Help for Struggling Readers
Reading Comprehension: What Is It?
by Susan Franklin
Reading Comprehension: What Is It?
by Susan Franklin
"My child can read but has trouble with comprehension." I have heard this many times from parents who are seeking help with their child's reading. Based on my experience this means that the literal comprehension foundation layer of reading has not been established. This foundation can be broken into components of decoding, word analysis, vocabulary, and grammar.
How can we break down "understanding" to teachable components? Well, we do this in layers or we lay a firm foundation first so that there is somethhing solid on which to build understanding. Solid word analysis and English grammar skills are the key to building up vocabulary and then deeper levels of comprehension, all the way to critical thinking skills and logic.
First and foremost, automatic decoding of words using intensive phonics established very early in elementary school is the most important layer. Simply memorizing word lists is not adequate for many children as understanding the phonics and spelling principles of the language through direct instruction. Next, analyzing words by sound, syllable, and affixes (prefixes and suffixes) is necessary to find base words and their derivatives. Then there is the meaning behind every root word, suffix or prefix that needs to be taught for students to understand and comprehend the word and its nuanced meaning. Knowing the Greek and Latin roots of these is an integral component of word analysis and vocabulary. In addition, literal comprehension requires the knowledge of many words and their meanings, which comes from conversation, wide reading and, yes, direct teaching of words and their many forms and multiple meanings. Children who have limited daily exposure to adult conversation will have typically have vocabularies limited to words used conversations with peers. Finally, understanding English grammar, the parts of speech and how they are used to build a sentence, will give young readers the tools to break sentences down to find the intended meaning.
When these literal comprehension elements are in place, then deeper comprehension skills such as determining importance, synthesizing, and critical thinking development can begin. #struggling reader, #readingtutor, #readingteacher, #Englishteacher
Phonemic Awareness Games for Preschoolers
by Susan Franklin
Phonemic Awareness Games for Preschoolers
by Susan Franklin
With a solid start understanding the sounds of speech each phonogram represents, and a parent who enthusiastically reads aloud often, any child can go into the early elementary years with linguistic skills ready to learn and ultimately able to learn by reading in a short time. To make this a positive experience, games that include multiple senses will have the most profound impact on retaining those sounds and attaching them to the letters and letter groups, known as phonograms.
Research conducted warns that without direct instruction in phonemic awareness about 25% of first-graders from middle-class homes lack this skill, resulting in difficulty in learning to read and write. *
"Phonogram" similar to "phoneme" means a written symbol representing a sound. So the letter "a" represents three distinct sounds as in the words apple, ape, and wasp. But before learning phonogram sounds or even letter names, it is appropriate to simply learn to distinguish various sounds from one another. Here are a few beginning game ideas.
1. Any listening game, such as "Mother, May I?" can be used for this. Also, add training in attentiveness by playing "Whisper Me" where you whisper the child's name and if he comes to you the first time, he gets a special hug and kiss or a treat.
Move toward training the child in the ability to distinguish between sounds like tapping, clapping, snapping. After naming and demonstrating the sounds, ask the child to close her eyes and listen with the purpose of naming the sounds, then listen with the purpose of determining which sound is missing, listening for the sequence of sounds.
2. Rhyming games, poetry, rhyming stories. Fingerplays that rhymes that are easy to act out with your hands. Here are a few samples. One way to use these is to whisper the words that rhyme. Another variation is to omit the rhyming words after a few readings for repetition.
3. Words and Sentences. Differentiate between individual words of long and short length and various kinds of sentences as well. Build sentences using individual word cards. Count words in each sentence.
The next level of games include syllable awareness, phonograms or phonemes, then letter names and spellings.
A fabulous resource on this topic is the book Phonemic Awareness in Young Children by Marily Jager Adams, et. al.
*Adams, M.J. (1990) Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambidge, MA: MIT Press.
What is Intensive Phonics?
by Susan Franklin
What is Intensive Phonics?
by Susan Franklin
January 21, 2018
A few people may wonder why I made the move from teaching high school English and Theatre Arts to teaching reading recovery in the elementary grades. Here is why.
When a child says, "I don't know that word" he has obviously not been properly taught to read using phonics. Further, if there is not automaticity in decoding a word, how can one really think about the content that is being read? As a high school, English and Theatre Arts teacher I heard "I don't know that word" so many times, and it always made me cringe.
If direct instruction in phonics has taken place early in the school years, reading any word should be nearly subconscious because all of the sounds of each phonogram are taught early and simultaneously. For example, the phonogram "A" has three sounds: as in "cat," "bake" and "wasp." All of these are taught from the beginning; the brain can easily store these in the same location for easy retrieval.
Strategies to guess at the word would not be needed. Not only does this speed up the decoding, but as a bonus, it frees up the brain to think about the meaning of the text. We need more thinkers, don't we?
The English language has more than 500,000 words! Learning to read word by word is really impossible in that context. But English has only forty-five sounds written in seventy basic letter groups or phonograms. The one thousand most frequently used words can be sounded out with these seventy basic phonograms.
Further, combined with twenty-eight spelling rules and a few additional advanced phonograms the logic of English can be directly taught over time to preschool and early elementary-age students. This method, which focuses on simultaneous multi-sensory learning of the phonograms without pictures or gimmicks, has been used in the past successfully but is no longer in fashion in public education. Too often, only if a child has been failing in reading for years and tested to be dyslexic can he or she be taught using this proven method. I believe all children are deserving of the best we have to offer in reading instruction. What could be more important?
Variations of this method are known as Orton-Gillingham, Spalding, Spell to Write and Read, The Logic of English, and Riggs.
If all early elementary children were taught this way, almost no child would be in high school looking at a word on the page and saying, "I don't know that word."
Welcome to My Blog!
Welcome to My Blog!
December 31, 2017
Thank you for looking at my website. Since my first workshop over a decade ago in how to use the Spalding method via Spell to Write and Read/The Wise Guide by Wanda Sanseri I have been passionate about bringing direct instruction in intensive phonics and the classics of children's literature to young learners. My own children thrived under this and loved learning this way. Visit often and please share with your friends.
Check out my other blog, Daily Chronological Bible Reading: God's Grand Story in Three Acts.
Teach Your Baby to Read!
Teach Your Baby to Read!
December 31, 2017
With my firstborn child on my hip I flipped through the parenting videos at our local library. Then I found it: "How to Teach Your Baby to Read." Curious, I brought it home and watched with rapt attention. Worth a try, I thought So I bought some posterboard and cut it into large flash cards and wrote in the required red marker on each one all the words I could fit onto that set of cards, including the recommended word, "refrigerator." So for weeks I held up and said each word in an excited tone and that baby boy smiled and enjoyed the show.
But I learned later that I wasn't teaching him to read at all. Learning to read involves learning first of all to associate the sounds of speech (45 of them in English, to be exact) with the letter groups on the page that form the syllables of words.
Fast forward to my world today. When I hear a student say, "I don't know that word" I remember holding up those "words" in red in front of my son and realize that whole word instruction forms that habit of looking at a word as a static symbol, not syllables and sounds. This missing link happens all too often today due to common practices in language instruction.
For more detailed information on this problem, I recommend Wanda Sanseri's Senate Speech entitled "Literacy Today" What is Wrong and How Can we Fix it?