Chapter 7 Developing Phonetic Skills

The question asked for this chapter is: Where does phonics instruction fit into an apprenticeship approach to literacy? In the literacy apprenticeship, teachers design instructional interactions around continuous texts both reading and writing that help shape young children’s development of phonemic knowledge (p. 89). During this process of learning, the brain is doing amazing things to enable “reading” to occur. Teachers strengthen interconnections between related information. Problem-solving strategies are helping to make sense of print, the eyes pick up visual information at the direction of the brain, the brain classifies information according to existing categories and in the end the brain integrates the visual information with other sources of knowledge. This allows the student to make sense of an abstract form - the letter according to Dorn et al ( 1998).

Beginning readers use onsets and rime as an analogy strategy for solving words. Onset is any consonant sounds that precede the vowel and rime is the vowel and any consonant sounds that come after it. Over 500 primary level words can be derived from a set of only thirty-seven rimes. With this knowledge teachers can help students acquire many cues and strategies for acquiring words and more words. The authors state that in a literacy apprenticeship, there is not scope and sequence for learning particular letters and sounds; rather, the learning is guided by the knowledge that children bring to the task. This knowledge again rests on observation, anecdotal notes and some assessments.

Several scenarios and dialogues about using onsets and rimes with small groups of young readers includes positive scaffold interactions between teacher and students and reflections of actions and to articulate what they have done. I like how they included always reflecting back to the learning process to help the students internalize what they have accomplished.

Another activity I liked was using poetry to activate knowledge of spelling patterns with an organizing activity. About 20 word tiles are given to each student and they classify words according to how the words are the same or different such as: words that start the same, words that end the same, rhyming words, one-, two-, three- syllable words, words in the class dictionary, words on the word wall, words that end in ed, ing, er. As students classify, the teacher facilitates and assists where necessary. Another thing that happens is students start trading tiles to make their groups complete which to me is cooperative/collaborative learning without being told or directed. I liked this activity.

Promoting familiarity with frequently encountered words helps students engage in memorable activities to focus on visual features. This is similar to creating a literate enriched classroom through using word walls, narrow strips taped to desks, use of personal dictionaries, etc… The goal is knowing words instantly and thus allowing the students to focus on the real task of reading which is to construct meaning. If students experience difficultly with words their reading fluency will be disrupted.

The chapter answered the framing question about learning to read and touches on the relationship between literacy and reading discipline. According to Wikipedia: Literacy has been described as the ability to read for knowledge and write coherently and think critically about the written word.  A reader learns the act of reading through progression. Once these skills are acquired the reader can attain full language literacy, which includes the abilities to approach printed material with critical analysis, inference and synthesis; to write with accuracy and coherence; and to use information and insights from text as the basis for informed decisions and creative thought. (Wikipedia, accessed on July 8, 2012) So in the end we want to create capable literate students to think critically.

Links for phonetic activities:

http://www.ehow.co.uk/info_7935961_activity-multisyllabic-words-third-grade.html

http://www.ehow.com/info_7840949_phonemic-awareness-activities-3rd-grade.html