don't start applying language to their lives until they think about what is being said and understand what they are actually saying.

The behaviorist theory also states that we should give our children positive reinforcement. I grew up in a very positive environment growing up. Whether it was sports or academics my parents were always very positive. i did have some coaches and teachers that were not as positive as my parents and i will be the first to tell you that my experiences with negative people never made me a better student or made me a better ball player to be honest I think i became worse. So what I'm trying to get at is we need to be positive towards our students and they will more likely be successful than if we are negative to them. In what ways are you going to make your classroom a positive environment and in what ways are you going to make your students lives a little better each day they step into the classroom?

Language Development Through The Years

I found chapter four to be very informational. It was interesting reading about exactly what children know at certain ages and how their language grows in their early years of life. One quote from the introduction that I liked was, “Children do not learn language passively; they actually construct – or reconstruct – language as they learn.” From the moment that we are born, we are already surrounded by oral language and reading through the different theories I seemed to agree with most of them.

            I liked how in the behaviorist theory Skinner talked about thinking as the internal process of language; both language and thought are initiated through interactions in the environment, such as those between a parent and a child. I believe that is a good way at looking at the development of language. The Nativist theory was a bit different. They believe that language develops innately. I am not sure if I believe that children can figure out how language works without the practice, reinforcement, or modeling. I can see however why they might think that the ability of language is innate to humans, even though I think that to really grasp language and develop at a good pace one needs the practice, modeling, and reinforcement.

            One thing that popped into my head when reading about the Nativist theory was the fact that sometime twins have their own language when they are very young. Many people have probably seen a viral video of twins seeming like they are talking gibberish but look like they are having a full on conversation. Apparently when my brother and I were younger we did. He started talking a bit later than I did and sometimes I would translate for him so that my parents understood what he wanted or was trying to say. This is somewhat a Nativist idea. We had our own language. It wasn’t the language that everyone else spoke but we did develop some kind of language on our own. This just interests me. I wonder how this happens with twins or even siblings sometimes. Does this confirm that the Nativist theory is correct in a way? 

            On another note, when reading about language development when we are much younger it is crazy how fast it can develop at that age. Age 2 to 3 is the most drastic in terms of language. I also saw how socioeconomic status could affect one’s vocabulary. The book states that children on public assistance have a vocabulary of about 500 words at age 3 compared to those who are in working-class families having a vocabulary of 700 words, and then compared to those from homes with parents who are professionals have 1,100 words in their vocabulary. That is quite a big difference. How as teachers could we help these kids who might not start off with a big vocabulary because of their families SES?

The Importance of Language Development

          Chapter four of our text was full of helpful and informative information on language acquisition from birth through elementary school. On page 103 of the text there is a list of ten things that caregivers should do to encourage a child’s use of language between birth and age three. These ten things are common sense to the majority but while reading this section myself, I got to thinking about the students who do not get these ten things. Many students hopefully at least get a few out of the ten but what about those students that get only one or two? Are those children already being left in the dust? Since the list is suggested for birth to age three, I personally believe the student has plenty of time to receive these ten things later in life but is that going to be as effective for their language development if it is delayed?

          The list of ten things on page 103 also got me thinking about technology.  Many of the activities on the list are now just a click or a swipe away for children, and many households have electronic tablets that children are proficient at using. Would technology make it easier or harder for caregivers to provide all ten of the suggested activities? If technology were to make life easier for caregivers would that really be a good thing for students? So many of today’s students get lost behind computer screens for hours, I would not want to encourage caregivers to just hand a student a computer and leave them alone to engage in all the activities on the list by themselves. It is important that caregivers are involved in language acquisition and part of that involvement is engaging with the child one on one to check the child’s progress.

           On pages 115 and 116 the author talks about how to incorporate language activities in other subject areas in the classroom that I thought to be very interesting and something I had not considered. She provides examples of learning centers to have in the classroom and what to include in each center, as well as examples of thematic units that all encourage the use of language. I encourage anyone who may have skimmed these pages to go back and read through her suggestions because they are all very basic ideas but they get students talking! On page 115 for example she talks about how in her classroom she had a pet gerbil for science but the students would often gather around the cage during downtime and they were so entertaining that they would really generate talk among students. I thought this section was so interesting because it lists so many simple ideas that some teachers may think of as possible distractions but are actually really great ways to encourage and stimulate the use of language between students rather than just having students reading and writing.

          Language can be a complex and daunting subject but chapter four provides many helpful activities and insights on how language is developed to help teachers better understand future students’ language needs.

Language development and theories

The first thing to really interest me while reading this chapter was when the author mentioned that when children are as young as 3, their language development can determine their success in reading in the eleventh grade, and how if students are behind they are more likely to drop out. Being able to determine success of students when they are that young seems crazy to me. How did you all feel about that? It shows how very important it is for young children to learn language development early on, and for us to have classrooms that enrich their language development. Page 116 of our textbook has lists center material for early childhood language development, but I think that maybe having some of these items in other classrooms would be beneficial and encourage curiosity and language development.

            While reading the textbook, I found myself agreeing in a way with many of the theories, but not so much with the Nativist theory. The Nativist theory states that children learn language internally and don’t need any sort of practice or modeling. I really don’t think I agree with this. It’d be like in Judo class, when you’re watching someone do a throw, and you’re listening to them as they explain it, but when it’s your turn, you have trouble because you’ve never done it, and you need to practice. I think that children really do need, models, and practice and reinforcement. How far would a child’s language develop if every time the child said “bear” you gave him his teddy bear, but there wasn’t any other interaction or modeling for better language structure? The child whose parent interacts might learn more complex language quicker. So I agree more with the behaviorist theory, Vygotsky’s theory, and Piaget’s theory. I like the behaviorist theory because I believe that modeling and practice is very important in learning a language, and Vygotsky’s, because a main component in his theory is that that adults must interact and support children as they begin learning language. Piaget’s theory is that children learn through their senses, which is important. Through experiences, and interacting with adults who are modeling correct language, I believe that students can thrive in learning language. What did you all think about the theories? Was there any one that you were drawn to?