Phonological awareness free essay sample

Phonological awareness is the ability hears and manipulates the sound structure of language. This is an encompassing term that involves working with sounds of languages at the word, syllable, and phoneme level. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sound in spoken words, and the understanding that the spoken word and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds ( Yopp, 1992) Phonological Awareness is the understanding that spoken language conveys thoughts in words that are composed in sounds (phonemes) specific to that language. It is the understanding that: Words are composed of different sounds (phonemes) Phonemes can blended together to make words, words can be separated into phonemes and phonemes can be manipulated to billed new words. Phonemic Awareness_____________________________________________________ This is the students awareness of the smallest units of sound in a word. It also refers to a students ability to segment, blend, and manipulate these units. We will write a custom essay sample on Phonological awareness or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page A student with phonemic awareness hears three sounds in the word bat: /b/, /a/, and /t/. Phonemic awareness is the key indicator of a child’s success in learning to read and central to later spelling achievement. (Stanovich, 1986,1994; Ehri, 1984) Children who have phonemic awareness skills are likely to have an easier time learning to read and spell than children who have few or none of these skills. (Armbruster and Osborne, 2002) Children who cannot hear or manipulate the sounds that make up words will have severe difficulty connecting sounds to individual letter symbols and combinations of letters. (Adams, 1990) R Language Experience Approach (LEA)_____________________________ The language experience approach is an approach to reading instruction based on activities and stories developed from personal experiences of the learner. The stories about personal experiences are written down by a teacher and read together until the learner associates the written form of the word with the spoken. Benefits Here are some benefits of the language experience approach: It brings together writing, reading, art, and language. It extends the learners creativity in storytelling through writing. It helps learners understand that what they think and say can be written. It is learner-centered and demonstrates that the learners thoughts and language are valued. It provides reading material that is predictable and readable because it uses the learners natural language. Strengths of the LEA Phonemic awareness is the key indicator of a child’s success in learning to read and central to later spelling achievement. (Stanovich, 1986,1994; Ehri, 1984) Children who have phonemic awareness skills are likely to have an easier time learning to read and spell than children who have few or none of these skills. (Armbruster and Osborne, 2002) Children who cannot hear or manipulate the sounds that make up words will have severe difficulty connecting sounds to individual letter symbols and combinations of letters. (Adams, 1990) Weaknesses of the LEA Time demands on teacher. Teacher must organize instruction, take dictation, plan individual programs, monitor No daily lesson plans provided No preplanned scope sequence of skills No control of initial vocabulary presented Limited number of commercial programs available to assist teacher Basal Approach______________________________________________ Basal/skills-based approaches break down the acts of reading and writing into a series of discrete skills. These skills are then sequenced and grouped into levels. Herein, children can take objective tests that place them into levels. The teacher can provide instruction on the skills specified for that level. The children can practice the skills that pertain to their level until they demonstrate sufficient proficiency to continue with the skills on the next level. While other approaches address the same reading and writing skills what is unique about basal/skills approaches is that these skills are addressed because a child, based on objective tests, fits into a certain skill levelwhich focuses on a list of specified skills. Basal/skills approaches are also unique because they rely on behavioral theories of learning. Specifically, basal/skills approaches focus on drill and practice exercises with each skill. In order to provide sufficient practice with each skill, these exercises commonly isolate the skills from the context of reading or writing authentic text. After ample practice and the development of proficiency, children use these skills in the context of authentic reading and writing. Strengths The highly pre-planned nature of basal readers is seen as one of their strengths, as this eases the load on teachers, particularly those who are inexperienced. Specific skills can be easily targeted, tested, and remediated. Those with very controlled vocabulary usage may ease difficulties for beginner or weak readers. Students who are reading below grade level will receive some benefits from using the on-level basal. The exposure will prepare them for state testing. Using a basal reader as a starting point for grade level reading allows educators to quickly assess student reading level. Basals are not meant to be the only resource a student uses, just the starting point. Weaknesses Some of the ostensible benefits of basal readers are viewed as shortcomings by critics of these books. Critics charge that they focus on teaching isolated skills, rather than fostering an enjoyment and appreciation of reading for its own sake, and that more time is spent on the supplemental worksheets than on actually reading authentic texts. The quality of the literature in the reading books is another target of criticism. Works chosen mainly to allow skills practice may not be particularly meaningful, authentic, or interesting. Critics of the basal reader industry, such as Rafe Esquith in his book, Teach like Your Hair is on Fire, blame the readers for the failure of schools to teach reading. Esquith questions the ability of the basal readers to stimulate students interest in reading. Other critics question the use of materials which lack any scientific evidence of effectiveness and point to the widespread failure of schools to teach reading as proof that basal readers are a waste of time. Onset and Rimes____________________________________________________ Onset and Rime are technical terms used to describe phonological units of a spoken syllable. A syllable can normally be divided into two parts: the onset, which consists of the initial consonant or consonant blend, and the rime which consists of the vowel and any final consonants. So in the word strap, str is the onset and ap is the rime. Words which share the same rime will also rhyme, but the spelling will be constant and not vary as it does with rhyme. In the word black /bl/ is the onset and /ack/ is the rime. Shared Reading_________________________________________________________ Shared Reading is a type of focus lesson in which either enlarged print is utilized, or all students have the text to â€Å"share† the reading process with a group of students. The teacher uses this time, explicitly modeling reading strategies and skills that the students need to learn. The responsibility for reading is â€Å"shared† between the teacher and the students, although the teacher reads most of the text. Interactive Read Aloud Interactive Read Aloud is a time when the teacher reads a piece of quality writing aloud to the whole class and stops at planned points to ask questions that elicit student response. Students learn to think deeply about text, to listen to others, and to grow their own ideas. Concepts Of Print_______________________________________________ So what are concepts of print? Basically, Concepts about print is what we know about print or more specifically written language: It is important for children to understanding that the print (not the picture) tells the story. The Concepts of Print task is a way for teachers to discover what children already know about the way we print language and what has yet to be learned. This task is an observation task that really taps into what the learners have noticed about the written language around them in their environment. It is important to note that this assessment was not designed to reveal how much a child knows about print? it is more a matter of discovering what Experiences they have had with print, what they have noticed and what they have ignored. It is easy to determine what a child knows about print when using the Concepts about Print observation task, and teachers will be better prepared to advance any child’s understanding when they know what the child is already attending to, rightly or wrongly Children should know As preschool children engage with printed materials they learn things, such as looking through a book in an orderly of fashion. However, there is so much more to learn about written language. When does one start to notice print? In what direction does one move? How does one move through a word? It is easy for adults to underestimate the complexity of the rules surrounding written print and it is equally easy for children to pick up strange ways of exploring print. For print to work, children must accept our writing conventions such as, writing top to bottom and left to right, the correct formation of letters, that clusters are called words, that there are first letters and last letters in a word, that you can choose uppercase and lowercase letters, that spaces are there for a reason, and that different punctuation marks signal different meanings. It is important to remember that learning the conventions of writing will occur over an extended period of time.