Give Them Words, Give Them a Voice
Sharing Word Recognition Strategies and Structures
Word Up! A Working Definition of Word Recognition and Instruction
A Word From the Experts:
"Becoming a skilled reader with a large repertoire of sight words(words that have been decoded a sufficient number of times to become words that are recognized in under one second by the reader) requires knowledge of phonemic segmentation, letter-sound correspondences, and spelling patterns." (McEwan-Adkins, 2010).
"...Word recognition builds on the ability to sound out words, given knowledge of the sound-symbol correspondence and spelling patterns. Word recognition involves breaking up a multisyllabic word into components and using meaningful word parts, such as un-, anti-, hydro-and -ment to deciper the word. The ultimate goal of word recognition is "automaticity," or recognizing the majority of words automatically." -http://teachingasleadership.org/sites/default/files/Related-Readings/SL_Ch2_2011.pdf
"Being able to quickly and easily recognize words is the key to successful reading (Ehri, 1998; Gough, 1996; Shaywitz, 2003). Successful readers identify words fluently, and if a word is unknown, have effective decoding strategies to decipher the word. Therefore it is important that students develop a sight-word vocabulary (i.e., words that students recognize without conscious effort) and decoding strategies to support them when they encounter an unknown word (Ehri, 2004; National Reading Panel, 2000; Snow, et. al., 1998)." (Vaughn & Bos, 2009) http://www.ablongman.com/html/productinfo/vaughn7e/0205608566_ch7.pdf
A Word From Me:
As a believer in balanced literacy and as an advocate for student-driven instruction I have been drawn to holistic structures such as reading and writing workshop that help provide students with authentic texts, and meaningful experiences that allow them to read and write in multiple genres and to create varied products. These structures allow me to differentiate instruction through conferencing and small group guided reading. Word recognition has been a critical component of my balanced literacy block because my students need words. They definitely need words to be able to write their own books,to read them and other books of their choice, and to communicate their message to an audience they want to communicate with, both in and out of the four walls of our classroom. Because I value each student's voice, I need to give them words. Words through a print-rich environment, words through immersion in a variety of texts, and words learned through word recognition instruction.
Word Up Photo Credit: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/word-up.jpg
Strategies and Structures to Promote Meaningful Word Recognition Instruction and Application
It's Not Just What, It's How
I firmly believe that how you implement any research-based best practice is just as important as the strategy and structure you are implementing. Multiple times in my own practice and in reflecting with pre-service and first year teachers in my role as a teacher mentor and university supervisor I have had a strategy fail or prove to be ineffective. When I actually take time to analyze what went wrong, I can correlate the failure, not with the practice itself and certainly not with my students, but with my own implementation. When considering strategies and structures for word recognition, and for any component of literacy instruction, I want to advocate that we deeply consider how we will implement the strategy, which asks us to go beyond the actual activity and that day's lesson plan and take a holistic look at the structures used to deliver the strategies, our schedules, our procedures, our purpose and intent, and our overall literacy program. What we teach matters. How we teach it determines if it is effective or not.
Below are a list of some of the strategies I learned from the resources shared in our Literacy Diagnostics Course and from gathering resources online. In the captions below are my questions and suggestions to consider before implementation.
How Photo Credit: http://www.govloop.com/blogs/1001-2000/1077-how.jpg
Word Walls: Do More Than a Wall Display
"The word wall is not something you should have filled in for the unit’s introductory lesson; rather, you
should build it with your students over time, constantly adding words that students find challenging to
identify with automaticity in the current area of study. For the word wall to truly improve word
recognition, you’ll need to refer to it whenever an already posted word occurs in your reading, and
encourage students to refer to it when incorporating those words into their writing." http://teachingasleadership.org/sites/default/files/Related-Readings/SL_Ch2_2011.pdf
*Check out both of these videos to see how word walls can be used in both reading and writing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoconCtm2tE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92k93lnQMvE
Photo Credit: http://www.mpmschoolsupplies.com/ideas/1198/ocean-themed-word-wall/
Prefixes, Suffixes, and Root Words - Beyond The Worksheets
In Intervention 10 in the McEwan-Adkins text, the author suggests in Figure 10.1 a strategy to teaching students steps to reading big words:
1.) Circle the prefixes at the beginning of the word.
2.) Circle the suffixes at the end of the word.
3.) Underline the letters that represent vowel sounds in the rest of the word.
4.) Say the syllables of the word.
5.) Say the syllables fast.
6.) Figure out if there is a word you know that sounds very similar to the one you said, and then connect your pronunciation to match the word you already know. (McEwan-Adkins, 2010).
A few great video resources I found for introducing prefixes, suffixes, and root words:
http://www.brainpop.com/english/grammar/rootsprefixesandsuffixes/preview.weml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOJrjNR7ZZM
Photo Credit: http://sarahtaylorbportfolio.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/edrd-6529-teaching-reading-strategies-of-instruction-2/
Cross Checking: More Than the Motions
Cross-Checking as a strategy is effective when taught to students explicitly through modeling and consistent application within the context of real reading on their level.
Below is a link to the page from the CAFE book explaining the cross checking strategy for improving accuracy:
http://marcy.mpls.k12.mn.us/uploads/rrf_accuracy_cross_checking.pdf
Below is a link to a parent newsletter explaining the cross checking strategy and how to review it with students:
Using Wordle and Taxedo to Create Word Images
One strategy that I have used for word recognition with both sight words and also student-generated words from their independent reading and writing is to create images out of their words. You can utilize free, web 2.0/cloud-based sites like wordle and taxedo for students to create images of their words. Check out the teacher created blog below for this and additional tech-based word recognition strategies she with her students.
The "Write" Words: Using Writing as a Tool for Word Learning
An ASCD online chapter text, Research-Based Methods of Reading Instruction by Vaughn and Thompson (Chapter 3) also supports the opportunity for students to write the new letters/words they are learning in the context of authentic writing.
"Effective programs also include books and stories that contain a lot of words for children to decode using letter-sound relationships, and provide children with opportunities to spell words and write their own stories using letter-sound relationships (Blevins, 1998; Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievment [CIERA], 2001; NRP, 2000; Texas Education Agency [TEA], 2000)." (Vaughn & Thompson, 2004).
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104134/chapters/Phonics-and-Word-Study.aspx
Cloze: Let's Do More Than Fill in the Blank, Let's Fill Them With Words
http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/40373_3.pdf
In this video below titled, "Word Study in Action: Shared Reading Using Cloze" you will see how the teacher asked students to help identify vocabulary words from the read aloud previously that they may want to use in their writing. She wrote the words on a piece of chart paper and then went back in the big book and covered them up. As they read aloud during shared reading, she asked students to use context clues to figure out the meaning of the covered words. Students were encouraged to use the words as readers and as writers.
How Do We Know What They Know? Assessment Possibilities for Word Recognition
My favorite assessment of word recognition is to actually have them engage in meaningful reading and listen to them, observe them, take time to take anecdotal notes either through Goodman's miscue analysis, Marie Clay's Running Records, or the new IRI format we've been introduced to in this course. I've learned that when I get "caught up" in the form that I can lose my "presentness" or "mindfulness" or whatever word you want to call the awareness we have of what our students are doing. When we are so caught up in what we are doing and if we are doing it right, we are unable to focus on what our students are doing and we are not able to have that "in the moment" teaching because we have to wait and analyze the data and then come back. In a book study that I led last year on Cris Tovani's professional text, So What Do They Really Know (Tovani, 2011) she advocates for a "Catch and Release" assessment structure in her reading workshop where the majority of the time students are working either independently, in small groups, or with her and she has the opportunity to make assessment and her instruction co-exist. She explains it beautifully in the pie graph in her text of her workshop model where she explains that the best assessments are dual purpose - they provide you with information to guide your instruction, but they also provide you with on-the-spot opportunity to give targeted instruction through the assessment tool. She explains that she may begin with a mini-lesson on a specific strategy, and then provide students with time to try it out. While they are trying it out, she is assessing them formatively through observation, questioning, and note-taking, and then when she sees an opportunity to catch students together to provide another instructional opportunity she does. She uses that teachable moment and then releases them back into their work to try it again, only this time with the new strategy or skill that can equip them to do it better.
Photo Credit: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/9/12/1347447110826/Oliver-Burkeman-column-Il-001.jpg