“What Can I Say Besides ‘Sound it Out?’ Coaching Word Recognition”

This article focuses on the power of coaching students to construct meaning from words, using a variety of cues and prior knowledge including but not limited to phonic elements, familiar spelling patterns, and picture clues. This article outlines a variety of different clues teachers can use to help students recognize and pronounce a word. There are two groups of cues teachers can use: General cues to promote thought and Specific cues to induce a specific action. Under these two categories are ranges of questions a teacher may prompt. General cueing questions may be along the lines of “What are you going to do to help yourself out (reading the word),” “Look for something you already know how to do.” If the student(s) is unable to attain meaning and construct the proper word from general cues, the teacher may use specific cues. Specific cues focus on having the student break down the word into compounds, chunks, look for little words within the whole word, using pictures, and vowel and constant sounds. Most specific cues should help students learn to recognize the different sounds letters can make. Students may also be prompted to look or think about a word family. One teacher interviewed stated that she incorporates the whole class in this learning, asking other students for input and prompting them with questions as well.

“Supporting Phonemic Awareness Development in the Classroom”

Phonemic awareness can often be confused with auditory discrimination, phonics, or phonetics. However, phonemic awareness is defined (according to this article) as the awareness that the speech stream consists of a sequence of sounds, specifically phonemes that make up the smallest difference in sound. Phonological awareness and metalinguistics make up the subparts of phonemic awareness. When you read a child’s writing, it is often obvious that they understand that our language is made up of a string of different letters that make sounds, although they often use incorrect spelling. Phonemic awareness should focus on addressing student from preschool-1^st grade. However, some older students will need more practice. Some helpful exercises teachers may use to develop phonemic awareness are poem readings, focusing on rhyming words, identifying specific units of sound, and cueing.

“Teaching Phonics and Spelling Patterns” Chapter 5

The English language is complex in that it is not a one-sound or one-letter language. Different letters or even words in English can have separate pronunciation or meaning. To help us decipher words we do not know, we use phonics. Good readers are also able to use other tools to help identify an unknown word such as searching their mental bank or using context clues, to name a few. Children can be taught to help figure out a word by thinking if it makes sense in the context. “Guess the covered word” is an activity that can help students learn this trick. The teacher can also use words you already know to help students identify rhyming words or words within the same family. Making words is another great activity to show students all the different words they can make with the same combination of letters.

These readings introduced me to phonemic awareness, some ways to teach it (besides sounding it out), and activities that students will enjoy but ones that are also useful. I am glad that I am being introduced and instructed about different ways to teach students words, besides saying, “just sound it out.” After reading these articles I can see more clearly that the English language is complex, especially to a beginning reader or writer. Letters and words can be pronounced differently; therefore it is not enough to just sound out a letter or word. Students need to be aware of the different sounds letters can make when paired with certain “word families.” Focusing on rhyming words or words that one already knows is a good start to teaching phonemic awareness. I think it is important that students also try and make sense of what they are reading, just as the Cinderella example threw us off in class the other day, the same misunderstanding can certainly happen to young students. I really like the “making words” lesson. This past semester, we had a kindergarten teacher come to our class and show us some ways that she and her students work on phonemic awareness. She too used “making words” and we all got to participate. I actually enjoyed it, so I am sure that her students did as well. With that exercise I was able to make sense of letter combinations that I would not have paired together right off the bat. These readings were a good introduction to phonemic awareness and ways to incorporate teaching it in my classroom. However, I need further clarification on the process, how to identify students who need extra help with this skill, and measures I can take to become more skilled at teaching phonemic awareness myself. I look forward to today’s class helping me more fully understand what all phonemic awareness entails.