Words Their Way
Chapter 4: Word Study for Learners in the Emergent Stage
 Emergent students do not read or spell conventionally and they score 0 on spelling inventories.
 Learning to read and spell is a process of matching oral and written language structures at three
different levels:
o The global level at which the text is organized into phrases and sentences
 Characterized as prosodic
 “musical” level of language, usually consisting of sentences and phrases
 Oral language is a direct form of communication accompanied by gestures and
facial expressions that takes place in shared context
 Written language is an indirect form of communication and must contain
complete, freestanding messages to make meaning clear.
o The level of words
 Students negotiate units called words
 In print, words are separated by spaces, but in speech, they are not clearly
defined.
 Students must decipher different words in speech by comparing them to words
on a page. Ex.) “once upon a time” often sounds like one whole word, but
students must decipher that there are different words that make up the phrase.
o The level of sounds and letters within words and syllables
 Sounds and letters
 Students must segment the sound of phonemes within words and match them
to the letters in print.
 Children can develop oral language, learn about stories, and learn about words, sounds, and the
alphabet simultaneously as teachers model reading and writing and encourage children to
imitate and experiment.
 Pretend reading – basically a paraphrase or spontaneously retelling at the global level that
children produce while turning the pages of a familiar book.
 Memory reading – more exacting than pretend reading
 Directionality – realizing that they should move left to right, top to bottom, and end up on the
last word on the page.
 Concept of Word (COW) – the ability to fingerpoint or track accurately to words in print while
reading from memory.
o When children lack a COW, word boundaries are obscured in their writing
 Emergent readers:
o are in the prealphabetic phase of reading
o lack an understanding of the alphabetic principle or show only the beginning of this
understanding
 Emergent writing, like emergent reading, is often pretend.
 The child’s first task as a writer is to discover that scribbling can represent something and,
thereafter, to differentiate drawing from writing and representation from communication.
 Mock Linear writing – children begin to write by approximating broader contours of the writing
system.
 Humans do not actually talk in words, and there is no such thing as the isolated phoneme.
 Early Emergent Writing:
o Children learn to hold a pencil, marker, or crayon to make marks on paper
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Scribbles sometimes evolve into more representational drawings and children learn that
print is distinct from drawings
Middle Emergent Writing:
o Children begin to approximate the most global contours of the writing: the top-tobottom linear arrangement
o As letters of the alphabet and numbers are learned, they begin to show up in letter
strings or a “symbol salad.”
Late Emergent Writing
o Children are beginning to use letters to represent speech sounds in a systematic way
o The ability to divide oral speech into the smallest units of sound is called phonemic
awareness.
o Matching these units of sounds to letters is the beginning of phonics, the consistent
relationship between sounds and letters.
As with oral language learning, written language learning involves forming and testing
hypotheses as new bits of knowledge are perceived and internalized.
Interactive Read-Alouds – promote oral language discussions around vocabulary, ideas, and
concepts related to the content and genre of a book.
Shared Reading – teachers read with children from enlarged texts like big books and charts on
which children can see the print and join chorally on rereadings.
Print Referencing – one begins to read on the page on demonstrates left-to-right directionality
and the return sweep at the end of each line.
Concepts About Print – (CAP) conventions of written language
Emergent understandings of how units of speech correspond to units of print operate within a
larger context of concept, language, and vocabulary development.
Through reading and writing activities, word study instruction for the emergent reader must aim
toward the development of six main components of the learning-to-read process:
o Oral language, concepts, and vocabulary
o Phonological awareness (PA)
o Alphabet knowledge
o Letter-sound knowledge
o Concepts about print (CAP)
o Concept of word (COW)
In a classic study, researchers estimated that by 3 years of age, some children have heard 3
million more words than other children, and by the time they enter school, some children have
heard 30 million more words than others.
A well developed vocabulary is an essential part of school success.
Adults should engage children in conversation at every opportunity and consciously use
language that includes new vocabulary and complex sentences.
Four criteria are important in selecting target words:
o Utility – consider words that can be used regularly in the classroom or words that will
show up in other books.
o Concreteness – concrete words are more likely to be illustrated in the story
o Repetition in text – words that are used more than once in the story
o Relatedness to themes or topics of study – choose words that can be clustered in a
semantic category
Planned experiences with careful attention to vocabulary, language, and concepts are more
likely to be fruitful.
 Combining read-alouds with experiences supports the necessary repetition of targeted
vocabulary and promotes linkages that facilitate learning.
 Promoting children to retell what they heard in the read-aloud encourages them to use new
words and more complex sentence constructions in hands-on, engaging activities.
 Retellings should be modeled for students as in the following example: “When you have a
chance to look at this book on your own, try to retell the story. Watch how I do that by looking
at the pictures.”
 Use dramatic play to act out stories or parts of stories under adult direction to get lots of
children actively involved as actors or audience.
 Concept sorts can be used at all levels of development as students categorize objects, pictures,
words, or phrases.
 Phonological Awareness (PA) – the ability to pay attention to, identify, and reflect on various
sound segments of speech
o It is the umbrella term for a range of understandings about speech sounds, including
syllables, rhyme, and a sense of alliteration.
o Phonemic awareness is a subcategory of Phonological awareness and refers to the
ability to identify and reflect on the smallest units of sound: individual phonemes.
 Early emergent readers need to participate in phonological awareness activities that focus
attention on syllables and rhyming words whereas middle emergent readers learn alliteration by
sorting pictures that begin with the same sound.
 Children must become aware that speech can be divided into smaller segments of sound—
phonemic awareness—before they will advance in literacy.
 Activities that play with alliteration focus children’s attention on the beginning sounds that mark
word boundaries in print.
 Oral language activities designed to teach phonemic awareness cross over into the learning of
letter-sound correspondences. This is known as phonics.
 The research on the development of phonological awareness identifies two ways of
understanding sound units as significantly related to reading outcomes:
o Rhyme awareness
o Individual phoneme awareness
 PALS- Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening
 Letters have names, a set sequence, sounds, and upper- and lowercase forms. They must be
written in particular ways, and directional orientation is vital.
 The alphabet is learned through active exploration of the relationships between letter names,
the sounds of the letter names, their visual characteristics, and the motor movement involved in
their formation.
 During the emergent stage, children learn their letters, attend to speech sounds, and begin to
make connections between letters and sounds.
 Toward the end of the emergent stage, many children will begin producing partial phonetic
spellings that contain one or two letters for each syllable.
 There are a number of factors to keep in mind when organizing sorts for beginning letter
sounds:
o Start with a meaningful text
o Make sorts easier or harder as needed
o Use a key picture and a letter as headers
o Begin with teacher-directed sorts
o Use sets of pictures that are easy to name and sort
o Correct mistakes on the first sort but allow errors to wait on subsequent sorts
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o Vary the group sorting
o Plan plenty of time for individual practice
o Plan follow-up activities
o Encourage pretend writing and invented spelling
The key is to be conscious of the many ways we use print and to think aloud as we draw
children’s attention to it in explicit ways. This is called print referencing.
When teachers have been trained to use a print referencing style during read-alouds, such as
naming and pointing out letters or asking questions about print and pointing to words as they
read, children have shown growth on measures or concepts about print, letter recognition, and
name writing.
As children become aware that print has something to do with sound units such as syllables,
their fingerpointing becomes more precise and changes from a gross rhythm to a closer match.
Students with a rudimentary concept of word (COW) will begin remembering a few written
words. This is a sign that these children are on their way to becoming beginning readers or early
letter name-alphabetic spellers.
One of the best ways to help children make connections between speech and print is to record
what children say in a dictation and then to read it back.
o Picture captions can be quick and easy forms of dictation.
Like picture captions, spoken or dictated accounts of children’s experiences also help them link
speech to print. This is called language experience approach (LEA).
o LEA is based in the premise that what one says can be written and what one writes can
be read.
Familiar rhymes, songs, or jingles are easily memorized passages that can be used to model and
teach a concept of word in text. It is important for children to first learn the rhyme, song, or
jingle “by heart” because developing a COW is all about matching speech to print.
Learning to read passages is done through three passes:
o Modeling
o Choral
o Echo
The six components of emergent literacy development:
o Vocabulary, Language, and Concept development
o Phonological awareness
o Alphabet knowledge
o Letter-sound knowledge
o Concepts about print (CAP)
o Developing a COW
The essential components of emergent literacy can be integrated into major organizational time
units during which teachers read to, read with, write with, do word study, and talk with
(RRWWT).
Developing COW vs. Rudimentary COW: some children will need to focus on alphabet
recognition and look for letters in familiar texts, whereas children who already know their
letters and have a rudimentary concept of word may be ready to acquire some sight words from
repeated readings of familiar text.