READING QUESTION/ANSWER

Alphabetic Principle

An understanding that specific letters are used in print to represent specific speech sounds

What are some ways to develop children's oral language in the classroom.

As teachers we can promote oral language learning with conversation, instructions and directions, dialogic reading, interviewing student's, & having them explain their train of thought.

Why is learning to read considered so important for young children.

Because it increases vocabulary, to increase knowledge of print, to communicate, because you learn how to write, because the inability to read is a National Health Risk.

Why is vocabulary knowledge a vital component in the reading process? Which factors contribute to differences in vocabulary development? Explain what the research says about how vocabulary should be taught.

Because reading comprehension and writing composition or dependent on word knowledge. They mean factors of contributing to differences in vocabulary development include exposure, reading levels, and time spent writing. Research shows us that we should teach vocab explicitly and incidentally. We need to teach how to construct vocab from context. Instruction must have multiple exposures, a depth of learning, and breadth of word knowledge.

How do effective teachers teach PA to young children?

By exposing them to print, providing literary activities, playing word games, reading aloud, having them read (or listen to) nursery rhymes, teach students how to manipulate phonemes, showing alphabetic principle.

What does it mean to decode and why is it important to learn the skill early?

Decoding is a skill that helps us figure out the pronunciation of an unknown word encountered in print by breaking it down. Decoding is important to learn early because it helps children blend graphemes together to form a word they understand. Children start small and work their way to reading fluently.

What does research say about the relationship between oral language and reading ability? State what is known and support answer.

Deficits in oral language can ultimately limit a child's learning of reading and writing. This is because the more exposure they have to phonemes, phonology, semantics, & pragmatics, the more children will be able to bridge the gap in the alphabetic principle.

Define fluency. Why is it important for children to be fluent readers? What can teachers do to help develop/ improve fluency in their student's?

Fluency is decoding words automatically with accuracy, speed, expression, and phrasing. Fluency is important because without it children have to pay so much attention to decoding that there is little brainpower left for comprehending. Teachers can provide reading practice, use repeated reading, model reading fluency, use oral and silent reading, and use monitoring.

Explain the differences between an expert reader and a novice. What does research say about comprehension instruction? What are five things teachers can do to improve the students comprehension of text?

Fluent readers focus on understanding text, syncs skills of decoding, vocab, and comprehension, read with speed and accuracy. Nonfluent readers focus on decoding, assess text word by word, and make a lot of errors and identification. A major goal of instruction is for students to build Linguistic and conceptual knowledge about the world. Teachers can improve students comprehension by doing read alouds, using a variety of book genres, giving students books to read about their instructional level, discussing ideas and words and front loading.

In our PowerPoint by Dr. Dole, we thoroughly discussed seven comprehension strategies. Name and explain how you would use four of them in your future classroom.

I would have my students generate questions to ask me or see if the text answers their questions. I can ask the students questions along the way to check for comprehension. As a class we can read half of the story and I can ask them to predict what will happen. At the end of the story I can ask the students to write a summary of what happened.

What are three processes to teach letter recognition effectively? Provide a sample activity for each process.

Letter recognition is taught by searching for letters, writing letters, and letter name instruction. We can have students search for letters in a small books when we read them as a class. We can have the students practice writing letters by providing a tracing paper for one letter at a time. We pace our instruction depending on the needs of our student's.

What role does phonemic awareness play in learning to read and write?

PA provides a background for reading because it shows that words are made of phonemes, helps build alphabetic principle, works with blends of parts of words, helps students learn how to spell, and allows students to learn similarities between words that rhyme or have the same prefix/ suffix.

Define phonemic awareness and describe its developmental process/ stages. Provide and example of each level.

Phoneme, Word part, Whole word. Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, & work with individual sounds in speech. PA has 3 different levels. The first is the phoneme level which deals with individual sounds in a word by blending, segmenting, deletion, & manipulation. For example /K/A/T/ becomes KAT. The next level is the word part level. This deals with the separate parts of a word such as syllables & onset/rime. For example, the onset is the "C" in CAT and the rime is the "AT". The third level is the whole word level, which deals with differences and similarities of the entire word, such as rhyming and alliteration. An example of rhyming is cat and hat.

Describe at least five evidence based characteristics of effective early reading instruction.

Phonemic awareness, alphabetics, fluency, vocabulary, & comprehension. Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, & work with individual sounds in speech. Alphabetics deals with spoken sounds and the way they are represented with letters. Fluency is reading that is the effortless and automatic ability to read and understand. Vocabulary is the words a person knows. Comprehension is the ability to understand what was read.

Describe three ways that you plan to differentiate instruction in your classroom. Provide examples to support your responses.

RTI, Instructional time, Small groups for intense instruction. We can differentiate instruction by using RTI, which has 3 tiers to help with any struggles a student may have, because they receive more individualized instruction. We can provide more instructional time to concrete knowledge and answer any questions students may have. We can increase intensity of instruction in small groups, this makes instruction more individualized. We can give specific feedback to our students so they can know which skills they should target.

What is reading? What does reading do for the mind?

Reading is to look at and comprehend print by mentally interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is made of. Reading results in cognitive growth in things such as vocab, verbal intelligence, general knowledge about the world, increase decoding ability, & produce higher achievement.

Students need to recognize when comprehension breaks down. And they also need to know what to do when it occurs. Explain three strategies that they can employee in the event of comprehension failure.

Story map, KWL, T-Chart, Vhen Diagram Students can use a story map to outline the aspects of the story and keep track of what they don't understand. Students can write KWL's to track what they know, want to know, and learned. Students can use t charts to sort cause-and-effect or van diagrams for sorting comparison.

Explain why students who struggle with word recognition or vocab/comprehension issues may experience reading fluency difficulties.

Student's struggle because part of fluency is automatic accuracy. If you don't understand the meaning of a word or recognize it then that word is not automatic. If you cannot recognize a word you may stumble which decreases accuracy. Also if words are not automatic the speed at which you are reading will decrease significantly, leading to poor expression because the child is no longer confident in their ability to read.

phonemic awareness

The ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words

Name and describe the five interactive strategies that have been proven to be effective for struggling readers?

The five strategies are: 1. rereading familiar texts. 2. phonics instruction. 3. reading and applying decoding skills to new text. 4. word work using high-frequency words in isolation. 5. writing. 1. 5 min, 2. 5 min, 3. 10 min, 4. 5 min, 5. 5 min

Before student's read specific vocabulary word for the first time, it is helpful to pre teach the words. Describe two pre teaching strategies that will help students to understand vocabulary words when they read them in a text.

We can introduce the word by writing it on the board, reading it aloud and having the student's repeat it until they can pronounce it. We can also present student friendly definitions of the word and having student's read it with us.

Select three evidence based fluency strategies and explain how you would use them in your reading instruction.

We can teach using FORI- Fluency Oriented Reading Instruction, Paired reading, and scaffolding silent reading. We use FORI by reading aloud to the class and having student's read back to us. Paired reading we have students take turns reading sentences or paragraphs. We scaffold silent reading by rounding on each table and having student's whisper a sentence or two to us to check for fluency.

Phonics instruction is included within a comprehensive reading program delivered by a skillful teacher, children can develop the enjoyment of reading that is necessary for them to become lifelong readers. Describe three effective strategies for teaching phonics.

We can teach using the I do, we do, you all do, you do model to work into independence starting from a classroom wide support. We can motivate students with games such as using letter sound cards to increase understanding of the alphabetic principle. We can also use online programs to increase interaction between phonics and independent work.