RE 5100: Teaching Beginning Readers and Writers
Take Home Final Exam
Angela M. Steele
Emergent Readers
1. A. Children need to learn the alphabet through comparing and contrasting of letters. As
children are learning letters, they have to be shown the distinctive features of three or
four letters at a time. This allows children to see what a letter is and/or what it isn’t.
These distinctive features are what make letters different. Children have to analyze and
note how the features change, and when a feature makes a different letter. As these
distinctive features become automatized for a child, then they can be exposed to
different fonts of the same letters. Children have to know that not all letters look the
same, for instance when we write the letter “g”, it looks much different from when the
letter “g” is found in reading text. Only after students learn the distinctive features can
they begin to learn about the different fonts. For students to retain letter formation in
their memory they have to hypothesize from their prior knowledge of the letter they are
producing. This prior knowledge has to be brought forward to produce letters. They
have to compare what they think the letter looks like to their letter production. The
production is reinforced by checking what they produced to the actual letter on an
alphabet strip.
B. There are three ways to assess and group students’ knowledge of the alphabet.
Students can play a letter recognition game, a letter production game, and a letter sort
game. In the letter recognition game, students are to place an alphabet strip face down
on their desks. The teacher or assessor will write a letter on the board, making sure not
to vary the font of the letter written. Students will wait until they are told to say the
letter all at one time. If some students are unsure, the alphabet strip can be used to
track to the letter that was written on the board. In the letter production game,
students have a piece of paper and the teacher or assessor asks students to write
various letters down. It is important to treat all guesses the same because students can
compare the features that they write to the ones of the actual letter called out. They
can check this by tracking down the alphabet strip. The third game is the letter sort
game. In this game, students are given three or four letters separated on a sheet of
paper, for example B, C, D, and A. Each student would have a baggie of approximately
24 letters, written the same for automaticity, to sort and say the letter name. All of
these games work together to show if students are ready to learn beginning consonants.
Only when a student knows 20 letters can they begin to notice the difference in sounds.
C. There are many stages that a student has to work through to learn how to read. As
students are learning the letters in the alphabet, they are learning to track like reading.
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The best way to teach the alphabet and this tracking is to teach students the alphabet
song, making sure to slow down and emphasize L, M, N, O, P. To recognize letters in
isolation, practice letters with the alphabet strip down, (Letter Recognition Game). As
students learn the letters, they then begin to recognize letters in isolation, through
letter sorts. This begins student learning of self correction. As students move to
producing letters in isolations, they are beginning to spell words. This cannot be taught
until a child is spelling/producing random letters. This is simply taught by having
students to write various letters, Letter Production Game. As students are learning
letters, they have to be able to sort. As students develop their knowledge of letters,
they are then challenged for quickness. This letter sort quickness strengthens the
automaticity of their letter knowledge.
2. A. To conduct a language experience with students spelling in the letter-like stage, a
short dictation could be taken about a common class experience. In a dictation, the
teacher writes down in the student’s language, word-by-word, their story. Upon taking
this dictation, it can be written down in the form of a book. In this book, there would
only need to be three to six words on a page. Limiting the words on the page
encourages accurate tracking and self correction. At this stage, students can self correct
by using beginning and ending consonants. Longer personal narratives could be made
for an individual child because this dictation would be in their own language about their
personal experience. This story will be a unique experience for the individual child,
allowing for a longer dictation.
B. For students beginning to spell with some logical beginning consonants, you would
take the dictation, and draw attention to the beginning sounds of each word. You
would ask the student about the beginning sounds that they hear, to aid in your writing
of the dictation. This is where they can use their knowledge of self correction by
applying what they know. Instead of writing three to six words on the page, you would
increase the words to eight to ten words. This still emphasizes correct tracking, but
increases the opportunity for the student to possibly get off track.
3. A. Students who are spelling with random letters may point to words of a memorized
text. This for the most case is done when words are monosyllabic. They are pointing to
the stress units, not necessarily the words. They say a stressed word or group of words
because they are listening to the patterns or prosody of a story. These children do not
have phonemic awareness.
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B. Children begin to spell with beginning consonants because this is the more salient
part of a word. Often in spoken language, we do not enunciate the ending as much as
the beginning; therefore, the ending comes at a later time, when they become more
aware of the concept of word. These children often begin tracking by pointing to one
syllable at a time. Since children are born with the LAD, they are continuously making
hypotheses about language. Their first hypothesis is that our language is a syllabury –
one syllable per symbol (Japanese and Chinese characters). Eventually children figure
out that this hypothesis doesn’t work, this is where their attention begins to focus on
beginning consonants. For instance, when a child says “Sam”, the sound they hear is
“s”; therefore, they focus on the beginning of a word. This is where self correction can
now be taught.
4. A. A child is ready to learn beginning consonants when they are pointing to words and
saying syllables and know at least 20 letters of the alphabet. Knowledge of beginning
sounds is where self correction occurs. At this stage, a child is partially aware of the
concept of word. The teacher can use this knowledge in their reading, to point out the
word/sound relationship. For example with “Sam, Sam”, if a child says baker, but points
to the words baker and man, you can point out that man does not start with the “k”
sound. This is how the child self corrects.
B. Picture sorts are a better way for students to learn beginning consonant sounds.
Some letters share similar sounds, for example s and c. Therefore, teaching the letters
in isolation can be confusing to the child. The picture card sort works much like a letter
sort. These sorts are based on contrasting features in columns and within columns.
C. Picture sorts are used because students do not have a large enough sight vocabulary
to support using word sorts. Students cannot read, but they can identify pictures of
different things.
Beginning Readers
1. When a child is spelling with beginning and ending consonants, they are partial
phonemic aware, forming a foundation for the concept of words. They acknowledge
both the beginning and ending consonant sounds. They begin to understand that when
they say –ly that the next word doesn’t begin with the “l” sound. This allows them to
track accurately.
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2. A child is completely phonemic aware when they begin to spell with vowels. They can
begin to differentiate between pit, pat, and put. When a child is memorizing text, often
it is short rhyming/patterned books; therefore, there are lots of words with similar
sounds. They are tracking by using beginning and ending consonants, but noticing the
vowels that make the difference.
3. Sight vocabulary develops only after a child can track accurately. Before they can track
accurately, they may be pointing to a word but saying another. This accurate tracking is
based on their knowledge of beginning and ending consonants. A child also has to have
a concept of word, including spelling with vowels. Only when they have knowledge of
vowels can a child keep pit, pat, and put apart. A child cannot keep words apart until
they can sort words that have the same beginning and ending consonants and can
differentiate between vowels. It is only through concept of word and developing a sight
word vocabulary that students can learn to understand vowels. Knowledge of vowels
and sight vocabulary are transactional, they feed upon one another.
4. A. Beginning readers are known as support readers because their reading is supported
through text patterns and the teacher. Students at this level do not have a big enough
sight vocabulary. These are sight words that can be read in isolation without sounding
the words out. When you take the support of the patterned text away, a beginning
reader is not 95% successful.
B. The support from the materials that beginning readers read are the repeated
patterns. A book that shows this support is Look at Me by Rigby. “Look at me. I am…”
Each page in the text repeats the same pattern of words. There is also support for the
beginning reader through the pictures. Using the same book as an example, if the text
said “reading”, then the picture would show an illustration of someone reading. A
dictation is another kind of material that can give support to the beginning reader.
Dictations support the beginning reader because it is written in their own oral language.
Also a dictation is based off of an experience that the child has had.
C. The teacher is also a support for the beginning reader. Teachers support these
readers by offering different ways to read the book. Choral reading is where the
teacher and students read together as a group. The teacher reads only as loud as the
students need. This is a great way to provide varying support. Echo reading is another
type of teacher support. This is where the teacher reads a page and then the students
read the page back to the teacher. Often echo and choral reading are used together,
once again the teacher only reading when necessary (students are clearly struggling).
Another support is through the teacher using picture walks. Knowing the text says
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“drawing” instead of writing the teacher can lead the child to read the word writing
instead of drawing.
5. Sight vocabulary is made of words that can be read in isolation without sounding them
out. The way to build a sight vocabulary is through rereading memorized or almost
memorized text. If words are left in a book, children will not be able to know them in
isolation. This limits the automaticity in their reading.
6. Building word banks foster building a better concept of word. By pulling words out of
books, students are forced to look at vowels. When you do this, students can no longer
rely on the context of the story, they have to read the words in isolation. When
students have memorized text, they are only paying attention to the beginning and
ending consonants to track accurately. When pulling words like sit, sat, and set,
students are forced to look at the vowel to differentiate between the words.
7. Guided reading groups for beginning readers work based on a three day cycle. On day
one, introduce a pattern book or take a dictation from the group. In this introduction of
a pattern book, begin with a picture walk. In this picture walk the teacher would clarify
words for the students. The book would be read through echo and/or choral reading.
The teacher would drop support when appropriate, supporting as little as possible.
Following this reading, students would reread the text as the teacher is monitoring. Day
two begins with the students reading the same story independently and quietly. If
students are successful in doing this, then the book is not too hard. If they are not
successful in rereading the story, then the book was too hard. This rereading is the
most important step for beginning readers. Following this reread of the story, students
would be given word cards with that story’s words. They would place the words in two
piles: words they know and words they don’t know. The words that they know would
be placed in their word bank to reinforce building their sight word vocabulary. After
going over these words, the teacher would begin to introduce another story (Day 1). On
day three, students would begin the day by pulling out their word bank and mix up the
words. It is important not to read the story first. This time students are looking to see
what words they remember. If they know the cards, a check is placed on the cards.
When students build up to 20-25 words, they begin to add more words, the words from
the newest story introduced on day 2. By the time they read 40 words it is time to send
those words home. Following the additional word card sort of word they know or don’t
know from the newest story (day 2’s new story), the teacher would be introducing a
third story. Each day following would look like a day three, where there is word bank
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checks, new words to check for known or unknown, and the introduction of a new story.
This is a continuous cycle to support the beginning reader.
8. Word family sort “a” would be more challenging than word family sort “b”. In word
family sort “a” there are two columns that share ending consonants. This forces the
students to have to pay attention to the vowel. The only difference in the words hat
and hit are the vowels. They have the same beginning and ending consonants. In word
family sort “b” the difference between the columns is the beginning consonants. Each
of the three columns share ending sounds: -at, -ip , and –ad. In this sort, the main focus
is on the beginning consonant sound.
Self-Reliant Readers
1. There are many differences in teaching by using the Basal Teacher Manuals and using
the Directed Reading/Thinking Activity Strategies (DRTA). Vocabulary is approached in
the Basal Manuals by pre-teaching words found in a story. Students get exposed to
these words prior to reading the story. By doing this, students seem to have an
understanding of the vocabulary, but often cannot identify these words in a different
context. In the DRTA approach, vocabulary is not pre-taught. If students are being
placed at appropriate instructional reading levels, then students will pick up the
vocabulary as they are reading the story. Students learn through making hypothesis
about what things mean, and they are not allowed to do this if vocabulary is taught
before they get to read words in context. Teaching background knowledge is a farce. In
the Teacher Edition Manuals, the writers understand that students have to make a
connection to what they read for comprehension to occur, but this is a connection that
students have to make on their own. By doing the DRTA approach, students are forced
to put the pieces together themselves. They are answering questions to activate this
prior knowledge and comprehension on their own like: What do you think is going to
happen? Why? Show me where you found that. If students are not making these
guesses, then they are not comprehending. Prediction is the most powerful stimulus to
activate prior knowledge. Textbooks often try to motivate students to read, by setting a
purpose for reading. Students are encouraged to set their own purpose in reading by
constantly questioning as they read. Am I right or wrong or do I want to change my
mind? All of these are encouraged by using the DRTA strategy, most importantly
stopping at points of anticipation for students to make up their own minds. The
questioning technique in the Basal Teacher Editions is based on answers that can be
highlighted in the text. They ask about things that have already happened in the story.
Facts do not substantiate your opinion or guess. The DRTA approach promotes
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conversations about the story, allowing students to form their own understanding
/comprehension of the story. You cannot teach a student how to comprehend, they
have to use their knowledge to promote an understanding of the story. When students
are reading they are not consciously thinking about what they are reading (the words in
the story). Students have to be thinking about what is happening throughout the story.
Comprehension exists “like eggs in a cake,” you cannot separate the eggs after you have
baked the cake. You cannot unweave the story to ensure comprehension. This is where
students MUST be placed on their independent reading levels and not be frustrated, so
that students can comprehend what they are reading.
3.
Word Families - Short Vowel
Stage A
Cop
hid
hot
shop - p
bid
pot – p
drop - p
rid
got
crop
lid – p
not
Flop
kid –p
dot – p
Pop
did
rot
Stage B
hat - p
pad - p
sit
Sat
had
pit
chat
bad
hit –p
bat - p
lad
bit
Pat
dad - p
knit – p
Rat
sad
lit
Non-Rhyming
bag - p
jet - p
mug – p
made
Trap
beg
hut
when
mad
best
puck – p
bush - p
That
felt
lump
sage
pat
leg
fun
what
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mask - p
red - p
plus
bugle - p
Consonant Blends/Diagraphs vs. Single Consonant
Sip
skip
scam
sick - p
skull - p
cereal
So
skim
school - p
Six
skate - p
scare
sink - p
skill
city
Set
skin
cent – p
hip - p
Short Vowel vs. Long Vowel
ice
light – p
dig
like
kind
fill
bike - p
eye
hid
five - p
lion
kit
side
dinosaur - p
pin - p
pile
fly
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