Helping Emergent Readers to Decode
How Emergent Readers Compile Meaningful Information
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness, defined as an individual’s ability to recognize the letters in words and identify the sounds that represent the letters in those words. Phonemic awareness plays a crucial role in laying the foundation for beginning or emergent readers. Phonemic awareness becomes a mastered skills when students can independently identify, isolate, segment, blend, rhyme, and manipulate phonemes.
Print and Word Recognition
An emergent readers proficiency increases with an increased amount of exposure to visual print (Stanley 2008). Print knowledge is also increased when teachers use the print referencing technique during read aloud sessions (Zucker et. Al 2009).
The visual aspect of print referencing begins and ends with repeated encounters with concepts, and images both in real life and in pictures (Stanley 2008). Several research based evidences have corroborated the difference that repetitive and constant encounters with strategies and techniques make in an emergent readers growth.
Decoding the Process
Visual Literacy
Decoding is a process that begins with visual literacy far before children can decode written and print text (Stanley et. al 2008).
Phonetic Strategies
Phonics describes the relationship between phonemes and graphemes. Phonics instruction is built on the alphabetic principal (Ellery 2009) and is categorized into different strategies that include synthesizing, analyzing, contextualizing, and last but not least the patterns of phonics (Ellery 2009).
Comprehension
Comprehension is the overall goal of reading. When a student has acquired the ability to understand and prescribe meaning to spoken and or written word they have acquired the systematic sequence of steps for understanding text.
What the Research Says
Reflection
As letter-sound correspondence is the foundation for reading it is apparent that without phonemic awareness, emergent readers will not have the necessary foundation that will promote them to the fluent stage of reading. The amount of time students spent utilizing the techniques associated with each strategy was proven to have significantly increased the skill level of most emergent readers. Student centered learning is a combination of discussions prompted by the teacher, social interaction/exchange, choral reading and such. Reading comprehension is not an innate ability and must therefore be obtained by effective learning supplements.