Phonological and phonemic awareness can be visualized along a continuum of increasingly discrete analysis. You can see this in the diagram to the left.

One of the first tasks of school is to show students how books work. Throughout Kindergarten and first grade, teachers constantly review the elements of books and the concepts of print.

Morphological Structure

Past Tense Pronunciation

Vowel-Consonant-E

Short Vowel-Consonant Patterns

Consonant Borrowers

Long and Short Vowels

r-controlled vowels

diphthongs.

Understanding the Vowels

teaching new sounds or improving articulation

consonant blends(two phonemes) or consonant clusters(three phonemes).

The liquidsare “the most problematic speech sounds for English articulation, reading, and spelling...These are among the later developing sounds in the speech production of many children and the most difficult to teach in speech therapy because they ‘float’ in the mouth. The liquids have no clear beginning or end point in articulation.

glidesdiffer from all the above consonants in that they do not really obstruct the airflow in their production. In this sense, the glides have vowel-like qualities. The first three phonemes below are referred to as “wind sounds” because of the puff of air articulated for them

nasalsinclude consonant phonemes that are produced by exhaling all of the air through your nose. All of the nasal sounds are voiced; you can feel the vibration of the vocal chords through the nose if you hold a finger beside your nose

The Groupsof phonemes cannot be as easily distinguished as the pairs, but there is a clear logic to their grouping

There is only one affricative pair. This sound is produced when a stop is followed by a fricative sound

ThePairsof consonants are two consonants that are produced the same way, except that one is voiced and the other is not

consonants and vowels

Guiding Principles

Assess and Track Students’ Fluency Over Time

Poetry Readings

Reader’s Theater

Special education teachers who pull students out of their general education classes for small group instruction might consider cooperating with the classr oom teacher to make reader’s theater work

One way to engage all of your students in repeated reading is by allowing students to read for an audience, a task that requires them to practice for a real performance

Tape-Recorded Reading

Buddy Reading

Echo Reading

Choral Reading

Repeated reading is one of the most effective ways to offer lots of practice to students; this instructional method has been proven to help students recall information from their reading, improve their comprehension, increase their reading rates, and change from word-by-word reading to reading with meaningful phrases.

provide students with brief, daily doses of practice in reading these high-frequency wo rds in phrases.

Modeling fluent reading aloud for your students is a method you’ll use everyday to help build your students’ fluency skills.

Many struggling readers beli eve that what defines good readers is th eir ability to read all of the words on a page without making a mistake.

Consider how a fluent reader raises his voice slightly when readin g a question, while the less fluent reader reads each word with the same tone and emphasis, seeming to ignore the question mark at the end of a sentence.

“Andrew Marcus wanted freckles Nicky Lane had freckles he had about a million of them they covered his face his ears and the back of his neck.”

Description of Production

English has 25 consonants that are separated into tw o broad types according to how the speech organs are used in their production; these categories are the pairs and the groups .

We can pronounce most phonemes only when we exhale.

You may wish to watch your mouth in a mirror as you pronounce sounds

our general knowledge of English will not suffice. To be precise in our assistance of students, we must have real knowledge of the construction of English speech and print.

1. Book and print awareness 2. Phonological and phonemic awareness 3. Phonics and the alphabetic principle 4. Word and structural analysis

nternalizing your state’s reading, writing, and oral communication standards will be critical to you as you set goals for wh at your students will be able to do at the end of their year in your classroom.

Independent Level

Running records are one way to determine whether your students are reading materials that are in an appropriate range of difficulty for them

Among the most useful forms of diagnostics that you might encounter are

Having this di agnostic information will also serve as a valuable baseline to which you can compare your students’ progress later in the year

Initial Diagnoses: Determ ining the Starting Line

you need to know what your students already know so that you can build on that knowledge, and avoid reviewing ma terial your students have already mastere

Third grade students learn to write in cursive.

19 First Grade—Major Steps to ward Independent Reading

first graders should read 60-70 words per minute.

To this end, the teaching of both phonological and phonemic awareness and phonics and the alphabetic principle are very important in Kindergarten. In the phonological awareness arena, students should begin to understand that sentences are made up of words, and that words contain both syllables and individual sounds, or phonemes. They should be able to hear and produce rhyming and alliteration, as well as begin to segment and blend simple words (to break the word cat down into the sounds /c... a... t/ and put those sounds together again to say cat ). Students should also be able to recognize, name, and easily write the individual letters of the alphabet (both capital and lowercase), and know their corresponding sounds. They should begin to use this letter/sound knowledge, attaching letters to the beginning and ending sounds of spoken words. For instance, when they attempt to write dog , they should be able to hear that the word begins with /d/ and ends with /g/ and use the letters d and g to spell the word.

having a strong foundation in literacy standards across grade leve ls will also make you a much stronger teacher in your own grade level.

even those of you who think you know your placement may find changes waiting for you when you reach your region.

such as: reading from left to right, using context clues to learn new vocabulary, or writing a topic sentence

Writing Workshops (described in chapter seven) are, for example, a staple of the elementary classroom

The child first attempts to use the letters he or she is learning to label pictures independently

Before reading, you should develop your students’ prior knowledge by allowing them to share their knowledge of the subject and giving the class important information they will require to make sense of the text

Vocabulary development plays a central role in reading comprehension

Read aloud to children daily

students who can read with accuracy and fluency are better able to comprehend the material because they are spending the majority of their time thin king about the text and not deciphering the words

First grade students will learn compounds, simple contractio ns, and some word endings. Second grade students will expand on these skills and learn some simple prefixes and suffi xes as well. Our second gr aders will learn syllable types in their phonics lessons and can combine the use of syllable types and word analysis to decode longer words. Third graders will lear n to use meaningful word parts not only for the purpose of decoding, but increasingly, to learn word meanings. Fourth an d fifth graders will use Greek and Latin roots to decode words and learn their meanings

comprehend it easily if they understand the meaning of each part.

many children will need review of the most complex of these

For example, the word squished is composed of the phonem es /s/, /k/, /w/, /i/, /sh/, and /t/.

Typically, Kindergarteners learn the alphabet letters and shapes (both capital and lowercase) in their alphabet order

In English, we rarely pause between our spoken words, except for emphasis. Cons equently, it is necessary for children to learn consciously that common phrases like “thank you very much” are composed of four individual words

The presence of students’ names in several locations around the elementary classroom (on classroom management charts, reading group lists, cla ssroom job boards, etc.) is of great importance as an instructional tool for new readers.

“Should I start at the top of the board or the bottom?”

our abil ity to read fluently—with speed, accuracy, and expression—is dependent on our ability to read non-decodable words on “sight,” to decode

Chapter One