The School Setting Jerry Baker Principal Palm Avenue School 21 Dalwood Avenue Seaforth NSW 2092 Tel:

02 9951 0308

Email:

[email protected]

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

1 20/09/2006

Overview 1. The components of a reading program: z sounds z phonemic awareness z reading strategy z “sight words” z text reading

2. z z z

The instructional setting: withdrawal one to one v. group the use of non-professional tutors

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

2 20/09/2006

Sounds Which sounds to teach z Teaching strategy z Dealing with confusions z The use of key words z

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

3 20/09/2006

The sounds to teach The initial set amtsifdroglhucbnkvewjpy z The remaining single sounds + at least sh, ch, th, ee, ar (What about upper case?) z The remainder (but not exhaustively) z Learning by analogy z

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

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Teaching Strategy Importance of writing and saying z Sound foundations z Mastery z Accuracy and fluency z

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

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Decoding Phonemic awareness: z What does a reader need to know? z How is this best taught? z z

Two basic processes: blending and segmenting A suggested strategy

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

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Sight Words What are they? (A sight word can be any word) z How do we learn them? (Sounds are still important) z How should they be taught? z

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

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Five ways to read a word Sounding out (decoding) z Pronouncing common letter patterns (advanced decoding) z Retrieving from memory (sight words) z Analogising to known words z Predicting from context z

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

8 20/09/2006

Learning sight words z z z

Shape? (too difficult) Sight of word activates meaning? (would get semantic substitutions far more than is the case) Grapheme – phoneme links? (yes, even for irregular words – all words have regular features)

“G-P relations provide a powerful mnemonic system that bonds the written forms of words to their pronunciations in memory.” (Ehri 1997) Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

9 20/09/2006

Teaching Sight Words Need to refer to sounds (i.e. “In this word …makes the sound …”) z Use writing as well as reading. z Use a mastery method similar to teaching sounds. z

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

10 20/09/2006

Reading Text z z z z

z

Accuracy + rate = fluency Issues regarding the teaching of fluency A reading method that encourages independence and the use of appropriate strategies Repeated reading improves fluency and consequently comprehension Prompting, tracking

v Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

11 20/09/2006

Reading Fluency z

z

Interventions tend to target the text level (i.e. modelled reading, repeated reading, timed reading) Need to target underlying skills “…instruction for fluency development should begin with an emphasis on the underlying representations for each level up to the word level. In the second phase the focus should be on facilitating the rate of processing in these same lower level processes and subskills until they become automatic…”(Wolf & Katzir-Cohen, 2001)

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

12 20/09/2006

Additional Considerations Comprehension z Generalisation z Writing z Motivation z

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

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The Instructional setting One to one v. group z Withdrawal v. integration z The use of non-professional tutors z

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

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Quality Teaching z

z

z

Intellectual Quality To engage in higher order thinking students need the tools of learning or alternative roots to learning Quality Learning Expectations of performance need to be explicit and students should be focused on learning Significance Learning should be meaningful and important

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

15 20/09/2006

Summary The importance of a logical sequence z The importance of establishing a decoding strategy to use EVERY time z The importance of establishing fluency in underlying skills z The importance of repeated practice (mastery) z The importance of an instructional setting which allows the achievement of he above z

Jerry Baker Palm Avenue

16 20/09/2006