Using the Word Wall to Teach High Frequency Words

The different ways that we spell sounds are influenced by: (1)Predictable and invariant sound-spelling relationships (2)The position (beginning, middle, or end) of a sound in a word (3)What surrounds the sound (4)Location of a sound within a syllable (5)Common English conventions (6)Language of origin (7)Morphological structure (the way in which English spelling often preserves and represents the meaning of a word part)4

In this graphic, you see the vowels in four groups: the smiles (the /ē/ in speak), open sounds (the /aw/ in saw), rounds (the /ō/ in rope), and schwa (the /uh/ in attend).

To assist these students, show them the proper articulation of the different sounds. Demonstrate the use of the diaphragm in /ch/ to create a puff of air (have students feel this by placing their hands in front of their mouths) and contrast this with the stream of air produced for /sh/.

As a teacher of beginning and/or struggling readers, you must help students learn and remember sounds by describing and drawing attention to what is happening in their mouths when they produce phonemes. Here are some suggestions for teaching new sounds or improving articulation:

To feel the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds, put your fingers against your vocal chords and say /b/ and /p/. You should feel the vibration for /b/ but not /p/.

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

To understand phonetics, it is necessary to learn a little about anatomy

literacy is a complex web of skills and knowledge related to engaging and expressing ideas—a web that, as mentioned in the introduction, serves as a foundation for all learning

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

While they should have learned all of the sound-symbol correspondences in the first grade, many children will need review of the most complex of these.

The content of word analysis lessons varies significantly between grade levels

Beginning readers should be able to read easily 90 percent or more of the words in a story, and after practice should be able to do so quickly, accurately, and effortlessly.

The most effective way to teach students to be strategic readers is to model the use of strategies while reading,

An excellent literacy teacher invests time learning what his or her students should be able to do by the end of the year so that the teacher can plan backwards to create a sequence of steps over the course of the year.

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

By the end of the year, Kindergarteners should have a solid foundation in book/print awareness. By the end of the year, Kindergarteners should be comfortable with and have a positive association with the fundamental concept that we learn from print.

These students write consistently in paragraph form and are able to combine information from a number of sources to produce written products that are longer, more organized, and more descriptive. They are able to apply rules of grammar and mechanics in writing. Third grade students learn to write in cursive.

In first grade, all of the pieces of literacy that have been practiced in Kindergarten begin to come together. Children become, in a real sense, independent readers.

To teach literacy as effectively and efficiently as you can, you need to know what your students already know so that you can build on that knowledge, and avoid reviewing material your students have already mastered so that you can fill in any gaps that may be present in students’ literacy development. Diagnostics are initial assessments that determine students’ current literacy abilities, providing you with a starting line from which to measure students’ growth over time.

In addition to standardized tests, there are many other assessment tools that can help fill the gaps left by incomplete standardized test data. Here we will briefly introduce you to some of these types of assessments. Among the most useful forms of diagnostics that you might encounter are:

use several diagnostics in combination with each other—principally, the SRI (Scholastic Reading Inventory), a computerized test that gives a quick-and-dirty look at the approximate level of each student, and the QRI (Qualitative Reading Inventory). The QRI gives an amazingly in-depth look at each student’s “level” with varying levels of texts and knowledge backgrounds. It takes a while to administer (about 45 minutes a kid) but is the BEST use of time. It gives a wealth of information: students’ issues with fluency, phonics, comprehension, texts of different genres. Once I administer the QRI and know where all the students are at, I form guided reading groups and make instructional plans for each student for the year.