Word Study

The articles I read for this post are all about word study.  The first article by Yopp and Yopp describes phonemic awareness and how it can be developed in the classroom.  Someone with phonemic awareness has the ability to recognize and manipulate the smallest sounds of speech.  The article describes how it is critical for beginning readers in order for them to understand the written system.  The article goes on to describe all the components that should be taken into consideration when planning phonemic awareness instruction.  The article breaks down several different examples of phonemic awareness activities using various tasks and units of sound.  The article ends by stressing that phonemic awareness instruction should not replace other areas of instruction and that it should be included in a broad literacy program encompassing a variety of reading instruction.  This article helps lead into the book chapter on teaching phonics and spelling patterns.  Phonemic awareness is recognizing the sounds in speech, and phonics is putting symbols to those sounds.  This chapter concentrates on strategies for teaching students how to decode unfamiliar words.  Allington points out that once you have developed the ability to quickly figure out the pronunciations of unfamiliar-in-print words, it enables you to then pull from your storage of familiar-in-speech words and therefore create meaning.  The majority of the chapter details a variety of different lessons that can be taught in order to help students learn to decode unfamiliar words.  Allington concludes by suggesting that while students are learning high-frequency words and building fluency, they also need to learn patterns so they can quickly decode and spell words they have not learned.  The last article discusses the effectiveness of coaching in word recognition.  In this article, Clark states that coaching can help foster students’ abilities to become strategic independent readers.  The article details two main types of instructional cues-general cues to prompt thought and more focused cues to prompt specific action.  The article describes how the teachers involved in the study would begin by giving general cues, and then move towards more specific cues if necessary.  The article concludes by describing the three factors that appear to contribute the most to coaching effectiveness- teachers having explicit knowledge of phonics, awareness of student instructional histories, and awareness of student strengths and weaknesses. 

The article on teaching phonemic awareness provided a lot of detailed information about a topic I was not previously very familiar with.  The guidelines for planning instruction for phonemic awareness will be extremely helpful once I reach the stage of developing my own lesson plans and classroom instruction.  I have seen a lot of the types of activities suggested in the article used in classrooms, but I’m not sure they were actually used for the express and direct purpose of developing phonemic awareness, which the article points out can make them less effective.  I am concerned about the idea of time allocation requirements some school districts have and wonder how as a teacher, especially a new teacher, you can develop lessons along the idea that what is most important is the quality of your instruction and how receptive the students are to it, not how much time is spent.  I think the activities suggested offer a great stepping stone for developing other similar activities and give good examples of how they can all be adapted and used for a variety of purposes.  I can also see phonemic awareness being another unit of study where a teacher would have to keep an eye out for struggling students and then try and figure out now to give extra assistance to those students while continuing to move forward with the other students.  I can also understand how the authors might be concerned that phonemic awareness instruction could possibly take over other areas, especially when there may be time allocation requirements.  I see how it could be a situation very similar to the information we read on fluency measures that suggest when one specific factor is stressed very highly, it can be to the detriment of other factors that are just as important, or sometimes even more important.  I found this chapter in the book to be very informative and am sure that it will become a valuable resource once I am teaching on my own.  The chapter is filled with detailed examples of teaching phonics, spelling, and word recognition.  I would have probably thought this chapter to be quite overwhelming if I had not seen most of these activities used in the classroom, or if I had not previously employed some of these strategies myself in working with students.  The chapter did help drive home the point that learning to decode words you don’t understand and then make sense of them using words you have heard before is a very important part of reading instruction.  I found the article on coaching to be the most interesting.  It’s funny how sometimes you can realize you have been doing something all along, but never know there is a specific term for it.  I have used coaching methods in the past to help students with reading, but I never before realized how powerful a technique it can be, and how it can be affected by different factors.  This article provided a lot of great information on how to hone my own coaching techniques.  I have seen how coaching can help struggling readers, so I am really interested in learning how I can use this method in the most effective ways.  It certainly seems like coaching is something that is developed over time, and after learning how to get to know your students so you can benefit them in the best possible ways.  I believe that thinking about reading instruction in the way Clark describes it in the article as “a problem-solving activity that students increasingly learn to handle on their own” helps you to understand what coaching is and how it can really help.