Language Development When baby's first cries are answered / when people respond to babies' early attempts to communicate, baby discovers he has an impact on his world and language development is encouraged (Vygotsky).  His Approximations (attempts to communicate) receive positive reinforcement; when they are acknowledged, baby tries again and again...  Language is learned when we need it - we need it to tell mom what we want, so we are motivated to learn the words: "Mom, I want a cookie." Language is learned when we use it - we use it to participate with those around us; this gives us valuable practice and we get better and better.  How do we develop language?  From the moment mom takes time to talk to baby while he feeds. When baby tries to answer back, mom continues the "conversation."  When mom take time to point and label things, baby learns what they are called.  When mom talks "with" baby, baby not only learns language, but the importance of "give and take" in conversations and in life.    When baby grows older, field trips, reading books, variety of experience, someone to discuss these with -- will all help develop competence in language.  The more closely this vocabulary and language structure match the 'readings' in the classroom, the more easily connections can be made (known to unknown).  Caution Visual Discrimination Can they tell the difference between a square and a rectangle, a circle and an oval, and later, b, d, p, q?  Playing with puzzles, manipulating objects large and then small, scribbling/drawing, looking for "Waldo" help children develop this ability.  The more practice with discovering subtle variation in form, line, and shape, the more easily variation in letter forms can be noticed when learning to read (known to unknown).  Auditory Discrimination Can they hear the differences in the sounds around them? (Mother's voice, telephone, keys jangling)  Tapping on pots and pans, listening and marching to a variety of music, talking with baby (taking turns) develop this.  The more practice with listening to and responding to variations in sound, the easier it will be to notice variations in sounds within spoken words (known to unknown).  This leads to phonological awareness (attention to rhyme, alliteration) which, in turn, leads to phonemic awareness (hearing the smallest details in a word).          Auditory(sounds) leads to:          Phonological (words, language) leads to:          Phonemic(sounds in words, e.g,  /c/  /a/  /t/ ) Spatial Awareness Where are they in time and space?  Jumping, running, spinning, dancing, going over & under, left or right, all help develop this awareness.  The more practice moving about in space, noticing certain positions vs others, the better able a child will be in making connections about where the bubble is in relation to the line: b, d, p, q (known to  unknown).  Note:  When he can manipulate and draw these letters and actually FEEL the difference, an additional sensorial experience is there to remind him.  Large Motor Skills Mobiles and hanging toys above baby while changing him give baby something to try to make hand contact with and pull to his mouth to taste once successful (actually his brain is mapping the object through the senses in his mouth). Caution: Keep baby on the floor when changing / they roll off at the most unexpected times, and if not for you, then for the sitter.  Ball games (large balls first and not competitive please /egocentric egos get involved), big blocks, jumping, skipping, hopping, running all help develop these large muscles.  The more development & control a child gains over his large muscles, the more readily he takes control over the small ones (which he will need for writing).   Baby 'generally' develops from top to bottom, from inside to out, from large muscles to small, from hand control to finger.  He learns to tie a simple knot before a bow.  He learns to alternate feet going upstairs before down. He learns to hop on each leg before skipping (Ask him to hop on the 'other' leg and watch him discover he has a strong and a weak leg).  Small, Fine Motor Skills Random scribbles, drawing, cutting, pasting, picking up raisins or pebbles, all help develop  these little finger muscles.  The more practice a child has using hs fine muscles & controlling the marker to produce forms of his choosing (which begin without meaning but soon become meaningful even if not obvious to you), the more success he will experience when he attempts to produce letters.   As his eye gets better and better at directing his hand, the forms and shapes become more and more recognizable.  This is called eye-hand coordination.  Hand Dominance Pouring water into cups, finger-painting, coloring and drawing, using utensils, basically just using hands allot helps a child determine which hand works best for HIM (hand preference / right or left)  Cognitive / Socio-emotional Childen need love, contact, stimulation, to have their basic needs met, to be able to participate and contribute, to become part of the group, to have, earn and keep friends.......to find success.  ..  .  . and we haven't even mentioned so many other important skills such as number concepts which certainly must help children generalize from the one-to-one correspondence (1-1 match) they use in counting, to mapping sounds to letters that make them (alphabetic principle) and the concept of separate words and spaces (print concept) . . .

Phonological Awareness

Being able to hear the sounds in speech / This is a more general all-inclusive term, whereas phonemic awareness a  'higher level" recognition of the individual sounds within a WORD.

Notice we are not talking about alphabet letters here just yet. That comes later.

Children can distinguish these sounds before they know anything about any alphabet letters.Children are  fond of the rhythms produced by language and are attracted to the sometimes funny sounds certain words make.

Saying nursery rhymes, clapping syllables heard in  friends? names, making up silly alliterative  sentences (Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers)  and singing songs all help develop phonological awareness (a general awareness of sounds in speech).Although it may take some time before children can furnish you with a rhyming word,  they recognize words that rhyme quite early on.  Note:  Actually people usually are able to understand and internalize something BEFORE they can actually PRODUCE it. Examples:  babies understand what you say to them but may not yet be able to speak; children and English language learners can understand more than they can say.Children may assume "I want some cookies" = one word (Iwantsomecookies).  Early phonological awareness activities begin at this low level of understanding--discovering that the sentences we say are actually individual words strung together to make meaning.When teaching phonological awareness, we begin with the largest units (sentences) and work our way down to smaller (words, then syllables) and then smaller units (onset-rime ) to finally the tiniest phonemes ( /m/  +  /a/  +  /n/).  This takes time and each builds upon the solid foundation provided at each prior level before advancing forward.  When we are careful to teach the easier level before advancing to the next more difficult level, we call this scaffolding.

Phonemic Awareness
The more difficult skills,  phonemic awareness  (noticing individual sounds within a word),  come later.

When students arrive at this level, they are most inclined to notice the more obvious parts of the word first (such as the beginning sound /K/ in kite, the double K sounds you hear in cracker, even the long vowel in tree).

Some may legitimately argue that alliteration goes here (Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers) since children are attending to that first sound in each of those words at some point.

As children's awareness of the individual phonemes (sounds in words) improves, they are able to discern  (and then repeat) the most subtle of sounds in words,   such as consonant blends (st, bl, str, cl), short vowels (nat, net, nit, not, nut), and diphthongs  (oi as in oil / they kind of glide along / ?vowel blends?). They also notice the funny sounds digraphs make (/ph/, /sh/, /ch/ /th/), although at this level they have no idea digraphs are a combination of letters making ONE unique sound.  They will have to be taught this later.

Sounds that are continuent (aaaaaa,   fffffff,   sssssss) are easier for children to 'hear' than the briefer 'lip poppers' called "stops" such as  /p/  and /t/ (which are not 'voiced') and  /d/ & /b/  ('voiced'). But blends are the hardest (bl, nd, str) especially if a word begins with one.

As they practice manipulating these 'sounds in words' they become more and more aware of them.
 

How  to Teach Phonemic Awareness

Some are more easily learned than others
Blending sounds (/b/ + /a/ + /t/ = bat) is easier to learn than  segmenting  of each  sound in a word ( bat =  /b/  /a/  /t ).

Larger chunks (not words) are easier than smaller units (letters).  For instance, blending b + at into 'bat' is easier than blending b + a + t  into 'bat.'

Substituting sounds in words  is more difficult than all of these (taking one out and putting another in).   Example:  replacing the /c/ sound in the word ?cat?  with the /b/ sound and it becomes bat .

Children generally learn to recognize the larger units  BEFORE the more precise and detailed (FROM counting words in a sentence, to counting the number of syllables in the word, to segmenting onsets & rimes within a word, down to the most difficult, which is noticing and being able to tell you the individual phonemes in a word.

The word DOG is made up of 3 phonemes (3 individual sounds), and they are:   /d/  +  /o/  +  /g/       We put those diacritical marks (little diagonal  marks) around the letters to indicate they are SOUNDS rather than alphabet letters.  For instance, when you see them on a page like this   /d/     you read the sound instead of the letter "d".  When you do not see them, you should read it as a letter  d.  Our example   /d/  might sound something like this:  daaa...ooo....gah (in slow motion) but when you run them together quickly, you get DOG.  While we never really do this when learning to speak, it is helpful to learn the parts of words in order to read them and to write them. How good are you at hearing phonemes?
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Alphabetic Principle:using letter-sounds to "sound out" words. What you must know Phonics - Alphabetic Principal p.95-161 http://idea.uoregon.edu:16080/~ibr/ibr_present/2002/al_june_02_ch2.pdf How do we teach it? http://www.readingrockets.org/lp.php?SCID=13

The better able the child is at noticing the sounds which make up words spoken all around him, the easier research suggests it will be for him to make the necessary connections he will have to make when the teacher teaches him the alphabet letters and asks him to remember which "sound" (he is already familiar with) goes with which letter.

We call this  "learning the Alphabetic Principle ."  This is also referred to as the letter-sound system, or the alphabetic code.   And, yes, some call it  "learning phonics."

Once a child learns "the code," he can use this TOOL to figure out some of those words on the page.   It will also be easier for him when he tries  to write one of those words (as he  attempts to  strrr-et-ch  the word out, segmenting it so he can better distinguish the individual sounds in it.

When children learn to listen carefully for those sounds in words, and are then taught and shown how they match up with the ABC's, research tells us they will be much more prepared to find success in their attempts to read.

Our research also warns us not to forget to give kids books that have decodable text in them so that the kids can practice using this new tool.  Practice makes perfect, you've heard said.  However, we are also cautioned that the texts we give beginning readers must be ones they enjoy and find meaningful.  Early readers (beginning easy reading texts)  that rhyme, are predictable, use simple wording at first, have pictures, and controlled vocabulary that kids know and can relate to (meaningful controlled readers) help ensure success and a smile. Just don't forget to give them "practice" using the alphabetic principle--sounding out decodable words.

Authentic reasons are the best for reading!

When children use the alphabetic principle to attempt to spell words, we call it "Invented Spelling"

What is a  grapheme?
......................................
. . . . .Exploring from Known to unknown.. . . .
Children reflect their environments
The "plastic" resilient brain is very receptive and thrives on varied & stimulating experiences (It is programmed to learn.) Children  are survivors of their environments, and strive to learn the 'rules of the game? they find operating  there.  If a child belongs to a family of swimmers, he will learn to swim; if born to a family of painters, he will be encouraged  to paint; if books and learning are an important part of his world, he will learn to read.

There are many things that should ideally be happening in the home before children come to school that would facilitate their reading success immensely.

Children are learning language from early on:
http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed318230.html
http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed426818.html

"Language learning is a socio-cultural process. To fully function in a particular language, one not only needs to understand the mechanics, such as the grammar, but also to apply that language across various contexts, audiences, and purposes. It is through meaningful interaction  with others as well as functional use in daily life that children develop competence, fluency, and creativity in language. With the increasing number of linguistic minority children in the United States, the school system needs to take into consideration the linguistic knowledge these children possess in their mother tongues in order to design a supportive and effective learning environment. The linguistic resources these children bring into classrooms not only provide a foundation upon which to learn English but they also offer schools and society multicultural perspectives on learning."
Read more: http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed423531.html

Children  come to  kindergarten "packed" full of PK (their own unique and special prior knowledge)

 What gets rewarded?  All humans simply want to participate--to become a contributing part of the existing system.  This is basic!   Good teachers know, that in order to  be  successful at teaching, they must attach learning  to this unique reservoir of  understanding and experience  each individual child carries with him into the classroom  in order to  effectively deliver instruction.

The Language Experience Approach (LEA) does this well.  Somehow, what the teacher has to teach, must connect up with  something the child can attach  it to, in  order for the thread of understanding to continue. (Known to unknown)   You wouldn't try to teach a child to  add 4 + 4 if he didn't know how many 4 was.  If you did, the child would resort to doing what children do best--'copying' you; simply memorizing the answers until he could no longer keep up.  When we don't teach children well, the 'cracks' begin to show up eventually and the 'struggling' learner emerges.
 

We must lay strong foundations for learning.
    Humans are amazingly complex.....so many variables influencing children?s lives   before they ever walk through the doors of our classrooms.   We are just beginning to appreciate how  significant these are ...... as well as the impact we might make intervening  earlier and earlier  (early intervention).      We must begin where we find the child (giving up our old ideas about  reading'readiness' and waiting until a child has passed a certain checklist before we permit him into our schools to begin 'reading') and build from  there  (developmentally appropriate instruction = DAP).

Reading is a process that begins at birth.  It continues on and on and on.  You and I continue to improve our reading as we take responsibility for it and continue to learn and grow....
To begin supporting our young children's success with reading...
...we must meet the learner...in order for...message sent to be  message received.
 

...all this  before  they ever set foot into our kindergartens !

Going to School

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How Did Johnny Learn To Read? When do we "teach" reading? How important is his teacher? Guided Reading

The Levels and Stages of Reading:
All children pass through the following levels and stages when they learn to read but they pass through them at different rates because of the variety of abilities, skills, and opportunities each has had and will have.

.....setting children up for success

1.  Emergent /Beginner Level
(a child just coming to the printed page)
Print Concepts are developing. Simple to develop / Just READ TO THEM!
When there is mutual enjoyment, simply by being next to the reader, the child notices how to hold a book, that exciting stories come from books, that people read from left to right and top to bottom, that books contain words and spaces in between, etc.

Logo graphic Print
Early on, children notice the world is full of signs, and if someone tells them what the McDonald's sign, the Walmart sign, or the STOP sign says, they may remember it and repeat it the next time they see it.  They can even learn to recognize their name, if someone shows it to them.  Someone might think they are really reading until they catch them calling the Welcome mat "Walmart!"  They are focusing on shape. These are beginning connections and a good sign of interest in learning to read.   

Picture Talk
Children enjoy pointing to and  talking about the pictures in the storybook.  These discussions extend vocabulary as well as stimulate further interest in reading.

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Pretends to Read
Children notoriously imitate/COPY those around them. They do this because this is what  the adults reading to them look like they are doing.  The more a child is read to,  the more likely the child will begin this early sign of 'reading.'  They begin by 'telling the story' from memory, but later it begins to sound like 'real reading,' because they have noticed that you sound this way when you read. At some point, often with your help (shared reading) , children begin to notice readers are paying attention to WORDS! They may try to chime in with a word or two as you read to them.

Let the reading begin!

Learns the Alphabetic Principle.
He learns to match the sounds he has been hearing in words to the alphabet letters. His teacher will show him the alphabet letters, tell him their names, and also tell him the sounds each makes. Since he is familiar with these sounds (phonemic awareness) he can easily make this letter-sound connection with a little practice. Eventually, he will be able to say the sound almost automatically (1 per minute) when the teacher points to any letter.  NOW he is ready to "sound out" those "decodable" words (cat, sat, dog, can).  As for words that are not decodable (irregular), he'll have do to alot of reading and over time, he'll just 'remember' seeing them so often, they'll be his, as well (the, are, here, their...).

Give me just the right book!

Decodable, manageable, controlled text 

Books that are leveled (ordered easiest to hardes--so I can find the right for me!)
and controlled (not too many new words at a time)
and decodable (easy letter-sound matching such as man  and dot and fewer words such as knee, are, and shoe)
are often the preferred introduction to reading for these sensitive "fragile" beginning readers. 

These books are step-by-step, so as not to ask a child to read too many new words at one time; they contain  many words which are familiar to the child, usually those which have been taught on the previous levels; they contain a majority of regular words, especially  when being introduced to a new word (regular words are  easily decoded, "sounded out"); and any irregular words  they contain are generally pulled from the  high frequency word list ( those which occur in sentence after sentence /the, are, to, etc), which are words all children must eventually master to sight  (automatic).When beginning text is controlled for giving them something manageable, and when they contain words these beginning readers can decode, we say we have given them controlled, manageable, decodable texts. This makes their early reading experience successful because we are only asking them to try something with which we have 'set them up for success.'  The eager student, enjoying this early success with something quite difficult, is then willing to persevere through more and more words on a page, and with this practice,  and your patience and support (guided reading), he learns to decode those words quite readily, and finds out he CAN READ.  At this time, we can be more casual introducing those wonderful, often more exciting, trade books, but not usually before then.

If  you ,or your student, prefer to use those 'trade' books (described below), which are full of amazing, uncontrolled, often undecodable words, you must be there to support him.  He will need a different kind of practice, more tools in his 'reading tool bag' to figure or guess what those words must be, and your kind and encouraging support  (echo reading, shared reading, choral reading, repeated reading, guided reading, etc.) as he struggles to make sense of so many exciting but unfamiliar words from one book to the next.  IF this support is not offered, you take the real chance of 'turning a child off to reading,' because he finds he cannot do what he has set out to do.  When we are not successful, we shun the activities associated with it.  We must be very careful with that beginning reader.

...But because each of our beginning readers are unique, we must be prepared to meet that early learner in a variety of ways.  While the current "replicable and reliable" research, plus your ExCET exam, prefers that you first offer explicit systematic phonics and lots of decoding practice using controlled manageable texts with this beginning reader, teachers must be aware of other ways to facilitate reading for their students who are not responding to this approach.  Teachers must also remember that we can sometimes get carried away with a 'good idea,' and recognize when phonics has served its purpose and move on.

WORD RECOGNITION - how to teach it
(focus on p. 3-18)
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/reading/products/redbk3.pdf

The 5 BIG IDEAS

Phonemic Awareness
video  handouts  
Phonics
video  handouts  ppt
Fluency
video  handouts  ppt
Comprehension
video  handouts  ppt
Vocabulary
video  handouts

Beg. Writing
video  handouts  

Kindergarten skills list - What's on it?  
TEKS  http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks 

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Community of Readers

When children are given choice  and can read books that interest them, they enjoy reading, and want to read more and more. The more they read, the better they get;  it's  almost that simple!  (Even dyslexic readers will tell  you this.  These are readers that show a discrepancy between their reading skills and what teachers really think they are capable of doing. We find many reasons for this; some of the more popular ones are deficient phonemic awareness, inability to name letters / words as rapidly as their peer readers / rigid reader?, reversing letters, etc.)

Because of this drive to read/conquor books of personal interest to them, children are willing to struggle through (often at frustration level) to determine (comprehend) a book's message.  Since they are not familiar with many of the words, and because there are so many 'irregular' words (words they cannot 'sound out' such as 'are,'  'knee,'  'croquet'), children must resort to other strategies, in addition to grapho-phonics (decoding) to 'unlock' the many confusing words they find in these texts.

This  excitement over reading produces quite a meaningful engagement with literature, which is what Whole Language is all about.  In trying to read difficult texts, it helps if the text is predictable in some way, if it contains vocabulary words the reader already knows, if sentence structure is familiar and similar to the way the child speaks, it helps if  the child has heard the story many times before so he can better guess at any unknown words, it helps if many of the sentences or ideas in the story are repeated,etc.

 If necessary, the child will also resort to cueing systems  other than grapho-phonics (a big word for phonics), especially if teachers "model" these for them so they can see how to do it. They may use  semantics (if I read it this way, does it MAKE SENSE?), syntax (if I read it this way, does it sound like a REAL SENTENCE? / of course, this is not as helpful for the  child who speaks predominantly in another language, or even with a dialect), context (other clues in the sentence tell me the word can only be this / something this paper is doing for you), and picture cues (the picture tells me what the word is) to help figure out what the words say.

The child may be so eager to get the message, and find sufficient meaning in the parts he is able to read, that he can even afford to skip over some of the words and still not lose the essence of the message; if you think about it, even you conflitulate when you come across a word in a sentence you do not know.  (Did you stop at the word I made up for you, or did you skip over it and try to absorb it in context?)

Running Records
 http://www.education.sfasu.edu/ele/classes/abel/rrhow.html

When we want to record what a child does when he reads,  we can take a running record. This information will help us decide what book level will be best for the child.  The miscues this child makes while reading signal to us the strategies he is strongest in using and when we notice he is not using a particular strategy, we can begin to "coach" him (during instructional level reading) to start using it. This gives him more and more "tools" in his "toolbox" for reading and can help make him a more effective "strategic" reader.

Motivation is KEY

When children read for a purpose, when they want to read a passage or a book, they almost naturally  comprehend  what is read and are able to tell you something about it.  When children are forced to read material they do not enjoy, or are asked to do too many  long and detailed  write-ups after reading, they can be 'turned off' to reading.

At best, those students who put up with reading even though they have been turned off in some way,  find themselves in a situation which may be analogous to driving a car to work or school early in the morning, and getting there but forgetting the drive!  You had placed yourself on 'automatic pilot' allowing your mind to drift to some other salient (interesting) place.

This, in part, may explain your 'word callers,' who seem to read with no comprehension, simply calling out the words as they go along in rather mindless fashion. 

Other reasons for 'word callers' include a child reaching frustrational level (too hard / recognizes less than 90% of the words)  while reading and with each struggle at each word, certainly finds no space left in his very occupied brain to do much comprehending, much less recalling what was read at the very beginning of such a looooong sentence! 

Word callers may also simply be imitating what they think adults are doing (again / they copy all the time!!), and teachers will have to invite them to begin thinking about what they are reading by posing interesting, challenging, thought-provoking, higher-order  thinking questions  (if you are doing this right, they should all be one and the same!) to stimulate interest.  Carefull -- let's not go overboard. Reading is to be enjoyed--not interrogated.

When new readers first learn to read, they  struggle with almost each and every word.  There is controversy over how best to teach children to read. For their  first attempts at  reading, young fragile readers may do best with a significant amount of the text being easily decodable, especially if they are being asked to read for a grade, in front of peers, or to read a piece they did not select.  But when young readers find a book or piece of writing THEY choose to read, this  too  can result in reading achievement (especially if much of it repeats itself, is familiar  to the child, is predictable, etc.),  and is especially supportive of any child who resists the first approach (and vice versa).

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2. Developing Fluency

Building a bank of sight words.
Words found in almost every book are called 'high frequency" words (the, on, in, to, are, and) /many of the words, in fact, that you see in each of these sentences. 

Some of these words are easily decodable / we call them regular:  on, in, and

Others are not easy to "sound out" /  we call them irregular:  are,  the,  to

When children see these over and over, they begin to remember them and can call them out readily.  This speeds up reading quite a bit.

An analogy:
Did you ever watch a child playing a board game? 
He will laboriously count dot after dot to determine he is to move his piece 5 spaces.  On the next throw that is also 5, he will begin counting again.  Next throw, more counting, and so on.  Eventually, he will 'get it,' and an "a ha!" expression comes over his face.  He announces " 5 " proudly without counting and moves his piece forward.  It is this way with learning to recognize words.  Children decode the new words slowly and laboriously, over and over again.  Eventually, he remembers he saw this word before, and, almost by magic,
                                                            . . . .it becomes "his!"

Children  must see them and see them again, then see them again.  This repetition facilitates bringing them to memory.  For some, the visual memory is quicker. It has been found to take up to l4 exposures to a word before a child can easily remember it "by sight."  How long does it take you to learn to recognize words (or symbols) "by sight:"  http://pbskids.org/sagwa/games/picturesaswords/

 Practice, practice, practice

As with anything, lots of practice is helpful.  When provided with authentic  reasons to read,children are motivated and WANT to read, and with every word read/repeated, a huge repertoire of known words, in addition to the high frequency words,  begins to build (sight word vocabulary);   they also become facile (automatic / fluent) in decoding and unlocking new words as they are encountered, using all of the strategies they have learned to help them be successful.

    Fluency = quick automatic word recognition + prosody (expression)

When children see themselves as successful, they will want to 'play.'  If not, you will lose them to something else that will give them the recognition all humans crave. While no human deserves too much recognition, ALL humans deserve to play the game--to become a contributing and succeeding part of the big picture--with reading, and in life.  Helping kids build a strong foundation for and experience reading success is the first BIG step.  Keeping them interested and not turning them off, is the next.  "Hook" them onto reading, and the rest takes care of itself!  More on fluency below.
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Orthographic Knowledge
As children read words over and over, even those which are not 'sight words,' they become familiar with certain English 'patterns' in these words and then do not  have to resort to the slower process of 'sounding them out.'

Some call them 'word families',  Benchmarks, onsets and rimes, phonograms, and word chunks (at, cat, mat).  If you can read these words, you will see what I mean:
                                                lanification      baskinots      monitating

These are not real words, but  you had no problem 'reading' them. You can probably tell me which one is the verb, as well.  This is because you have  developed 'orthographic knowledge'  from all of your reading.  It speeds up your reading when you no longer have to laboriously sound out each letter to figure out words.

Once you develop this ability, you are able to scan over words more quickly, and your reading becomes fluent.

Game:  http://www.humorsphere.com/fun/colortest.swf  Notice that you are such a good reader that it is hard for you NOT to read the word; less fluent readers will be noticing the colors 'better' than you! Your non-readers should score l00 on their first try but it is unlikely you will.  Try it. It takes only a few minutes.

Word knowledge & structure can help
Clearly, having an extensive vocabulary can eliminate a lot of the struggle upon meeting a new word on the page.  If a child comes across a word he has never seen in print, he will resort to using one or more of his decoding / cueing  strategies until he is satisfied with the word he settles for--the one which makes the most sense, given the text before him.  If he were, for instance, to come across the word, trampoline, he would notice the sentence was looking for a noun by the way this word was used in the sentence.  Next, he would notice people were jumping on it, from the  way the word was used in context, with other words helping to describe it.  As he 'sounded' out  (decoded) the word, he might mispronounce it at first with the  long vowel in 'line.'

We call these mistakes miscues.*   Alert competent teachers use this information to inform their teaching.  But, for this child who already knows this word but simply has never seen it in print before, the light goes on!  He quickly recognizes the word because he knows it and with all of the other information suggesting to him that this is the word he suspects it is, he  self-corrects quickly (informed teachers looks upon this behavior favorably since they know self-corrections are a sign of comprehension (thinking while reading), restating  the word correctly this time, and with barely a pause, continues without losing his train of thought.  A child whose vocabulary is less developed will be somewhat blocked here.  If that child begins to encounter more vocabulary word blocks, his reading fluency and very likely his comprehension will begin to drop rapidly.
 

If this same child is reading along, and comes across the word hypogeal but finds himself still confused because he does not recognize this word (because it is not in his speaking or listening vocabulary), he may use yet another strategy to figure out this word.  Perhaps upon  second glance,  he notices hypo which means "under."  Maybe, too, he recognizes geo, and from his PK knows it means "earth."  Now he is in the position to bring meaning to this 'unknown' word because he is familiar with the meaning of some root words (geo) and affixes (in this case it is the prefix, hypo). Here are some root words and prefixes children can learn to help them: http://www.getwords.com/14-words.html word parts: http://www.wordfocus.com/
Here are some of the most important affixes  words teachers can teach their students.

Morphemes  (smallest meaningful word parts) can help provide clues to meaning.  A word ending in -ed   quickly suggests something already occurred, while a word ending in  s   means more than one.  On the other hand, the word "salamander" is also a morpheme, surprisingly, since there are no other parts to it--the word "salamander" is all you have and this ONE word (in this case, also, morpheme) carries meaning, just as the "s" on the end of a word.
 

Chapter books appear. 
At first, these long books without pictures are intimidating to young readers.  They do not yet realize that they know most of the high frequency words in them, and that their cueing strategies are sophisticated enough to conquer most new words.

It helps to "model" unlocking those big scary compound words  (houseboat = house + boat) and addressing affixes (prefixes and suffixes) which may deter them (structural analysis).

When teachers or parents 'bait' them by reading the first chapter, and share some of the initial reading with them (Sachar's "Wayside Stories" is a great one for this), young readers jump to the challenge with eager anticipation.

This intrinsic  motivation (personal, real, authentic) is a real reward for reading and in the long run, so much more satisfying than points or candy (extrinsic motivators for reading).

Esteem rises with earned success as children are authentically intrinsically rewarded for their efforts.

Sometimes children may need a little boost.  Sometimes they do not read as fluently as they need in order to 'sit back,' relax, and enjoy the reading process.  Sometimes they are so busy trying to decode the words on the page that they even forget to think or perhaps can NOT think as they are reading.  Analogous to patting your head while rubbing your tummy, walking and chewing gum, or even driving a car with a 'stick' while trying to pay attention to traffic and everything else, reading can be a daunting task for some.

Building fluency may  provide a solution if you find a child is not learning to recognize these words quickly.  Late first grade
is the earliest this should even be considered and only after you are sure the student has learned to read and can decode well and read some words rather effortlessly. You should use easy level text, never frustrational, to encourage your student to practice reading his favorite stories repeatedly and then charting his progress on a chart.  This concrete form of seeing the improvement right before his eyes may help spur him onward to continue working to build fluency even further.   Readers' theater and partner reading can build fluency, too.

Fluency Rates

Please remember that these are simply strategies, or Band-Aids, for helping children improve skills.  It never replaces good  old-fashioned reading pleasure.  But when we find a child is behind, for some reason, and we feel we don't have time to allow it to repair itself in a more natural way, we may resort to using these nifty ideas to synthetically push the reader along.  If we are careful NOT to turn the child off, in the process, we can actually produce a more efficient and effective reader, and even find the child more pleased than before with his new progress.  This can have a profound effect on a child who, up to this point, did not see himself as a successful reader.    We must always remember , however, not to lose sight of our most effective goal--helping children to find purpose and enjoyment in reading so that they seek it for themselves (ownership).

Invented Spelling
Given the opportunity, children happily make random markings on paper, first for the sheer feel and thrill of moving the marker over the paper, but later, in attempt to express themselves.  Eventually, these markings will begin to resemble "real" print in some ways, and at some point, a real alphabet letter (usually the first sound they hear in the word they are  attempting to write) actually emerges. When  there  is no connection to letter sounds representing words the child wants to communicate, we refer to this as Pre-phonemic, meaning BEFORE sound.


During the phonemic level of invented spelling, children begin 'sounding out' words to figure out how to spell them, in order to label a drawing or write a story  (usually just a sentence at first).  They generally just put down the first sound they hear (which is usually the first letter in a given word).  They tend to "box" or "frame" their words in reading and spelling, and the next letter they will "hear" and place in their invented word is usually the final sound (the last letter).  The word tape, then, would be spelled TP, and the word face, might be spelled FC.

Finally, and lastly, they are ready to include medial sounds. When they become better at inventing their spelling and streeeetching out their words to discern what is in the middle, they may write the word tree this way:  TRE   or  they may write the word desk as DSK.   Medial (middle) sounds are now appearing, but only the more 'dominant' sounds (easiest to hear). Short vowels are difficult for children to tell apart, and thus, many do not appear accurately until later.

This is where their phonemic awareness comes in handy.
How is yours? http://www.education.sfasu.edu/ele/classes/abel/318PApractice.html
When these children get even better at this, it shows up in their invented spellings.

As we enter the transitional level, you will begin to notice something else happening: Their spellings are almost right--Grandma could read them and probably guess what they are trying to spell with little difficulty.  This is because their invented spellings look more and more like the conventional (correct) spelling.  Because these children have been reading by now, their 'visual memories' are developing, and they may simply remember to put in a vowel or two, just because they know one should be in there somewhere.  They have also be learning some spelling rules.  For instance, a child who has heard "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking."  may remember to add an extra vowel, even though he may add the wrong one or put it in the wrong place.  The resulting word, however, looks more like the correct one.  Also, by now, some children may have learned that each syllable should have a vowel, so they remember to add vowels to their writings, whereas, only weeks or months before, none were 'heard' and, therefore, none were added. Now we are seeing words spelled like this:   tape  =  TAEP   There is usually evidence there is some thinking going on beyond the 'letter for each sound heard' approach.

Conventional spelling level: By around the third grade, we begin to expect our students  to become accountable for "correct"  (conventional ) spelling, and we teach them dictionary skills and how to use spell-checkers to do this.  Of course, we all make an error once in awhile, but a "good speller" can recognize when a word doesn't 'look right' and knows how to take steps to correct it.

We also find that certain people (often with preferred modalities for auditory learning which may explain their facility with language and their sharp memories) simply do not spell well.  Hopefully, teachers will not make this a primary focus, but rather center on instruction that will help them take control for learning those basic high frequency words, certain helpful spelling patterns, and how to use word processing and other tools to clean up the rest.  When an audience must read our writing, it must be correct.  These invented spellings are only acceptable during DRAFTing and quick-writes. When children are young, the teacher can step in to help.  As they grow older, they take accountability for this themselves. 

Teaching Spelling
http://www.readingrockets.org/lp.php?SCID=17

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Writing  supports reading.

Reading and Writing support each other.
When children are encouraged to write their reactions to books they have read, experiences they have had, feelings they want to share, and when teachers do not insist on every word being spelled correctly, allowing children to "invent their spellings," (just as they once learned to speak using "approximations" to express themselves),  they are able to share quite sophisticated writings,and enjoy doing so.

Compare these sentences:

This  struggle to create writing extends into their decoding success with reading as children gain practice with, and eventually master, phonemic segmentation. (knowing which letter/sounds to use where).  This is one of the places you find 'phonics' in Whole Language classrooms.  It is also a good place to see the teacher's on-going assessment in action.  She records a reminder on her chart that the next time she conferences (has a private discussion) with this student or responds to her in her dialog journal [where the teacher and student write back and forth and the teacher deliberately uses some of the words the student misspells, "modeling" the appropriate way to write them when she writes back to her], that she will teach her the CVCe spelling pattern (cake, make, kite, cute, lake, and of course, came and gate).  All of this is referred to as "analytic" phonics because it deals with the 'whole' before breaking it down into parts for analysis, then returning to the 'whole' again.   Synthetic phonics begins like regular phonics instruction, with the letters, then sounds, then blending sounds, then making words, and building from there / part to whole.  Some people call this the "skills approach" to reading (or Bottom-up). Read about the models for teaching reading.
 

Prewriting(also known as brainstorming or rehearsal) refers to the first of 5 stages, where the student decides what to write about.  Sometimes teachers will have to help  him narrow his topic if he should, for instance, decide to write about animals.

The next stage is drafting.  Getting ideas down on paper in whatever messy fashion necessary in order to keep from losing any exciting thoughts, is the intent here. If the child were to stop and look up spelling, for instance, he would interrupt the 'flow of words' and much could be lost doing this.

Once he has his ideas down on paper, he can breathe more easily and go back for the revision stage.  Now he has time to  cut/paste,  fix it up.  He may consult with peers or with the teacher (conferencing) to get constructive  feedback(positive/helpful ideas) on how he might improve it as well as support and praise for the parts he did well.

Now comes the editing stage, where he will  use  a checklist that reminds him what to look for. His teacher and friends can also help him do this.  Some writings are so good, that students decide to "publish" them.  Not all writings go to this final publication stage, but the ones that do, become serious business.  They are edited with the teacher's help in Standard English (some people call it "correct" English, but they are referring to the generally accepted English, TV broadcasters use in communicating to a broad informed audience). Less frequently, they might try to edit it for an audience with an unusual dialect, but they recognize that they are writing for a specific audience here.

Publications even have an author's page and are reproduced in a very fancy book that the student will read from the exciting, important, often unique "author's chair" for the whole class to enjoy.  The student may consider donating it to the school library or entering it in a contest; both, popular authentic  purposes  (real reasons) for writing. This exciting writing triggers reading which triggers more writing....

Some characteristics we look for in their writing / a rubric
Stories to teach English: http://www.comenius.com/fables/

topMetacognition. . . I picture myself reading and tell myself what to do.

As children gain in their ability to read, with lots of practice, practice, practice, they  get better and better at doing this  in almost unconscious fashion. Some refer to what they do when they read, as  'metacognition', which is adjusting reading behavior to meet the demands of the text before them.  Do you slow down when you read difficlt text books or difficult articles?

Depending upon the task at hand, the reader will almost automatically speed up (to scan a text for quick information), slow down (to read expository texts on science or social studies), reflect on past experiences to bring understanding to situations being described with only some familiarity, determine which  to use,  decoding  (to unlock words easily 'sounded out'), semantics, syntax, etc. Teachers will "model" this for the student  who does not do this on his  own.  They 'think out loud' as they demonstrate this for students.  As with the self-taught tennis player, a little coaching can only improve his game!

Children learn (reflect) what they are taught. This may sound rather simple, but when phonics is strictly encouraged,
children become good at it.  This is what they choose to use every time they encounter an unknown word.  And, that is often all they use.  Because this works much of the time, they can become successful  readers.Children who are encouraged to use a variety of strategies to unlock unknown words, develop a more 'flexible' reading style, and their minds learn to 'jump outside the box,' so to speak, as they search around in their minds for a strategy which will work in the given situation.  Consistent with brain research, giving children's minds alternatives and practice using many avenues for providing solutions to the unknown words, it is obvious significant benefit can only result from this approach, as well.  It especially frees up children to approach any book around them in the real world that they should decide they want to read. Some day, researchers might be able to point directly to this 'flexing of the mind in mental gymnastics'  as significantly helpful in assisting the rather rigid behavior of certain struggling readers.

This constant drive to be the best she can be through taking advantage of opportunities to improve her teaching and
his or herself is called Professional Development.

Conferences:http://www.ascd.org/trainingopportunities/conferences.html
Issues: http://www.publicagenda.org/
What Texas expects: https://secure.sbec.state.tx.us/SBECOnline/login.asp
10 Tips for Reading Teachers http://www.rif.org/parents/tips/default.mspx
Understanding "the research" http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/html/stanovich/
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3. Independent    / Mature Reader

Reading to Learn
but, still  'concrete' (literal)  readers.

Reading has finally become quite a pleasure. If everything has gone well for children up to this point, reading is finally easy for them.  This is expected to happen around the 3rd grade level.  They can identify words easily as their eyes scan across the page.  Because it is no longer a struggle to identify most words they are being asked to read in 3rd grade, they can now focus on getting content; they begin to learn more and more about the world around them.

Textbook reading now enters the picture, if it hasn't already.  Since the structure of these expository texts may not be  as familiar to them as those exciting and simple narrative "stories," they may again slow down in their attempts to extract meaning while trying to understand their science or social studies textbooks. Since they have developed this reading fluency with word identification, their time can spent learning the various text structures to help them anticipate the metacognitive strategies they will be required to use as they read to learn.  Read more about diverse students and diverse texts.

This level of reading development is named after the Independent Level of ability in reading.  When reading is easy; we call it Independent Level reading. This, of course, can happen at any stage where the child knows a good 95% or more of the words.  (If a child who is just beginning to learn to read saw the same two words on every page of his book, and if he could read each of them easily, we could actually say he is reading at his independent level of because it is an EASY level for him!)  Try to understand the different uses of this identical term.

At the independent level of reading, no matter what child you are talking about, whether he is a lst grade beginning level reader,or a 3rd grade independent level terrific reader, reading at this level of word recognition would entitle the reader to easily skip any unknown words and not lose much, if any, of the message at all!  Although children love reading at every stage, certainly this is the stage where it becomes second nature and there is no longer a concern about knowing how  to read.  As stated above, we like to see strong independent level readers  reading at the independent level of ability around 3rd grade.

Book Levels - Lexile
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/curriculum/lexile/

For readers who are progressing normally, it is often not before the middle of second grade that the ability to read with expressive fluency and comprehension emerges reliably (Chall, 1983; Gates, 1947; Gray, 1937; Ilg and Ames, 1950). Clinical (Harris and Sipay, 1975) evidence and laboratory (Stanovich, 1984) evidence concur that children who can read second-grade texts accurately can read and learn from text with reasonable efficiency and productivity on their own, provided the text level is appropriate. One of the most important questions for second- and third-grade teachers is therefore how best to help children reach this level. Given that the goal is to help children learn to read the words and understand them too, a promising tactic would seem to be to engage them in more connected reading of appropriate text.  It has long been appreciated that a critical factor in considering the learning impact of time spent reading is the difficulty of the text relative to the student's ability. Common terms to describe differences among text are the following:  The independent reading level is the highest level at which a child can read easily and fluently: without assistance, with few errors in word recognition, and with good comprehension and recall.  The instructional level is the highest level at which the child can do satisfactory reading provided that he or she receives preparation and supervision from a teacher: errors in word recognition are not frequent, and comprehension and recall are satisfactory.  The frustration level is the level at which the child's reading skills break down: fluency disappears, errors in word recognition are numerous, comprehension is faulty, recall is sketchy, and signs of emotional tension and discomfort become evident (cited in Harris and Sipay, 1975).  Regardless of a child's reading ability, if too many of the words of a text are problematic, both comprehension and reading growth itself are impeded. As a general rule, it has been suggested that error rates for younger poorer readers should not exceed 1 word in 20 which is 95% accuracy (Clay, 1985; Wixson and Lipson, 1991). If the goal is to increase reading proficiency as quickly as possible, however, this creates a dilemma: whereas children are capable of learning little from text that is beyond their independent level  (frustration level), there is little new for them to learn from text that is beneath their instructional level (too easy).  Source: "The Research" Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children  / Chap.6 Catherine E. Snow, M. Susan Burns, and Peg Griffin, Editors SUM:  Guided reading next to the informed competent teacher at independent level reading stimulates growth in reading. What exactly that level is, however, varys some.  For teachers in Texas, the following guidelines appear to be recommended (TEA): Independent = 95% and above Instructional = 90 - 94% Frustrational = below 90% accuracy

Time Spent Reading independently

%

Per day

Words per year

98	1 hour	4,358,000
90	1/2 hour	1,823,000
80	15 min.	1,146,000
70	10 min.	622,000
60	5 min.	432,000
30	1 min.	106,000
Bottom 2% of class	Less	very few

Frequent reading of books of personal interest, help  vocabulary and knowledge soar  and  push the reading level even higher.  As children begin to struggle again, they may drop back to an Instructional Level (where they are forced to begin using their decoding skills, such as phonics,  and other strategies to attack the unknowns which begin appearing).  If it becomes even m