Hitting the Big Five

Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency,

Comprehension

Phonemic Awareness

• Phonemic Awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds, which are called phonemes. A child who is phonemically aware is able to isolate sounds, manipulate the sounds, blend and segment the sounds into spoken and written words. It does not involve print.

Phonemic Awareness

• Main focus is on phonemes/sounds• Deals with spoken language• Mostly auditory• Students work with manipulating sounds and

sounds in words.• Hear the language and play with it.

(Michael Heggerty)

Phonics

• The letters that represent these units of language is phonics. Phonics is the relationship between the sounds of spoken language and the 26 letters of the alphabet that represent the sounds.

Phonics

• Main focus is on graphemes/letters and their corresponding sounds.

• Deals with written language/print.• Both visual and auditory.• Students work with reading and writing letters

according to their sounds, spelling patterns, and phonological structure.

• See the text representing the language and play with it.

(Michael Heggerty)

Vocabulary

• The ability to store information about the meaning and pronunciation of words including listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Vocabulary

• Teach the meaning of critical, unknown vocabulary words.

• If students understand the meaning of critical vocabulary in the passage, their comprehension will be enhanced.

(Isabel Beck and Margaret G. McKeown)(Anita Archer)

Selection of Vocabulary Words

• Select words that are unknown.• Select words that are critical to passage

understanding. • Select words that are general but

sophisticated words. (absurd, fortunate, dignity, convenient)

• Select words that students are likely to encounter in the future and are generally useful. (Stahl, 1986)

Fluency

• Fluency equals comprehension, accuracy, speed, and expression. CASE

• It is demonstrated during oral reading through ease of word recognition, appropriate pacing, phrasing, and intonation.

(Jerry Johns)

Comprehension

• Reading is thinking.• Readers take the written word and construct

meaning based on their own thoughts, knowledge, and experiences.

• Active readers interact with the text they read.• Constructing meaning is the goal of

comprehension.(Stephanie Harvey & Anne Goudvis)

Skilled Readers:

• monitor their comprehension• visualize and make sensory images• draw inferences• connect to background knowledge• ask questions of the text• determine what’s important• synthesize and summarize

( Harvey “Smokey” Daniels)

Interactive Read Aloud

• “At all grade levels, students need to listen to texts in a variety of genres and increasingly complex texts within those genres.”

(Fountas and Pinnell)

Beware of the Bears Alan Macdonald (K-2)Popcorn  Elaine Landau (3-5)

Phonemic Awareness

• Roller Coasters - Teacher says a word. Students repeat the word and do one of the following “roller coaster” actions with their hands.

• The beginning and ending sounds are on the ground and the medial sound is stressed in the rise, dip, or loop of the action.

• Remind students that you start and end on the ground and have a “thrill” in the middle of the ride! (This action only works with three phoneme sound words)

• P-o-p, b-a-th

Phonemic Awareness

• Rhyming-Students brainstorm words that rhyme with the scientific name for popcorn. This is a strategy to help them remember! Point out how words don’t need to be spelled the same to rhyme.  You can use nonsense words.

• Syllables-Students can clap out or bump out the number of syllables.

Example: Zea rhymes with tea,be, treeMays rhymes with plays, trays, staysEverta rhymes with uberta, aterta, omerta

Phonics

• -ed endings to base words- Show your students that ed endings can be pronounced different ways.

• Choose several examples from the book: grumbled, splattered, decorated, flooded, stopped, whacked, grasped,

• Use a Three-Way Sort Sheet to sort the words: ed /d/ ed /ed/ ed /t/

Phonics

• Compound Words-Show your students how the second part of the word relates to the first part of the word. This “rule” applies most of the time but in some words it’s hard to see the relationship.

• Example: popcorn-corn that pops, snowstorm-a storm of snow, deerskin-a skin of a deer. Cornstalk-a stalk of corn.

• Non example: everywhere

Vocabulary

• “The major means for developing students’ vocabulary should focus on learning words in context”. (Beck)

* Engage in vocabulary activities after the story has been read with young children.* Teach young children useful, interesting,and sophisticated words.

)

Basic Instructional Sequence:1.Read the story2.Select three words from the story: launch,

gleeful, astonished3.Contextualize the words within the the story.

In the story when the bears were playing and throwing the cereal around, Daddy Bear launched some spoonfuls of cereal in the air.1.Present a student-friendly explanation of the

word. Launch, means to toss or move something upward fast.

– Have children say the word.

Basic Instructional Sequence cont.

6. Present examples of the word used in contexts different from the story context -have students discern between examples and non-examples. • Which of the following could be launched?

Say, “that could be launched” if what I say can be launched or say, “no way” if you think they are things that cannot be launched.

• -A rocket, -An elephant, -A paper airplane, -A tree, -Some fireworks?

Basic Instructional Sequence cont.

7. Engage children in activities that get them to interact with the words.Which would you more likely want to launch- a kite or a car?What would make you more astonished-Your dog said hello or your little cousin said hello?8. Have children say the word.(Isabel Beck)

Vocabulary

• Context Clues-Show your students how they can figure out the meaning of a word by thinking about what is happening in a sentence or paragraph.

• Example: What does the word “festering” mean? You read,”your little brother’s science project festering in the fridge.” You know that a science project that is in the fridge would probably be something gross or disgusting.

Fluency

• Super Signals- (Jerry Johns) Super signals involves helping students look for and understand the typographic signals that are used to help convey the author’s message.

• Signals such as bold or italic type, commas, exclamation marks, and type size are often clues to meaning that should be noted by the reader, particularly during oral reading.

“We thought we’d pay you a visit,” said Mommy Bear.

Fluency

• Choral Reading-It’s important to teach our students that comprehension is taught alongside speed, accuracy, and intonation. A good way to show this is by reading together and paying special attention to punctuation and phrasing.

• Example: A jack-in-the-box pops. Bubble wrap pops. And pop goes the weasel. But what makes popcorn pop? The answer is simple: Water.

Comprehension

• Connections can emerge in three ways:• Text-to-self connections: when text makes

me think of my own life• Text-to-text connections: when a text makes

me think of another text (or media of any kind)• Text-to-world connections: when text makes

me think of the world around me, maybe a theme or big idea

(Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmerman)

Comprehension

• Help kids think about the kinds of connections they can make and how these connections make the text come alive and deepen their understanding of the text.

• For extra support, post “thinking stems” for students to use:

That reminds me of…I’m remembering…I have a connection to…I can relate to…

Comprehension

• Visualize-Show students how to generate mental images to stimulate thinking and heighten mental engagement. Don’t forget to teach them to use their five senses!

• Example:Popcorn kernels burst into the air like rockets fired into space.

Paragraph Shrinking(GIST)

• This strategy can be applied to passage reading.

• 1. Name the who or what.(The main person, animal, or thing.)• 2. Tell the most important thing about the who

or what.• 3. Say the main idea in 10 words or less.

(From the PALS program by Fuchs, Mathes, and Fuchs)

Summing Up the Big 5

• The 6 Word Synthesis-Ask kids to think about what mattered most or about something important or interesting that they learned. The synthesis must consist of exactly 6 words