The Common Core
Reading Foundational Skills:
Petra Moran and Rochelle Berndt
Baldwin Wallace University
October 25, 2012
OCTEO Fall Conference
Take a Moment…
Reflect on how you currently teach phonics (and/or
spelling), and how you have taught phonics in the past.
 What do you think are the “best practices” in teaching
phonics to novice and striving readers?
 How did you learn phonics?
 Was it effective? Enjoyable?
Some Important Definitions
 Phonological Awareness - the awareness that spoken
language can be broken into smaller units such as words,
syllables, onsets, rimes, and phonemes.
 Phonemic Awareness – the ability to identify and
manipulate individual units of sound.
 Phonics – an instructional approach that focuses on the
systematic relationship between letters and sounds and
how sounds map to letters to form words.
 Orthography – the spelling system of a language.
What are the Common Core State Standards
(College and Career Readiness Standards)?
 Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in
History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical
Subjects
 Developed by the Council of Chief State School
Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors
Association (NGA)
 Ambitious
The Standards Are:
1. Research and evidence-based
2. Aligned with college and work expectations
3. Rigorous
4. Internationally benchmarked
“A vision of what it means to be
literate…”
“As a natural outgrowth of meeting the charge to define college and career
readiness, the Standards also lay out a vision of what it means to be a literate
person in the twenty-first century. Indeed, the skills and understandings students
are expected to demonstrate have wide applicability outside the classroom or
workplace. Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close,
attentive reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex
works of literature. They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to
pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in
print and digitally.
“A vision of what it means to be
literate…”
They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality
literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and
broadens worldviews. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and
use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible
citizenship in a democratic republic. In short, students who meet the Standards
develop the skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening that are the
foundation for any creative and purposeful expression in language.”
(p.3, Introduction, CCSS)
A Shift in Instruction
“It was just a few years ago when No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
required educators to focus on the expectations of the National
Reading Panel. Back then, the whole world of comprehension
was compacted into one small item in a list of five priorities –
phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and
comprehension-with all of comprehension being equal in
emphasis to phonemic awareness….”
A Shift in Instruction
“…One glance at the Common Core State Standards’
expectations reveals that today’s document places a much
stronger emphasis on higher-level comprehension skills”
(p. 9)
–From Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement by Lucy
Calkins, Mary Erenworth and Christopher Lehman (2012)
Reading Foundational Skills
 Please take a moment to read pages 15-17 from the
CCSS/CCRS and pages 17-22 in Appendix A.
 Turn and Talk: What do you notice about how the
CCSS/CCRS addresses the order and depth of
phonemic and orthographic knowledge?
A Change in Instruction
Though the CCSS/ CCRS does not dictate how to teach,
the content contained within (and the Bibliography in
Appendix A) seemed to suggest to us that many of the
“explicit” methods for teaching phonics under Reading
First might be outdated.
A Sample Reading First
Phonics Lesson
Phonics Lessons –
West Virginia Reading First
Bibliography – Appendix A
Reading Foundational Skills
• Balmuth, M. (1992). The roots of phonics: A historical introduction. Baltimore, MD:
York Press.
• Bryson, B. (1990). The mother tongue: English and how it got that way. New York,
NY: Avon Books.
• Ganske, K. (2000). Word journeys. New York, NY: Guilford.
• Hanna, P. R., Hanna, S., Hodges, R. E., & Rudorf, E. H. (1966). Phonemegrapheme correspondences as cues to spelling improvement. Washington, DC:
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
• Henry, M. (2003). Unlocking literacy: Effective decoding and spelling instruction.
Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
• Moats, L. C. (2000). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers. Baltimore,
MD: Brookes.
• Moats, L. C. (2008). Spellography for teachers: How English spelling works. (LETRS
Module 3). Longmont, CO: Sopris West.
• Venezky, R. (2001). The American way of spelling. New York, NY: Guilford.
So What to Do?
The inclusion of Kathy Ganske’s Word Journeys as well
as the inclusion of morphemic knowledge in English
orthography seemed to suggest that the scope of reading
foundational skills went well beyond the various vowel
patterns marked the end of phonics
instruction (i.e. workbooks) of the past.
Early Expectations
• Please look at the following slide, taken from the ODE
website.
• Notice what students are to have mastered at the end
of grade 3, then grade 5.
• Turn and Talk: Do you think these expectations are
developmentally appropriate?
Reading Foundational Skills: Phonics and Word Recognition
Choose a strand and trace the progressions of K-CCR. Pay particular attention to your grade level. Consider the following:
–
What specific skills are needed to meet these standard statements?
–
What other strands should be incorporated to help support this shift?
–
What do these standard statements look like in your classroom?
–
In the standard statements that remain the same from grade to grade, how do you plan to increase the complexity?
CCR Anchor Standard 3: n/a
Grade
Grade-Specific Standard
Kindergarten
Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary
or many of the most frequent sound for each consonant.
b. Associate the long and short sounds with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
c. Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).
d. Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.
Grade 1
Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs.
b. Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words.
c. Know final -e and common vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds.
d. Use knowledge that every syllable must have a vowel sound to determine the number of syllables in a
printed word.
e. Decode two-syllable words following basic patterns by breaking the words into syllables.
f. Read words with inflectional endings.
g. Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.
Grade 2
Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Distinguish long and short vowels when reading regularly spelled one-syllable words.
b. Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams.
c. Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels.
d. Decode words with common prefixes and suffixes.
e. Identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences.
f. Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.
Grade 3
Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Identify and know the meaning of the most common prefixes and derivational suffixes.
b. Decode words with common Latin suffixes.
c. Decode multisyllable words.
d. Read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.
Grade 4
Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Use combined knowledge of all letter-sound correspondences, syllabication patterns, and morphology
(e.g., roots and affixes) to read accurately unfamiliar multisyllabic words in context and out of context.
Grade 5
Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Use combined knowledge of all letter-sound correspondences, syllabication patterns, and morphology
(e.g., roots and affixes) to read accurately unfamiliar multisyllabic words in context and out of context.
Progressions and Practice
The Teacher as Expert
 Teachers themselves must have a better understanding
of the English language.
 Teachers must know what precedes and follows the
scope and sequence of phonics and spelling instruction
at their grade levels in order to differentiate instruction.
 Older students still need to engage in the
study of words (morphemes,
derivational suffixes).
Teacher Knowledge Matters
“The most powerful feature of schools, in terms of
developing children as readers and writers, is the quality of
classroom instruction…No school with mediocre
classroom instruction ever became effective just by adding
a high-quality remedial or resource room program, by
adding an after-school or summer program, or by
purchasing a new reading series.”
(p.142, Richard Allington, What Really Matters for Struggling Readers)
Student Understanding Matters
“Professional teaching requires much more than
presentation or coverage of material…
[Teachers] emphasis …is not simply on
covering material but rather on…[helping
students] develop a deep understanding of that
content.”
(p. 216, Du Four and Eaker, Professional Learning Communities at Work)
Philosophical Shift - Compare
A teacher who responds
to a student who has
failed to learn by asking,
"What is wrong with this
student?”
A teacher who responds
to a student who has
failed to learn by asking,
“How could the content
or instructional strategies
be modified so that the
student can learn what
was intended?”
So, Is There ONE Right Way to
Teach Phonics (and Word
Recognition)?
Synthetic Approach
 Synthetic – letter by letter, each letter is pronounced
& individual sounds are blended together
 Texts students read are dictated by words they can
decode
 Example: Bob Books
 http://www.bobbooks.com/bob_books_set_2.php
 Simple, predictable (yet abnormal) texts
 Student writing is typically limited to words they can
read and spell correctly
Analytic Approach
 Analytic – teaches rules (like an e on the end of the
word makes a vowel long) that are typically filled with
confusing jargon (i.e., schwa)
 Most common approach found in basal readers
 Students are usually given the freedom to read and
write texts that are not limited to decodable or known
words
Analogic Approach
 The teaching of phonics patterns
 Children use the patterns in known words to figure
out unknown words (word families)
 “If I know how to spell hat, how can that help me to
write about large, black rodents?”
What Can You Do in the Interim?
(In our humble opinion…)
Word Study
 In the time of the CCSS (or CCRS) and RTI, a
workbook or basal approach will not meet the needs
of all students.
 One size fits all scripted instruction will not meet the
needs of all students.
 Word study can address phonics, spelling
and eventually vocabulary instruction and
it can do it at each child’s level.
A Time for Something New
 Please read the short article “Traditional Spelling Lists: Old
Habits are Hard to Break” by Katherine Hilden and Jennifer
Jones from the June/July 2012 edition of Reading Today
 Turn and Talk: What was one new discovery you made in this
article? How does the article challenge or
confirm your thinking?
Not Officially Endorsed
Though the word study or making words approaches are not
officially endorsed by CCSS/CCRS, we feel that this method of
instruction:
1. Encourages students to think more critically about words
2. Actively engages them in making and analyzing words
3. Is more easily differentiated to move students towards the goal of deep
comprehension outlined in the CCSS
Please note we aren’t endorsing any program or system, instead we suggest that teachers
familiarize themselves with research on the developmental nature of spelling.
Stages of Spelling Development
 Emergent Readers and Writers/Pre-Alphabetic
 Letter Name
 Within Word
 Syllable Juncture
 Derivational Relations/ Constancy
The Developmental Nature of Spelling
 Spelling proceeds along developmental lines
(Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton and Johnson, 2008)
 Stages are not grade specific
 The following voice threaded PPT is helpful in
explaining the developmental levels (we suggest you
begin at 1:24 to move to the section which describes
this with examples)
 Spelling Development PPT
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhWFbtMY0AA
What is Word Study?
 Students actively engage with words, searching for
common features among them, instead of being told
rules (that are often breakable) by adults.
 Students “play” with words.
 Students record new words they encounter with features
they have noticed.
 After repeated engagement with words,
students may be assessed on their new
word knowledge.
Spelling-Based Phonics Instruction is
More Easily Differentiated
 “First” or “Second” grade are ambiguous terms.
 Children within a grade level are most often within a
wide variety of instructional levels.
 Spelling and phonics instruction embedded within
word study is most easily differentiated to
accommodate a wide range of learners,
from identified special needs to
gifted students.
Begin With a Formative Assessment
 There are several different assessments you can
you use:
– Developmental Spelling Analysis by Kathy Ganske
– Words Their Way Spelling Inventory
The Developmental Spelling Analysis
(DSA)
 Administered orally.
 Students write words on form just as they would in a
“traditional” spelling test.
 The first goal is to determine each student’s spelling
stage.
 The second goal is to determine
where to begin instruction at that
stage.
Scoring the DSA
 Twenty-five words are assessed.
 Students receive one point for every word they
spell correctly.
 Students receive an additional point if they get
the underlined feature correct.
Scoring the DSA
 CAUTION: A student can earn 1 point if the feature
is spelled correctly, but the word itself is not accurately
spelled.
 For example:
 petch for patch
 The tch is the feature, so the student
would earn 1 point, not 2 points.
Small Group Instruction
 One of the key methods for meeting the various
instructional levels in your classroom is small group
instruction.
 Assessments can reveal the various levels of students within
a classroom.
 Warning: Groups can be difficult to manage initially, but
will have the greatest impact on student growth and make
that group visible to parents and other stakeholders.
 Syllable Juncture doubling lesson
Word Sorts
 The foundation of word study is sorting words by
features.
 Please refer to Words Their Way orWord Journeys
for spectrum of features within the developmental
stages
 Word Sort (-ick,-uck,-ack)
Additional Activities
 Word Ladders by Tim Rasinski
 Making Words by Patricia Cunnigham
 Video of Making Words Lesson
What Level of Knowledge is Sufficient?
Our Final Thoughts:
• Whatever method of phonics instruction you decide to
use, relying on a workbook or activities (for which the
educational outcomes are little understood) is not
enough in to move students along a continuum
towards deep comprehension.
• Teacher knowledge of how language works is the
lynchpin for successful phonics instruction.
Contact Information
Petra Moran, M.A. Ed.
Doctoral Student
Kent State University
pmoran@gmail.com
Rochelle Berndt, M.A.Ed.
Doctoral Candidate
Kent State University
rberndt@kent.edu
Adjunct Professor
Baldwin Wallace University
pmoran@bw.edu
Adjunct Professor
Baldwin Wallace University
rberndt@bw.edu