- What role does finger pointing play in developing concept of word and phonemic awareness?
Finger pointing helps students distinguish what a word is. Prior to true reading kids just ramble without understanding what a ‘word’ is. It aids in phonemic awareness as well because they can start to “see” how phonemes match up with letters in words.
2. Describe the 4-stage model of early literacy.
Stage One: Beginning consonant knowledge: Kids can hear the beginning letters of a word and correspond the sound to the letter which helps them follow the text.
Stage 2: Concept of word in text: They now not only hear the beginning sound of the word but also the last sound. They correlate the sounds with the first and last letters of the word and can know see that that is one word.
Stage 3: Phoneme segmentation ability: Now is when being able to see the word in print and decide what the middle letters are they will also hear the unique sound they make helping them hear/understand phoneme segments.
Stage 4: Word recognition: they now can hear all the sounds of the words and see the beginning and end of the word creating the ability for them to store actual ‘words’ in their memory not just the sounds of a word.
3. Describe what this means: “It is not in the telling, but it is in the very act of reading that Jack will actually learn how to read.” p. 10
It will not help the student for you to continually tell them that “this is a word” they need to struggle themselves and start by simply identifying the first letter/sound of the word. Read through the story with them and then allow the child to take their time and slowly decipher where the beginnings of each word are.
4. What instruction helps develop beginning readers’ awareness of words and phonemes?
Have the teacher read aloud to the class fluently. Model proper finger pointing, show them that each word you are saying has a distinct grouping of letters on the page. Echo read with students who are struggling. Choral read, adult and child read and finger point together. Partner read, this is for children who require less support. Buddy reading, text copies, language experence approach, concept of word center, cut-up-a-sentence, and be the sentence.
-oOo-
Robbins and Ehri (1994) Assignment
1. How do children increase their vocabularies? Most commonly children increase their vocabulary through listening to adult conversation and hearing words incidentally in verbal context. Once they hit the age of 3 they begin learning words from the television
2. What evidence is there that reading aloud to children can increase their vocabularies? Before the third grade it is unlikely that the vocabulary in the books we read to young children differs greatly therefore it does not have much impact on expanding their vocabulary but around the age of 7 or 8 books began being read multiple times and words discussed further helping children decipher meanings and have more understanding of vocabulary. Additionally when children ‘pretend read’ stores they have heard they often use vocabulary from it that is not typically used elsewhere.
3. Does it matter what teachers read to students? In other words, if you are reading aloud to students in your kindergarten class, should you care about the richness in the language that a book does or does not have? What kinds of books are best to read aloud to students if we want to build their vocabularies? If a book has more difficult vocabulary the author needs to ensure that they are placed with in a meaning-clarifying context. The stories we choose to read need to include attractive characters with whom children can identify with, they need to have humor, and a high action plot to help keep their interest. If they cannot identify with the characters they will not pay enough attention to the words of the story to increase their vocabulary.
4. Why do you think you should focus on emphasizing vocabulary in your lessons with students? Does this apply to read aloud activities? Expanding a child’s vocabulary is essential for their future success. If they have a limited vocabulary they will have difficulty reading and in turn will not enjoy reading. This will be detrimental to the expansion of their vocabulary and their writing skills will suffer as well. So emphasis on vocabulary is extremely important because it effects so many aspects of their lives. Read aloud activities are important because it can get students excited about reading and the more they hear the same vocabulary the easier it will be for them to retain it.
5. What role will reading to students play in your teaching? Reading will play a large role in my classroom. I am an avid reader and feel it is the perfect escape for children and will help expand their imagination. I am thinking of teaching 5th grade so reading aloud will not be as frequent as silent reading.
-oOo-
