Week 7 – EngEd 275-E1 – Nicole Kavajecz
There are three relationships between letters and sounds which can be built upon to create the best foundation for reading (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, and Green, 2019, p 146). Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound, usually just one letter. For example, a teacher might say the phonemes /c/, /a/, /t/ and the students would happily reply they heard the word cat from the sounds. Graphemes are the written letters of the alphabet. Diagraphs are two letters that represent one sound in a word. In the classroom, a teacher might speak /r/, /ai/, /n/ and write the word as they speak it so students would visually see the diagraph while the teacher says the word (Sayesky, The Alphabetic Principle). Graphophonemic relationships are developed as students match letter/s to sounds, blend sounds to form the words as in both of the classroom examples above, as well as decode the words using their phonemic awareness.
A teacher can use toys, books, labels, and many other strategies to develop their students’ phonemic awareness. Playing games is a must for this age, so creating opportunities where the students are having fun while learning is an excellent way to engage the young readers. A teacher can take their cues from their students as to what games will entertain them best. One game that I have been able to apply effectively is centered around snack time. The students have to sound out (phoneme) then spell (grapheme) the name of the snack before they get it. Of course I am always there to help so every student earns their snacks quickly.
Elkonin Boxes are a tool used to visually show the separation of phonemes in a word. A teacher can write a word then draw the boxes around each phoneme (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, and Green, 2019, p 152). Students then could move a marker of some sort through the word as each phoneme is pronounced. This assists the students in physically tracking the sounds they are hearing.
“Phonics is the set of relationships between phonology, the sounds in speech, and orthography, the spelling patterns of written language” (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, and Green, 2019, p 153). Especially in English, there is not a one-to-one spelling pattern. Teachers must develop the phonemic awareness as throughly as possible for students to effectively use phonics to read. Onset is the consonant that precedes the vowel, and the Rime is the vowel and any consonant sound that follows it. Diphthong is a two vowel combination that sounds as a glide through the two such as oi or oy. R-controlled vowels are special because the letter r that follows the vowel effects the pronunciation.
Teaching phonics best practice tells teachers that they should have a combination of explicit instruction as well as authentic application activities ((Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, and Green, 2019, p 160). There are many resources available for teachers, including whole-year instruction manuals and assessment tools, which should be provided by the district the teacher is employed by. There are also a wide variety of free online resources that a teacher may find to supplement.
There are 5 stages of spelling development. The pre-development process is invented spelling, where the student may create phonetical spellings for words that make sense to what they know (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, and Green, 2019, p 166-169). Children between 3-5 years old are in the first stage of Emergent Spelling, where students develop the the distinction between drawing and writing, create schema about how to make letters, the direction of writing on a page, and beginning letter-to-sound matching. Children between ages 5-7 are typically stage 2 is Letter Name and Alphabetic Spelling, where students learn how phonemes are represented through the letters. They process back through the invented spelling step, and provide the teacher with many opportunities to elaborate their knowledge. This stage also includes defining consonant, vowel, and blended sounds. Within-word pattern spelling is stage 3, ages 7-9 years old. Students learn more about how to observe and spell long-vowel spelling patterns, r-controlled vowels, diphthongs, and homophones. Ages 9-11 are in stage 4 is Syllables and Affixes spelling, during which students focus on syllables as groupings and patterns rather than the individual phonemes and digraphs. They learn about inflectional endings, rules for adding them, syllabication, compound words, as well as contractions. Sometimes it includes common prefixes as well. The final stage of the spelling progression is made up of 11-14 year old students and titled Derivational Relations Spelling. Within this stage more complex spelling relationship understanding occurs. Roots of words, people’s names, and related meanings are learned, as well as consonant and vowel alterations.
The video by Kristin Sayesky on The Alphabetic Principle provides an in-depth explanation of the phoneme/phonologic/grapheme/digraph process and so much more. Examples are given for the breakdown of individual phonemes and the digraphs which correspond to them. Specific tools a teacher could use to create meaningful and authentic lessons for their students could be created with ease from the information the video provides.
References
Tompkins, G. E., Smith, C., Campbell, R., & Green, D. (2019). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (Seventh ed.). Melbourne, VIC: Pearson Australia.
Sayesky, Kristin. (3 June 2014). The Alphabetic Principle. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DptnGoIeuUA
