Balancing Top and Bottom:
Learner-Generated Texts for
Teaching Phonics
LESLLA 2009
Patsy Vinogradov
Hamline University,
University of Minnesota
Agenda
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Balanced Literacy
Whole-Part-Whole method
Ways to elicit student generated writing
Specific activities to teach phonics and
phonological awareness
• Q&A
Balanced Literacy Instruction
• Both bottom-up and top-down instruction
are necessary for students to achieve
literacy.
• High interest, relevant, meaningful reading
instruction should be included in
contextualized lessons.
• At the same time, nurture bottom-up
strategies like decoding and phonemic
awareness.
Whole-part-whole
Method of teaching reading that starts with a whole text (ex:
vocabulary from thematic unit or a story) then pulls out specific parts
to analyze for phonics/phonemic awareness skills, then goes back to
the text to practice in context.
Balanced Literacy with Adult
Emergent Readers
• In every lesson, keep
going up and down
the ladder.
• Remember that
phonics should only
be one small part of
a larger, meaningbased reading
curriculum.
Student-Generated Texts
• What are StudentGenerated Texts?
• Why is this a good
practice?
• Student-generated
texts are derived from
authentic learner
language (written or
oral)
Types of Student-Generated Texts
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Shared experience
Students’ newsletters
Picture stories
Responding to a visual
Using a volunteer/higher level student as a scribe
Transcribed taped conversations
Journal entries
Texts for wordless books
Photo books
Class posters
Overheard student stories
A few definitions…
• Phonological awareness: “The ability to attend to the
phonological or sound structure of language as distinct
from its meaning...It includes word awareness, syllable
awareness, rhyme awareness and phonemic
awareness.”
• Phonemic awareness: One kind of phonological
awareness. It is the “ability to focus on and manipulate
phonemes in spoken words.”
• Phonics: Teaching reading by emphasizing the
relationships between letters and sounds.
Faduma’s Story:
Coming to America
Same first letter sound
F A M I L Y
F: family, Faduma, first, for
A: am, America, apple, airplane
M: money, month, my, mother
etc.
Sort words by sounds
Somalia happy came month money
my
country
school husband
S s
C c
school
M m
came
H h
The Nine Patch
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Nine Patch
1.
2.
family
4.
3.
daughter
5.
6.
don’t
from
7.
8.
first
month
money
9.
difficult
my
Letter tiles
Dictation
Begin with first or final letter, then learners
can attempt to write the whole word.
The Lor Family
This is the Lor family. There are 6 people. The
grandmother’s name is Blia. She likes milk and
fruit salad. The father’s name is Xue. He likes to
play music and play airplane with the baby. The
mother’s name is Angela. She likes to read
books. The baby girl is Pa Nia. She is 1 year old.
The older daughter is Phyu. She likes to play in
the garden with the dog. The son is Too Aung.
He likes to play basketball. The dog’s name is
Ow Nai. The Lors are very happy.
Where’s the sound?
beginning – middle – end
/d/:
dog
old
daughter
salad
read
/m/:
milk
name
music
mother
/n/:
son
airplane
name
Manipulating sounds with
large cards
B–O–O–K → C–O–O–K → L–O–O–K
M–O–T–H–E–R → B–R–O–T–H–E–R →
F–A–T–H–E-R
Fill in the missing sounds
fa __ __ er
mo __ __ er
grandmo __ __ er
b __ by
n __ me
airpl __ ne
__ lay
__ eople
__ a Nia
Sort words by sounds/letters
M
mother
milk
music
B
books
basketball
baby
G
girl
garden
grandmother
F
father
family
fruit
Emergency!
1. It’s June. Ali has a stomachache. He says “Ouch”!
2. It’s September. Ali has a stomachache. He says “Ouch!”
Ali’s sister says, “Go to the doctor.”
3. Ali says, “No doctor. Too much money.”
4. It’s December. Ali has a very bad stomachache. He says
“Ouch! Ouch! No doctor. Too much money.”
5. It’s January. Ali is in the ambulance. He goes to the
hospital.
6. It’s February. Ali is in the hospital sleeping. He has a big
bill.
Blend the word
j – u –n
b–i–l
h–o–s–p–i–t–a–l
Circle repeated words in the story
• Where do you see the name “Ali” in the
story? Circle it.
• Where do you see the word “doctor” in the
story? Circle it.
Circle the word
1.
2.
3.
4.
Ali
bad
honey
mother
All
dad
tummy
money
Always
bill
money
Monday
Word families
• goes – toes
• ouch – couch – grouch
• bad – mad – sad – dad – had – glad
• bill – fill – hill – pill – will
• starts – parts
Same or different
bill
pill
ouch
couch
ambulance
ambulance
June
tune
she
he
December
December
says
pays
Community Garden
(Minnesota Literacy Council, Andrea Echelberger, instructor)
Minnesota Literacy Council,
St. Paul, Minnesota
HOT DAY
Today is summer.
Today is sunny.
Today is hot.
Today we are
sweating.
Today drink water.
Today wear t-shirt.
Beautiful Garden
Mr. Jerry tiller on the dirt.
Many students clean the stones and
grass.
Dirt in the pot and plant tomatoes,
chilies, cilantro, eggplants.
Put in the stakes and put in the fence.
Plant broccoli, onions, green beans,
flowers in the garden.
Water the plants everyday.
We like cucumbers, carrots, broccoli,
onions, radishes.
We feel happy.
• What kinds of phonics and phonemic
awareness items can we work on from this
text?
What ideas do you have for such
activities?
Instructor’s comments:
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“We wrote the stories as a group using the language experience approach,
and then pulled specific words out of there to work on phonics with. We
went through and practiced pulling the word apart and sounding out each of
the phonemes, and then pushing it back together to say it fluently. We
looked at words that have similar sounds and groups circled words or wrote
word lists. For a follow-up, I have alphabet tiles, and so I would say a word
and they would have to move the tiles around to spell out the word. The
higher learners were able to sound out most of it, and the lower and pre-lit
learners were doing really well with the initial onset and the final consonant
sound. I didn't create any new resources for the phonics work, we just used
the blog and the whiteboard, which made the activities much less prepintensive for me.
•
It's a lot of what we've talked about doing with phonics, but it was fun
because it was our own story. Also, I always worried about learners getting
bored with phonics and everyone in my class LOVED the activities,
especially the word tile one.”
Questions, comments?
Thank you!