Lit. 101 Building a Foundation for Literacy

1. Lit. 101 Building a Foundation for Literacy Wausau School District & Americorp Amy McGovern Reading Specialist December 12, 2012

2. Introductions: Amy • Reading Specialist for the Wausau School district (Master’s in Reading) • Expertise supporting ‘at-risk’ students • Elementary teacher, Focus Teacher, Consultant, Direct Instruction Specialist, literacy coach, Title I reading teacher, • 17 years of experience as an educator, 14 concentrating heavily on literacy and at-risk students • Mom of two great kids & wife of radio guy on WJJQ in Tomahawk

3. Your Role as a Tutor • Build a connection with the child before tackling academics • Focus on the positive • Establish how special this time is and how lucky the two of you are to get to work together. • Provide managed choices • Support literacy or math needs by meeting them half way • Model, practice together, try on your own, step in and support as needed

4. Understanding ‘at-risk’ children • Home life- ‘Who takes care of you?’ • Nutrition-’Are you hungry? Did you get breakfast, how was lunch?’ • Stress-’Remember that I’m here to help you. It’s wonderful that your teacher connected you and me.’ • Academics-’what are you really good at in school? What’s really hard for you?’ • Structure-’Today our plan is to…

5. The truth about language… • Before school, before learning to read, children learn most of the words they know through daily oral language with adults. • Great differences exist in the exposure to language with highly verbal or nonverbal parents.

6. Vocabulary develops through every day oral language experiences with adults in the child’s world.

7. Let’s go shopping with mom!

8. A trip to the grocery store.. The child is in the cart and reaches toward an avocado: • Mother #1 (low verbal) ‘sit still’…. ‘Keep your hands to yourself.’ • Mother #2: (average) ‘What should we have for dinner, honey? We haven’t had carrots for a while. (child reaches towards avocado). ‘Put that back, now.’

10. At the grocery store.. • Mother #3 (high verbal) ‘oh, what do we see here? Organic avocado? Do you know what ‘organic means, sweetie? It’s when the farmer says she doesn’t put any pesticides on the plants. What’s a pesticide? It’s something that kills pests. Pests are insects that eat up the green leaves on the top of the plant. The plant needs the green leaves for all that green chlorophyll that goes into that yummy green mushy stuff we make guacamole with. Guacamole? That’s a Spanish word! (Child says, Mommy, you talk too much!”)

11. Vocabulary, Decoding, & Phonological Awareness • Receptive Vocabulary is related to phonological awareness and early literacy development • Children with better vocabularies tend to have better PA skills and better decoding skills

12. Phonological Awareness • in preschool and kindergarten years--strong predictor of how well a child will read in later school years • interventions to improve phonological awareness abilities lead to significantly improved reading abilities National Reading Panel Report, 2000

13. Louisa Moats 2005 Humans have an intrinsic need to understand what is said to them and to share experience through language, the brain is biologically adapted to support language acquisition.

14. Phonological Awareness Alliteration Word Awareness Awareness of Initial Consonant Sound Syllable Awareness Onset - Rime Rhyme Awareness Phonemic Awareness Segmentation Blending Manipulation

15. Where do we learn words? • Children’s books have more varying and unusual words than prime time TV or children’s TV • Rarity and variety of word in children’s books is greater than that in adult conversation • Adult reading materials contains words 2-3 times rarer than those heard on TV • (Hayes & Ahrens , 1988, cited in Cunningham & Stanonvich, 1998, What Reading Does for the Mind, American Educator.)

16. Books and kids…a no brainer • Word learning requires exposure to the language of books. • The language of books is most attainable when adults pause while reading and engage children in conversations about new words and concepts and relate those concepts to their own experience. • LETRS Module 4, p. 12 Louisa Moats (2005)

17. How do we learn words? • Words are learned through both indirect and direct processes. • Beck et al. (2002) have estimated that children need 10 to 12 exposures to words used in multiple contexts in order to learn their meanings INDIRECTLY.

18. During indirect word learning • Which is a natural process • Children are unsure of what the word means and grope for evidence to confirm their idea of the word • The more they hear and practice the word in a variety of ways, the more solid the word becomes

19. Direct Teaching of words • Succeeds when it deepens and enriches knowledge of word meanings • Emphasizes the relationships among words and concepts • The ability to give a definition is often the results of knowing what the word means

20. How we know words… • By reading a lot • Through exposure to multiple examples in context, spoken, and written • Through explicit instruction exploring word relationships • By becoming conscious of the word’s sounds, origins, usage, & multiple meanings

21. English Language Arts National Common Core Standards Adopted June 2010

22. Semantic Features • Words that overlap extensively in meaning qualify as synonyms • Words that overlap very little and have opposite connotations qualify as antonyms • The better a word is known, the more properties or features that are known

23. CUP, GLASS, MUG…what’s the semantic overlap?

24. Help kids build categories for words… • Members of a category share semantic features. How are these nouns the same (overlapping) or different? Daughter, niece, sister vs. nun, waitress, actress Rooster, bull, ram vs. hen, ewe, cow

25. Antonyms & Scaling • Gradable antonyms: tiny---enormous • Gradable antonyms lend themselves to VERBAL scaling of terms to show degrees of an attribute Putrid, foul, stinky, unpleasant, scented, fragrant, intoxicating • Complementary antonyms: • Black ---white, dead---alive

27. SCALING words • Is a verbal exercise that helps young children refine their knowledge of word meaning. Is it complementary or gradable? Hot –cold winner---loser Angry –delighted straight ---bent Above—below honest--devious

28. Dimensions of word knowledge • Use word in context • Synonyms • Antonyms • Categories • Connotations (may be personal) • Sound spelling relationships • Morphology • Multiple meanings and uses

29. Words to teach Directly • Words critical to understanding the text • Words with general utility likely to be encountered many times • Difficult words that need interpretation (metaphorical, abstract, nuanced) • Beck, McKewon, et al.

30. Words to teach briefly • Specialty words that are not likely to be encountered again soon because they are unique to the setting or theme of that text. • From Little Bear Lost: Cradleboard, Lodgepole, buffalo grass, Pawnee, doeskin.

31. Provide Context for the new word • Preview key words by starting discussion in which the words are used several times. • “Learning to accept responsibility is sometimes a hard thing to do when you’re growing up. Have any of you ever had responsibility for a pet? What are you responsible for doing?”

32. Word Structure and meaning • Notice word pronunciation (and spelling) • Verbally explore morphology (compounds, prefixes, roots, suffixes) helps connect new words to known words… • imagine, imaginary Introduce, introduction… • Generate a definition then check it • Compare similar words…tiny, small, mini

33. Pronunciation… Students confuse similar sounding words such as pacific and specific, then and than, shocked and shot.

34. Watch my mouth… • Without an accurate and complete phonological representation of a word, (how it is pronounced, with all sounds enunciated), students will have trouble sorting out the meaning. Moats (2005)

35. Check pronunciation • Always have students pronounce new words accurately. If speech issues are evident, confirm or repeat the word after the child has used it. • Kindly encourage and gently coach for correct pronunciation…so that we help children build an accurate phonological map of this word. It’s a work in progress for many children .

36. Word Detectives • Tune into interesting words. Practice saying new words as a group. • Model. • Lead. • Lead. • Lead. • Try on your own.

37. How many words per week • Research says that students can learn 10 to 15 new words a week through direct teaching. • To make this happen, relationships among words should be emphasized. • Relationships: synonyms, antonyms, categories, overlapping meanings, thematic associations, analogies, class-example relationships, figures of speech

38. What does this mean for you and your student? • Before you begin reading the book, page through it together and scan for challenging words. • Ask: Are there any words you’re not sure of? • Tricky Word Strategy: • Look through the word, beginning, middle, end, say the sounds or sound chunks • Model & Lead -saying the word, have the student repeat it • Talk about what the word means within the context of the story

39. Practice, practice, practice

40. What about meaning? Thrilled • Wow! The Forest Friends are thrilled! They are excited to go the carnival! • Thrilled. Say thrilled (signal) Thrilled means excited. • Tell me, what means excited? (S) thrilled • When are you thrilled?...what about…when you get a present! Or your friends come over to play! I bet that makes you feel excited.

41. Now look at the picture. • These boys are at a Birthday party. They are excited. They are thrilled! Tell me, what does thrilled Mean? Excited, that’s right.

42. Resources • Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling Module 4, The Mighty Word:Building Vocabulary and Oral Language by Louisa Moats (2005) • Conner, M.C, Morrison, F.J., Slominski, L., Preschool instruction and childeren’s emergent literacy growth. Journal of Educational Psychology (2006), vol. 98, no.4, pp. 665-689. • Scanlon, D.M., Anderson, K.L., Sweeney, J.M. (2010) Early Intervention for Reading Difficulties. Guilford Press, NY. • Carnine, D. W, Silbert, J., Kame’enui, E.J., Tarver, S.G., Jungjohann, K., (2006) Teaching Struggling and At-Risk Readers, A Direct Instruction Approach. Pearson, Columbus. • Moats, L.C. (2010) Speech to Print Language Essentials for Teachers 2nd edition. Brookes Publishing, Baltimore. • Beck, I.L, McKeown, M.G, Kucan, L. (2002) Bringing Words to Life Robust Vocabulary Instruction. Guilford Press, NY.

43. How predictable is English? A. It’s not predictable. There are too many rules and exceptions. B. About 30% of the English language follows consistent rules and patterns C. About 80% of the English Language follow predictable rules and patterns. D. 94% of the English Language is predictable based on sound, meaning, and word origin.

44. Facts about Predictability From Hanna, Hanna, Hodges, and Rudorf (1966) 50% of English words are predictable by rule 36% of words are predictable by rule with one error 10% of words will be predictable with morphology and word origin taken into account Fewer than 4% are true oddities Moats, L., (2005), Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, Module 3 Spellography for Teachers: How English Spelling Works, p. 7

45. Five Principals of English Orthography #1 . We Do Not Spell solely by Sound to Letter Correspondence If wee did spelfonetidkly, Wordzmiyt look liyk this Mayduvpreeditabul Sownd-spelinkorispondensez Moats, LETRS Module 3 slide 6, p. 10

46. We use Graphemes: letters and letter combinations to spell words Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondence. Usually a sound is made from more than one letter. /ch/ = ch / eeee/=e /l/= le /z/=s Consonant Grapheme Types • Single letters (including blends): trap, spend • Diagraphs: chain, shrink, either, phone • Trigraph: wedge, batch • Silent Letter combinations: comb, autumn, folk

47. Vowel Grapheme Types Single letter spelling: sound and name, long & short Ro-bot, mo-ped, ho-tel, Vowel Teams: east, south, night, blue Vowel-r combinations: her, bird, fur, car Vowel-consonant-e: cape, kite, cube, rode

48. Vowel Teaching Tip The vowels that children most often confuse are close to each other in articulation. For example, children are likely to confuse the vowels in • cut, cot, caught, • fill, fell, fail • Boot, bought, boat • Introduce vowel spellings in an order that emphasizes wide contrasts (short i and short u) before close contrasts such as short i and short e. (Example a, i, o, u, e)

49. Principle #2 of English Orthography Spellings may be determined by the position of a sound Spellings for /f/: fun, puff, rough Spellings for /ng/: ring, bang, hung = ng rink, ankle, anguish = n

50. Spelling may be determined by the position of a sound • Spellings for long /a/: Rain, ray They, hey, whey strait, stray braid, bray Spelling for /oi/ boil, boy Troilus, Troy avoid, annoy