Reading

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES

Graduate Coursework Accountability Statement (To be completed by student)

ACADEMIC YEAR: 2013/2014 SEMESTER: 2

COURSE CODE: EDLS6501 TITLE: Online Text Activity One

NAME: Michelle Thompson ID: 312500212

1. I hereby certify that I am the author of the attached item of coursework and that all materials from reference sources have been properly acknowledged. 2. I understand what plagiarism is and what penalties may be imposed on students found guilty of plagiarism. 3. I certify that this paper contains no plagiarized material. 4. I certify that this is my own work and that I did not receive any unfair assistance from others (including unauthorized collaboration) in its preparation. 5. I certify that this paper has not previously been submitted either in its entirety or in part within the UWI system or to any other educational institution. 6. In the case of group work: a. I certify that the individual work of each member of the group has been clearly indicated; b. that where no such indication has been given, I take the responsibility for the work as if it were the section of the paper for which I am solely responsible; and c. that I have not collaborated with any members of the group to breach the University’s regulations.

Signature: M. Thompson

Date: February 25, 2013

Children of the 21st century will face many challenges that will require them to use reading in different forms. As we begin the new millennium, research- based approaches to teach reading and writing is being relied upon to drive students towards the ultimate goal. Literacy for all, understanding how children learn, particularly how they learn to read and write influences the instructional approaches taken in homes as well as classrooms.
Adams (1990) defines Phonological awareness as an awareness of sounds and the ability to revealed tasks such as rhyming, matching sounds, deleting sounds, blending or segmenting sounds. Because these sounds are spoken words they require testing to manipulate phonological segments. This is required to determine the performance of good readers and poor readers. Depend on the result one can determine which elements of phonological awareness are absent or reliable for both readers. He further articulate that they are five levels of difficulty in phonological awareness these are Awareness of rhyme and alliteration, comparing and contrasting the sounds of words for rhyme and alliteration, blending and splitting syllables, full segmentation of component phonemes and adding deleting and moving phonemes. In addition to these five levels of difficulty is the importance of phonological development. Phonological development is the key to phonological awareness. Proctor and Compton (2004) babies are not born with the full range of adult perceptual abilities, which include the five senses vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. However, these abilities develop greatly within the first year of life. Newborn babies can only process sensory information and their understanding of sight, sound and touch stimuli develop rapidly as they grow. This leads to cognitive development which, in turn lays the foundation for language development.
In preschool years, a child develops phonological skills, these skills acquired in a largely unconscious, or implicit fashion that is to say, even though the child may be able to produce certain vowels, consonants and consonant clusters he or she has not explicit awareness of doing so. Phonological awareness is so called because the child becomes explicitly aware of the phonology being taught and has the conscious ability to detect and manipulate phonological units. It is important to note that phonological awareness is a subset of the larger set of skills known as phonological processing. Phonological processing involves receiving sound waves from the ear and then using this date to assemble pronunciation of the word that was spoken. The process of assembling a pronunciation is known as coding. Deficits in phonological processing are responsible for some differences between good and poor readers (Stanorich, 1986 ;) poor readers are slower and less accurate than good readers.
Many studies have found that certain levels of phonological awareness are essential to the development of early reading ability such as an awareness of rhyme, the ability to blend sounds, to isolate initial and final consonants and to distinguish phonological elements smaller than Syllables. Other more difficult elements of phonological awareness are developed as a result of learning to read, that is “the relationship between phonemic awareness and learning to read is most likely one of reciprocal causation or mutual facilitation (Yopp, 1992,) The relationship between phonological awareness and reading acquisition are complex, and there is strong evidence that difficulty with awareness and manipulation of verbal sounds has powerful effects on reading ability. However, the most positive finding stemming from research on phonological awareness is that “critical levels of phonological awareness can be developed through carefully planned instruction” (Chard & Dickson 1999) there is also consistent support that “phonological awareness facilitates reading and is facilitated by reading instruction.” (Smith,Simmons & Kameenui 1995) This finding has important implications for teaching. It implies that students must be taught explicitly about sounds in order to benefit from reading instruction but also that phonological awareness can be highlighten in relation to reading of text. Teaching programs, therefore, need to include activities which focus on the sounds in spoken English in pre-school and in the early years of schooling. Such activities include rhyming activities, breaking speech into individual words, alliteration, blending sounds, segmenting of words into onset & rime and then to more demanding tasks such segmenting or deletion of individual.
Charles A. Perfetti, Nicole Landi, and Jane Oakhill simple state that reading acquisition is the comprehension of learning to understand writing as well as one understands spoken language has empirical justification. (Curtis, 1980; Sticht & James, 1984). also added that learning to read, the correlations between reading and spoken language comprehension are small because at the beginning, children are learning to decode and identify words, so it is these word-reading processes that limit comprehension. He further established that as children move beyond the beginnings of learning to read, the correlations between reading comprehension and spoken language comprehension increase and then level out by high school Famous behaviorist skinner (1974) explained students learn to read by learning a series of discrete skills. He believes that learning is the result of stimulus and response actions direct instructions are given when teaching the requisite skill in a planned, sequential manner. Information is presented in small steps and reinforced through practice until a solid foundation is laid.
Jean Piagets (1969) constructivism theoretical framework differs, as learning is described as the modification of students’ cognitive structures schemata as they interact with or adapt to their environment schemata are like mental filing cabinets and new information is organized with prior knowledge in filling system. Piaget also posited that children are active motivated thinkers and learners so instead of teachers and adults dispensing information or knowledge, children are engaged with experiences so that they modify their schemata and construct their own knowledge.
The sociolinguistics contributes a cultural dimension to how children learn. They view reading and writing as social activities that reflect the culture and community in which children live. (heath ,1983 ,vygotsky1978,1986)according to Vygotsky, language help to organize thought and children use language to learn as well as to communicate with others.
Tremendous amount of new research under the term “emergent literacy” (teale & sulzby 1991) shows us what happens in the homes of children where literacy is a priority. Children borned into homes where someone spends time with them in reading activities walk into the school system with an incredible foundation on which phonological awareness can be built. Parents or adults read to children and talk to them about what is being read. The reading is normally done in the lap position where the child can see pictures as well as the words used to tell about the pictures. Favourite books are read again and again hence creating a stimulating environment for reading acquisition to begin.
Parents are the children’s first and best teachers and can therefore do many things to support their children’s development at home. In addition to reading to their children and listening to their children attempting to read to them they are building children’s self esteem and phonological awareness. In some homes the main reading experience is the bible, new papers, nursery rhyme or novels. Families write signs on furniture, make shopping lists or leave written messages for others. As children are able to hear and identify sounds from intra uterine to infancy, gradually they are able to separate syllables and manipulate the sounds in words, expanding their grasp of frequently used words and phrases. Favourite stories are re-read until they become well-known and words are easily pronounced as they talk an appreciation is developed for associating sounds with letters, a basis that is necessary for learning to read. The phonological system is important for both oral and written language as it plays a crucial role in reading instruction during the primary grades. Children use their knowledge of phonics as they learn to read and write. Phonological Development and Phonological Awareness Unit 2, outline that phonological awareness cannot be the only cause of reading acquisition. This is so based on the studies carried out which discover other influence on reading development. Adams 1990 highlighted the importance of alphabetic principle which consists of alphabetic understanding with the knowledge that letters correspond with sounds and words are composed of sounds. Therefore, it is evident that phonological awareness and reading acquisition has some forms of relationship; since both has powerful effects on reading ability. Based on the information gathered the levels of phonological awareness can be developed through carefully planned instruction where students must be taught clearly about sounds in order to benefit from reading instruction and develop phonological ability. The importance of phonological awareness in relation to reading acquisition posits by Juel, 1986) a longitudinal study of children in first and second grade. The study is quiet evident that children who perform low in phonemic awareness in first grade remained the low performances in reading through fourth grade remain the low performers in reading through fourth grade. With this in mind when working with children it must be clear that phonemic awareness is a perquisite for learning to read Cunningham, 1999, as they become phonemically aware, children recognize that speech can be segmented into smaller units, this knowledge is very useful as they learn about sound-symbol correspondence and spelling patterns. Phonological development and phonological awareness unit 2 posits that phonemic awareness is critical to the reading process because reading involves the translation of graphemes into phonemes if one does not mastered all the phonemes in language, then they are not in a position to translate graphemes into phonemes, students’ who have not mastered phonemic awareness experience reading difficulty. So with this is mind one relevant key principle of effective phonological awareness instruction is nursery rhymes. Rhymes are the correspondence of ending sounds or words or lines of verse. Rhyming is the ability to indentify words that have identical final sounds segments Bryan and Bradley (1985)report that scores of initial rhyming test predicted reading and spelling progress and years later researcher suggest rhyme facilitates reading and spelling in the following ways: rhyming helps students develop phonemic awareness, which facilitates decoding, rhyming teaches students to group words together by sound, thereby reducing the number of words they have to learn to read by making generalizations of larger sound units, rhyming teaches students to make connections between categories and the letter string patterns that are used to spell words. I would read stories that have rhyming words, draw to the students attention the word that rhyme, help students to identify the patterns made by a rhyme, recite rhymes, sing the rhymes, clap to the rhymes even act out the rhymes. Sing and use students’ names to complete the rhyme example wallaby Wallaby, Wusan an elephant sat on Suzan wallaby Wallaby Wark an elephant sat on Mark as students catch on to the rhyming pattern, they can generate the rhyme using other names. For example in these four activities the teacher read aloud a story that contains many words that rhyme for example a fat rat in hat. After reading the story the students will chant the rhyming words heard in the story. The next activity the teacher introduce the rhyme ‘at’ then students follow the rhyming pattern bat, cat, fat, hat, mat pat, rat and sat. Students will clap and sing as they say each rhyming word. For activity two students will stand in a line the first person will say a rhyme which relates to ‘at’ if it is correct, the child gets the chance to shoot a ball in the provided hoop. If it is incorrect, teacher and students will assist and that child goes to the back of the line. The last activity students will be provided with a print activity sheet in which they will fill in the missing letter based on what was learned in activities one and two above.
These activities will be modeled daily until students fully grasped the concepts. Modeling is the process of demonstrating for someone something he or she does not know Bandura,(1986).when students see teachers or parents at home reading or writing a letter modeling is taking place, so that’s why modeling can be a very constructive way that students can be taught reading. Modeling can be implicit or explicit (Roehler & duffy , 1991).
According to Deanna mascle rhyme is important to emergent literacy and learning to read because it teaches children about language. Rhyming helps children about word families such as let, met, pet, and get. Rhyming also teaches children the sound of language. Other important skills include phonological awareness, the ability to notice and work with sounds in language. Rhyme help with phonemic awareness which is the smallest units of sound that make up words. The awareness leads to reading and writing success. Rhyme also teaches children who are learning to read about the patterns and structures of both spoken and written language. Rhymes expose children to the rhythm of the language this will help them read with intonation in their voice instead of first a monotone. Rhymes also prepare children to make predictions while learning words and give them crucial decoding skills.
When students are faced with reading challenges as that one referred to in the study by Juel et al( 1986) that children from first grade through fourth are low performing children in phonemic awareness rhyme, can help make the task both easier and more fun, teach important language skills, and teach language pattern and structure. These benefits given above are of vital importance in giving your child a positive start to reading.

References

http://www.pitt.edu/~perfetti/PDF/The%20Acquisition%20of%20Reading%20Comprehension%20Skill...

http://linguistics.huji.ac.il/IATL/27/Abstracts/Gafni.pdf http://Ezine article.com/?expert=Deanna_mascle.

Literacy for the 21st century A Balanced Approach 4th edition by Gail E. Tompkins

Literacy helping children construct meaning 5th edition by J. David Cooper with Nancy
D. Kiger
Phonics They Use words for reading and writing by Patricia m. Cunningham

Unit 2 EDLS6501 Module 2 Phonological Developments and Phonological Awareness

References: http://www.pitt.edu/~perfetti/PDF/The%20Acquisition%20of%20Reading%20Comprehension%20Skill... http://linguistics.huji.ac.il/IATL/27/Abstracts/Gafni.pdf http://Ezine article.com/?expert=Deanna_mascle. Literacy for the 21st century A Balanced Approach 4th edition by Gail E. Tompkins Literacy helping children construct meaning 5th edition by J. David Cooper with Nancy D. Kiger Phonics They Use words for reading and writing by Patricia m. Cunningham Unit 2 EDLS6501 Module 2 Phonological Developments and Phonological Awareness