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AUTHOR Fountas, Irene C.; Pinnell, Gay SuTITLE How and Why Children Learn about Sounds, Letters, and Words

in Reading Recovery Lessons.INSTITUTION Reading Recovery Council of North America, Columbus, OH.PUB DATE 1999-00-00NOTE 12p.

PUB TYPE Guides Classroom Teacher (052) Journal Articles (080)Reports Research (143)

JOURNAL CIT Running Record; v12 n1 p1-6,10-11,13-14 Fall 1999EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Beginning Reading; Classroom Research; *Classroom

Techniques; Learning Activities; *Learning Processes;*Literacy; Primary Education; Word Recognition

IDENTIFIERS Lesson Structure; *Orthography; Phonological Awareness;*Reading Recovery Projects; Word Learning

ABSTRACTThis article takes a look at Reading Recovery lesson

elements to compare the teaching and learning within the lesson components toseveral areas of learning that have been identified at the national level asimportant to children's literacy learning. The lesson elements examined inthe article are: (1) phonological awareness; (2) orthographic awareness; and(3) word learning in reading and writing. The article states that the firsttwo areas of knowledge, and the way they are interrelated, contribute toyoung children's growth in the ability to solve words while reading formeaning, while the third area strongly supports learning in the first twoareas and also helps to accelerate early learning in literacy. These elementstogether contribute to the child's development of a larger process in whichthe reader uses "in-the-head" strategies in an efficient way to access andorchestrate a variety of information, including meaning and language systems,with the visual and phonological information in print. The article provides adefinition and description of each of the three foundational components ofearly literacy. It describes and discusses seven components of the ReadingRecovery lesson, identifying within each the potential for supportingchildren's learning in the areas of phonological awareness, orthographicawareness, and word recognition. Contains 3 figures and 15 references. (NKA)

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How and Why Children Learn about Sounds, Letters, andWords in Reading Recovery Lessons

Irene C. FountasGay Su Pinnell

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[RECOVERY' RecordREADING

COUNCIL

Running 44444444OF NORTH AMERICA

A Review of Theory and Practice forReading Recovery TeachersFall 1999 Volume 12 No. 1

...

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In This IssueHow and Why Children Learn about

Sounds, Letters, and Words 1

The Talents of This Teacher 2

To Reading Recovery Training 3

Tracing the OrangeAlphabet Bedboard 6

Editorial Board 7

Editor's Corner 7

Copyright Notice 7

Spotlight 8

Work-based Learning ThroughCooperative Education

Success for RR in WyomingVisiting Abroad

To Save a Child 10

The Ghosts of Christmas 11

My "No Fear" Story 12

Speak Up! 12

That Deadline Looms! 13

A Flower 13

WANTED 14

Publications and Products 14

Membership Application 15

The Last Word 16

Reading the Environmental PrintThe Right AttitudeDiscoveryBehind the "Clean" Glass?In Need of a Bandage

The Running RecordPublished by RRCNA

1929 Kenny Rd., Suite 100Columbus, OH 43210

www.readingrecovery.org© 1999 RRCNA

All rights reserved.

The Running Record is publishedtwice a year (Fall and Spring).

Submission of articles, teaching anecdotes, and poetryare welcome; all submissions will go through a reviewprocess. Please enclose 3 copies of each submission, aphotograph (non-returnable) and a self-addressed,stamped envelope for correspondence. Photos will beused on a space available basis. Send submissions to:

Judith C. Neal, EditorThe Running Record

California State University, FresnoSchool of Education & Human Development

5005 N. Maple, M/S 202Fresno, CA 93740-8025

FAX (559) 278-0376Email [email protected]

How and Why Children Learn about Sounds, Letters,and Words in Reading Recovery Lessons

Irene C. FountasTrainer of Teacher LeadersLesley CollegeCambridge, Massachusetts

Gay Su PinnellTrainer of Teacher LeadersThe Ohio State UniversityColumbus, Ohio

Meeting

nationalgoals for

literacy achieve-ment means teach-ing all children, achallenging tasksince some, for avariety of reasons,require more teaching than others. A key tomeeting this challenge is early interventionthat catches students before they fail andbefore they fall so far behind their peersthat they cannot profit from classroominstruction (Torgeson, Wagner, & Rashotte,1997).

It makes sense to design our interven-tions in a way that is consistent with whatwe know from research about "whatworks" for young children who find read-ing and writing difficult to learn. Welldesigned and delivered interventions areworth the investment of resources. ReadingRecovery is a research-based program thatis designed to support young children tobuild effective reading and writing process-es (Askew, Fountas, Lyons, Pinnell, &Schmitt, 1999). We teach those childrenwho have been identified as the lowestachievers in their classes, and we workwith them intensively until they becomeindependent readers and writers.

Marie Clay's original research onyoung readers was the impetus for thedesign of the Reading Recovery lesson.Since the initial design, Reading Recoveryprocedures have been continually refined inresponse to Clay's research as well as otherresearch from many different perspectives.

In this article, we take a look atReading Recovery lesson elements in orderto compare the teaching and learning with-

in the lesson compo-nents to several areasof learning that havebeen identified at thenational level as impor-tant to children's litera-cy learning. These ele-ments are: (1) phono-logical awareness; (2)

orthographic awareness; and, (3) wordlearning in reading and writing. The firsttwo areas of knowledge, and the way theyare interrelated, contribute to young chil-dren's growth in the ability to solve wordswhile reading for meaning. The third areastrongly supports learning in the first twoareas and also helps to accelerate earlylearning in literacy. These elements togeth-er contribute to the child's development ofa larger process in which the reader usesin-the-head strategies in an efficient way toaccess and orchestrate a variety of informa-tion, including meaning and language sys-tems, with the visual and phonologicalinformation in print.

A recent book, Preventing reading dif-ficulties in young children (Snow, Burns, &Griffin, 1998), reports the findings of theNational Committee on the Prevention ofReading Difficulties in Young Children.The committee reported that reading inter-ventions should provide a strong founda-tion for these young learners, including thedevelopment of phonemic awareness,orthographic awareness, familiarity withwords, and important concepts about print.Reading Recovery is designed to build thisstrong foundation.

An important observation is that youngreaders who have difficulty are mostly ofaverage intelligence, and they may have

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How and Why Children Learn ...continued from previous page


problems resulting from multiple anddiffering causes. They require one-on-one instruction from a teacher who isable to use a balanced range ofapproaches in an intensive and individu-alized way. With appropriate interven-tion, almost all children experiencingdifficulty can learn to read, providedinstruction is intensive and begins early(Vellutino, Scanlon, Sipay, Small, Pratt,Chen, & Denckla, 1996). ReadingRecovery is a multi-dimensional inter-vention that allows us as teachers totailor instruction to the needs of thesehighly diverse individual children.

In Reading Recovery lessons, chil-dren learn letter-sound relationships inseveral different ways, and they aretaught to apply that knowledge in carry-ing out real reading and writing tasks.Different components of the lesson fos-ter the use of sounds and letter corre-spondence; however, all instruction isdirected toward helping children learn`how words work' and for the automatic,rapid recognition of words while readingfor meaning. As Pressley (1998) writes:

We ... are taken by Clay's (1991)positions on the importance of visualprocessing of words and attention toword sounds and parts. Clay arguesfor teaching children to attend care-fully to words, analyzing the wordsinto parts that can be sounded out,but also emphasizes that the decodingsthat result should be cross-checkedwith other information (i. e., syntacticand semantic-contextual cues) todetermine whether the word as decod-ed makes sense (p. 177-178).

In the section below, we provide adefinition and description of each of thethree foundational components of earlyliteracy (given above and referenced toSnow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) with ref-erence to their research base.

Foundational Components ofEarly Literacy1. Phonological awareness:Hearing sounds in words.

When children develop phonologi-cal awareness, they become sensitive tothe sounds that they hear. They recog-nize that spoken words consist of asequence of sounds. They can hold up

language and its sounds to consciousobservation and analysis. They can tellwhen words start like other words or endlike them. Awareness of the sounds inwords is a strong predictor of readingachievement (Lomax & McGee, 1987).Phonemic awareness (sometimes calledphoneme awareness) is the ability tohear individual phonemes in syllables."Phonological awareness, or phonologi-cal sensitivity, is the ability to attendexplicitly to the phonological structureof spoken words, rather than just to theirmeanings and syntactic roles. This meta-linguistic skill involves treating languageas the object of thought rather thanmerely using language" (Snow, Burns, &Griffin, p. 111).

2. Orthographic awareness.The orthography of language refers

to the spelling systemthe letters andletter clusters that represent the soundsand words of the language. Orthographicawareness refers to the child's ability toperceive the features of letters and torecognize visual patterns. The distinctivefeatures of a letter are those that distin-guish it from every other letter, forexample, the tall or short stick, the circleor "twiner or the "tail."

The alphabet is the basic tool of thereader and writer; all words in our sys-tem are based on this limited set ofgraphic signs. To identify letters, a basicfoundational skill, the child must learnto notice the features (very small differ-ences) that distinguish one letter fromanother. The grapho-phonic relationshiprefers to the relationship between theoral sounds of the language and the let-ters or clusters of letters in written lan-guage that represent those sounds. Theability to identify distinctive features ofletters must be established before a childcan attach names or sounds to letters.

3. Word LearningIn the earliest stages of learning to

read, students do not have in place theskills needed for phonological decodingsystems; so, they must often read wordsby sight [recognizing the particular visu-al patterns of the letters that make up the

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word) (Ehri, 1991). These early sightwords are very helpful to students asthey learn more about word identificationstrategies. Children who know how torecognize letters and have a small bodyof words they can read, move more easi-ly to the application of letter-sound rela-tionships to the reading of words (Ehri &Wike, 1985). Moreover, it appears thatthe more words an individual knows andrecognizes, the easier it is to learn morewords. As children gu beyond the earlystages of learning to read, we wouldexpect an acceleration in their word .learning because they have learned ways

of learning words. Rapid, automaticword recognition is related to competent,fluent reading with understanding(Stanovich, 1991). For fluent readingwith understanding, readers need instantrecognition of about 95% of words seenin text (Adams, 1990).

We have included word recognitionand word learning here because theseprocesses are intricately related tophonological awareness, orthographicawareness, and the use of phonographicrelationships. The first words childrenlearn are important exemplars for themas they become aware of the patterns ofletters in words. When a child has read aword several times, it becomes moreavailable to him/her phonologically(Clay, 1991). The child has said the wordmany times and has had opportunity tothink about the sounds. Also, the childhas had the opportunity to connect theword with visual information while say-ing it.

Building FoundationalConcepts Across the ReadingRecovery Lesson

We will describe seven componentsof the Reading Recovery lesson, identi-fying within each the potential for sup-porting children's learning in the areas ofphonological awareness, orthographicawareness. and word recognition.

In presenting this discussion we rec-ognize that we are focusing on knowl-edge of words and how they "work,"which is only a part of the processes ofreading and writing. It is useful forReading Recovery teachers to think

about concepts like phonological aware-ness and letter-sound relationships withinwords, for these terms are popular intoday's discussions of literacy. Weshould not forget. however, that when wetalk about reading, we mean the process-ing of continuous text with a focus onmeaning. Children in Reading Recoverydevelop knowledge in many separate butinterrelated areas; but the ultimate goalof the lesson is to help them use manydifferent kinds of information in an inte-grated way to construct meaning fromprint. Effective teaching is de.signerl tobuild knowledge while also creatingmany opportunities for children to useknowledge, such as letter-sound relation-ships, during the reading of continuoustext.

Familiar ReadingReading familiar material helps chil-

dren bring together their growing infor-mation about print with the language andmeaning of the stories that they read.While reading continuous text, the readeruses visual information to monitor orcheck on himself, to self-correct, and tosearch for information to solve words. Inaddition, during familiar reading, thereader is constantly recognizing knownwords and thereby is growing more auto-matic and fluent in the process. Forexample, in the following example fromKyle's familiar reading of Sally's NewShoes (Smith, 1996), Kyle read accurate-ly, with rapid word recognition, the firsttwo pages of the story.

[p. 11 I'm going to walk in my newshoes.

[p. 2) I'm going to run in my new shoes.(p.31 I'm going to ... (stops and

appeals).Teacher: [Demonstrates by reading] I'm

going to j-DO&[p. 3] [Rereads first part of sentence] I'm

going to jump in my new shoes.[p. 4] rm going to (stops and appeals).Teacher; [Demonstrates by reading] I'm

going to h-Child;[p. 4] [Rereads first part of sentence] I'm



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Text: Little Pig (Melser, 1990)

2. "Go Home,"

said the hens."No," said Little Pig.

3. "Go Home,"

said the ducks.

"No," said Little Pig.

4. "Go Home,"

said the cows.


5. "Go Home,"

said the sheep.


6. "Go Home,"

said the butcher.

7. "or I'll make you intosausages."

8. "Yes, I will,"

said Little Pig

Running Record

4 44 4 chickens

hens

4 4 4

4 4 44 4 4

4 4 4 4

4 44 4 4 44 4 4 4

4 4

4 4 4

4 4 4

J

b- Rb- Abutcher IT

14 turn 4 4I'll make

4 4 44 4 4

going to h- hop in my new shoes.[p. 5] I'm going to c-, I'm going to climb

in my new shoes.Teacher: The first letter helped you

didn't it?Child:[p. 6] I'm going to dance in my new

shoes.[p. 7] A j_ I'm not going to

But I T[p. 8] ...swim in my new shoes.

Kyla recognized many words cor-rectly, with the support of meaning andrepetitive language. She was beginning touse her knowledge of letter-sound rela-tionships to help her with unfamiliarwords. Her teacher showed her bydemonstrating the technique of rereadingthe sentence and sounding the first letterof the word. After two demonstrations,Kyla took on the technique for herself. Atthe word but, she again appealed to theteacher and was told the word. After thereading, the teacher turned quickly tosome of the pages in the book and askedKyla:

"Find the word to on this page;"Find the word in on this page; and,"Find the word but on this page."

She was asking the child to find twofamiliar words and one unfamiliar word.She was reinforcing Kyla's ability toattend to the features of a word that issurrounded by other words in continuoustext.

Then the teacher said, "But beginswith an upper case b on this page, does-n't it?" Then, she took magnetic lettersand asked Kyla to make the word butwith both a lower case and upper case B.In these ways, she was teaching Kylaabout the orthography of the word.

In familiar reading, ReadingRecovery teachers show children how touse their growing awareness of phono-logical and orthographic features tocheck on their own reading. Kyla quicklyrecognized many words; rereadingknown text gave her an opportunity togrow more automatic in that recognition.The orthography of high frequencywords was becoming more availablethrough reading them many times in afamiliar text. This growing automaticityallowed her to give more attention to

learning new things such as makingattempts at less familiar words by usingthe first letter.

Reading Yesterday's New BookThe Running Record

Every day, Reading Recovery teach-ers take a running record while the childindependently reads a book for the sec-ond time. Yesterday, Kyla's new bookwas Little Pig (Meiser, 1990). Figure 1shows part of the teacher's runningrecord.

Kyla read Little Pig with 94% accu-racy, indicating that the book was wellwithin her range for learning. After thereading, the teacher made the followingpoints:Interaction 1Teacher: [turns to page 2] Read this part

again.Figure 1

Kyla: [reading] "Go home," said thechickens.

Teacher: That would make sense. Thistime, when you come to this word,make the sound of the first letter.

Kyla: [reading again] "Go home," saidthe hens.

Teacher: Now that makes sense andlooks right. You can use the firstletter to help you with trickywords.

Interaction 2Teacher: [turns to page 6] Let's do this

part together. If you come to atricky part, use the first letter.[reads with child] "Go home,"said the butcher. [teacher dropsout]

Kyla: [reads] or I'll m-make you intosausages.

The Running Record 444 Fall 1999 Page 5



Teacher: I like the way you worked outthat word make.

Again, we see that Kyla can recog-nize most of the words in the text quicklyand easily. The high frequency words are:go, said, the, no, you, into, yes, I, will.The teacher called attention to letter-sound relationships that will be helpfulfor the child to use in coordination withmeaning and language for less familiarwords. She called on the child to use astrategy that she had successfully used infamiliar readingthat of making thesound of the first letter of the word. Here,the teacher showed the child how to applywhat she did in familiar reading to aproblem-solving situation in fairly newtext that had been read without the bene-fit of teacher assistance.

Letter Identification/Making andBreaking

Working with letters is an integralpart of Reading Recovery lessons.Teachers work to ensure that, very earlyin the program, children learn how tolook at letters, distinguish one fromanother, learn their names and associatedsounds, learn to notice letters withinwords, and produce all of these responseswith speed. According to Clay (1993),"The child must learn to attend to thedetails in print, respecting the rules ofdirection, the order or sequences of let-ters, and the order of words. Some chil-dren, finding this difficult or tedious,coast along on their language skills andpay as little attention to the detail of printas they can get away with" (p. 23).

Reading Recovery teachers beginwith the known set of letters and work forexpansion of children's letter knowledge.In early lessons, teachers work to helpchildren "gain footholds" in print bylearning letters and some simple words.For children with very low letter knowl-edge, teachers use movement (motor)and, if necessary, verbal and visualapproaches to help the child rememberletters. Children

write letters;construct their own alphabet books(recording their own knowledge todate);work extensively with magnetic let-ters which, because they are three-

dimensional, lend themselves tofeeling shapes and manipulatingthese smallest units of language.

After taking a running record on yes-terday's new book, teachers always workwith magnetic letters. The letters areoverlearned in order to help childrendevelop the fast, automatic responses thatwill be required for word recognition andword solving while reading continuoustext. This section of the lesson is shortand is preceded by and followed by manywhole word and whole text experiences(see Clay, 1993, pp. 23-27).

Following the running record, Kyla'steacher placed 25 lower-case magneticletters, with duplications of individual let-ters, on the chalkboard and asked thechild to work with them. This work withletters gives children practice in quicklydistinguishing the features of the letterforms (orthographic awareness). Theteacher pulled out a letter and said, "Findall the letters like this." This exerciseprompted Kyla to look closely at the par-ticular letter, think about its distinguish-ing features, and then look for those samefeatures in other letters. The exercise wasrepeated twice with four different letters.This letter work takes only one to twominutes and is typical of ReadingRecovery lessons for children who arenot fluent and flexible with print. Letterwork is continued as long as the childneeds it.

Next, the teacher made the word cat,saying, "What's this word?" Kylaanswered, "Cat." The teacher made theword sat with magnetic letters and placedit under the word cat saying, "Sat is likecat, only the first letter is different."

In a similar manner, the teacher andKyla worked with two more pairs, canand man, and no and go. Kyla was beingtaught that you can change the first letterof a known word to figure out a newword. The teacher was making the phono-logical and orthographic features of thewords available to Kyla. The idea is tolink the letters and sounds within a word,left to right. The child is encouraged tosay the words, hearing the sounds insequence, and to coordinate this actionwith the letters (hence, linking soundsequence with letter sequence). The goalis to learn how "words work."

Writing a StoryIn this lesson component, the child

first composes and then is assisted inwriting a message or story in a writingbook, with some words selected by theteacher for closer examination using the"practice page." Children are taught toarticulate words slowly, listening forsounds and connecting sounds with let-ters. In the first lessons, the child isencouraged to articulate and hear theword in the absence of letters; he usescounters which are pushed into boxesdrawn on the practice page by theteacher. At first, teachers use a box forevery phoneme or sound; but as the childlearns more about the structure of words,the teacher begins to use a box for everyletter. Teachers ask questions such as,"What else can you hear?" or, "What canyou hear at the beginning?" Childrenmove from using simple letter-soundcombinations to more complex ones.They learn to analyze the new words onewants to write and to use letters, sounds,and spelling patterns to do so. They alsouse analogy, making connections betweenknown words and words they want to getto.

Another way children work withwords is writing words several times anddeveloping a way of studying andremembering words by noticing thesequence of letters. In this way, the childcan add to his growing knowledge of par-ticular words. The words that the teacherselects to teach to children are:

words with high utility;words which occur most often in thelanguage;words needed often in writing;words the child almost knows that alittle more practice will bring tooverlearning (Clay, 1993, p. 30).

In the lesson we discuss here, Kylacomposed this sentence: My dog likes toeat candy in the night. (See Figure 2.)

The teacher said, "What's the firstword?"

Kyla said, "My," and quickly wrotemi for the word my.

The teacher said, "It sounds like that,but this is how it looks." She covered thei with correction tape and wrote y. Sheasked Kyla to write the word my several


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continued on page 10

times quickly in different places on thepractice page. Then, she asked Kyla tocome to the chalkboard and make mywith magnetic letters, mixing it up andhaving Kyla assemble it three times. Kylasat down, read my as written correctlyand she continued her writing.

The word dog was new for Kyla. Theteacher drew three boxes on the practicepage and asked Kyla to say the wordslowly while pushing markers into theboxes, a technique which she had previ-ously taught her. Kyla said the wordslowly and pushed the markers as shemade the appropriate sounds of the word.This action illustrates that she was learn-ing to coordinate her articulation ofsounds with movement. This exercisehelps children become sensitive to thesounds (phonemes) of individual wordsand to examine them and their locationwithin words.

Kyla identified d as the first sound ofthe word and wrote it in the first box. Shethen identified g as the final sound andknew the box in which to place the letter.The teacher wrote the o in the middlebox, and Kyla wrote dog in her story. Eatand night were also constructed with thesupport of boxes. Foreat, two boxes wereused (for two sounds).Kyla identified andwrote the e and the 1,and her teacher filledin the a. For night,three boxes were used(for three sounds).Kyla wrote the t firstand then the n and thei. The sounds of eachword were said slowly,without segmenting, ina way that helped thechild to identify them.The use of soundboxes, as these exam-ples illustrate, allowschildren to isolatephonemes in individualwords and think aboutletter-sound relation-ships.

Continuing withher story, Kyla quicklywrote the known words

to and the; the teacher wrote the word in.For the word candy, her teacher asked herto first clap the word. Kyla correctlyidentified the first part as can. Theteacher said, "Write the word can thatyou know and then I'll show you some-thing." After Kyla wrote can, the teacherwrote dy to make it candy.

Clapping words helps children thinkof words in parts and makes the phono-logical aspects of syllables more availableto them. In this case, the action allowedKyla to identify a phonological part thatshe knew and to connect it to a word sheknew: she used a known word to get part-way towards writing a new word.

While writing a message, Kyla wasexplicitly shown how to analyze soundsin words and to connect phonemes to thegrapheme patterns that represent them.She also learned some very useful highfrequency words. As children learn even afew words, they begin to see similaritiesbetween words. They encounter the sameletters and clusters of letters over andover, noticing that certain letter sequencesappear in words. In this way, building arepertoire of words that the child knowsin great detail is extremely helpful.

Figure 2


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Text: The Merry Go Round, (Randell, 1996)

Reading and Teaching Interaction

2 "Come here, James," Kyla read the first two lines, pausing and appealing at the wordsaid Dad. Kate. The teacher told her the word."Come here, Kate." She read the fourth line accurately and them paused at look,"Come here, Nick." making the sound of 1, and then saying look, reading accurately"Look at the merry-go-round." to the end of the line.

4 "Look at James." Kyla read, "'Look at James. James is..."."James is up on a pig." The teacher told her the word up.

6 "Look at Kate." Kyla read, "'Look at Kate. Kate is..."Kate is up on a duck." Teacher, "That word is up."

Kyla read, "Look at Kate. Kate is up on a duck."

8 Dad said, Kyla read, "Dad said, 'Come...Here is a car, Nick." and read"Here is a car, Nick." accurately the rest of the page."No," said Nick. The teacher said, "I like the way you fixed that."

10 Dad said, Kyla read, "Dad said, Come...Here is a airplane, Nick.""Here is a plane, Nick." The teacher said, "That would make sense but check the first"No," said Nick. letter. It starts with a p."

Kyla reread the sentence accurately.The teacher said, "Now that makes sense and looks right."

12 "A horse, look, Kyla read, "A horse, look at a horse,' said Nick," inserting theA horse," said Nick. word at."Here is a horse." She read accurately the rest of the page.

14 James is up on a pig. Kyla read accurately.Kate is up on a duck.

16 Nick is up on a horse. Kyla read accurately.

With this goal in mind,early in children's programs,teachers work to extend knowl-edge of words by having chil-dren make words with magneticletters, trace words, and writewords. Teachers work for fullcontrol of the word and then forflexibility with the word by hav-ing children construct wordswith different materials (magnet-ic letters, chalk, water, paint-brush, finger on desk, whiteboard, marker, etc.) as well as indifferent places. These proce-dures help children to develop a"program" for a word, one thatwill allow them to order the let-ters in sequence with a mini-mum of attention (Clay, 1993).

Cut up SentenceWriting and reading are

connected when the teacherwrites the child's message on asentence strip and then cuts itapart, word by word, for thechild to reassemble. This activityprovides opportunity for practic-ing many requisite literacyskills, such as early behaviorslike word-by-word matching. Itpromotes, also, the connectionsbetween letters and sounds, fornow the child is saying eachword (from the memory of theirown language just reconstructed in print)and visually scanning the available choic-es (words) for identifying the "match" forthe word they are saying.

Kyla put together her sentence, Mydog likes to eat candy in the night, left toright, rereading to help her keep her placein the reconstruction. As a reading task,reconstructing the story enables the childto notice and locate the patterns that dis-tinguish a word. Kyla reread and checkedthe message, making sure that the con-struction "made sense" and also "lookedright."

Introducing the New BookThe introduction to the child's new

book not only supports comprehension butalso extends children's ability to use wordrecognition and grapho-phonic skills. In

Figure 3

the earliest reading books, teachers directchildren's attention to words within thesimple texts that they are reading. Theteacher will ask the child to locate knownwords; other "new and important" wordswill be located by first predicting what thechild would see at the beginning of theword.

Kyla's new book was The Merry-Go-Round (Randell, 1996), a level three book.First the teacher pointed out the threecharacters, James, Nick, and Dad, in theillustrations and asked Kyla to say thenames. Then she said, "This story is abouta merry-go-round. Look, James and Nickare going to get up on one of the animalsand ride. On this page (page 2), Dad issaying, 'Come here, James.' He wantsthem to look at the merry-go-round."

Later in the introduction, the teacher

repeated and had Kyla say some of thetricky language of the book. For example:

"Come here, James.""Come here, Nick."

"Here is a car, Nick."

"James is up on .a pig."

"A horse, look,A horse," said Nick.

Knowledge of the high frequencywords come, look, here, and up had poten-tial for helping Kyla monitor her reading.Kyla had previously read these words andwritten some of them; she knew the wordlook very well and had just learned theword here. Since come was important onpage 1, the teacher had Kyla locate comeon that page and say the phrase, "Comehere."



continued on page 13

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10

On page 4, the teacher said, "Jamesis up on a pig," and had Kyla locate theword up, saying, again, "Yes, he is Lip ona pig, isn't he?" This interaction directedKyla's attention to up since she wouldhave to use this knowledge to help herover a tricky piece of language. Herteacher asked her to locate the knownword here on page 8, saying, "Herestarts with an upper case H on thispage."

The teacher gave some specialattention to page 12, saying, "Nickdidn't like these other things on themerry-go-round but on this page, hefound a horse. He's saying this: 'Ahorse, look, a horse.' Do you think hewants to get up on the horse?"

Kyla said, "Yes," and noticed thatNick was riding the horse on the lastpage.

In this introduction, the teacher pro-vided a high level of support for Kyla'sknowledge of language structure. Sheneeded to have the meaning and the lan-guage readily available to her whileengaging in word solving. Locatingwords helps children focus on visualaspects of words, again, making thegrapho-phonological relationships moreavailable to them. Each time the teacherasks a child to locate an unfamiliarword, the child is asked to say the wordand think what s/he would expect to see.It is an exercise in coordinating know-ledge of sounds (not only what you hearbut how it feels in the mouth to producethat word) with letter patterns.

Reading the New BookFollowing the introduction, the child

reads the new book with the teacher'ssupport. During this "first reading" (thefollowing day, the child will read thebook for a second time completely inde-pendently while the teacher takes a run-ning record), another way the teacherdraws attention to words within text is tonotice children's errors and help themsee the discrepancies between their oralreading and the words in the text. Theteacher prompts to the error in a numberof ways or provides needed informationfor solving a difficulty when the childstops. Because the text selected willhave many known words along with a

few new things to learn (Clay, 1993), thechild will be able to monitor his readingas well as notice any discrepanciesbetween what he says and what he sees(with the teacher's prompting) at the fewpoints of difficulty. In these ways, helearns about how to search for moreinformation to produce an accurate read-ing.

Some of the teaching interactionsfrom Kyla's reading of The Merry-Go-Round (Randell, 1996) are displayed inFigure 3.

After the reading, the teacher con-tinues her teaching interactions. Here,the teacher asked Kyla if she thoughtNick was happy because he got to ridethe horse and asked her what she wouldlike to ride. After this brief conversation,the teacher turned back to page 4 andasked Kyla to find the word up. She thenturned to page 10 and said, "What's thisword?" [pointing to here.] Then she said,"You did some good reading work.When something made sense but didn'tlook right, you figured it out. Comewould make sense, but you checked theletters."

All of these examples are for a childwho is beginning a Reading Recoveryprogram and should be consideredwithin that context. For example, themeans of searching for visual infor-mation beyond the use of a beginningletter/initial sound would change asquickly as possible in order for thechild to make accelerated progress.

Phonological and OrthographicAwareness in ReadingRecovery Lessons

Developing the ability to hear thesounds in words, to identify letters andrecognize letter patterns, to usephoneme-grapheme relationships, and tolearn words is explicitly recognized inthe Reading Recovery program (Adams,1990). In Reading Recovery lessons,children are taught how to use letter-sound relationships to construct words inwriting and to analyze words while read-ing. In order to accomplish these corn-


tHow and Why Children Learn ...continued from page 11

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plex analyses, specific instruction isemployed throughout the ReadingRecovery lesson to help children thinkabout the order of sounds in spokenwords and to analyze words intosequences of sounds.

In one Reading Recovery lesson achild will reread familiar books (that areeasy but still offer some word solvingopportunities), a book read for the firsttime the previous day, and a new bookthat has been introduced by the teacher.In the process of reading, children learnto apply their skills at word solving. Theylearn to take words apart while reading,to use initial letters and final letters as abeginning point for a detailed analysis, toconnect sounds with letters and clustersof letters, and to notice the inflectionsthat, added to words, change the word

and make it easy to recognize. They learnnot only to use the relationships ofsounds and letters or letter clusters, butalso to attend to large chunks or groupsof letters within words; thus, they learn touse all of their developing knowledge ofspelling patterns. It bears repeating thatthese elements together contribute to thechild's development of a larger process inwhich the reader uses in-the-head strate-gies in an efficient way to access andorchestrate a variety of information,including meaning and language systems,with the visual and phonological informa-tion in print.

Writing also helps children hear thesounds in words, think about the order ofsounds in words, and represent soundswith letters and letter cluster. Writingslows down the process so that children

can attend to the details of words as theyconstruct them and learn how words.'`work." As writers, they make connec-tions between oral and written language,

, learn to select topics and express theirmeanings.

Every day in Reading Recovery, chil-dren develop phonological and ortho-graphic awareness and learn to make theconnections they need to construct wordsin writing and to read words within con-tinuous texts. The Reading Recovery les-son puts research-based concepts intoaction while the child is enjoying a mean-ingful one-to-one interaction with a high-ly-skilled adult and is reading and writingfor meaning. This is the message we asReading Recovery teachers need to becommunicating in the face of renewedemphasis on these aspects of early litera-cy learning.



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12

ReferencesAdams, M. (1990). Beginning to read:

Thinking and learning about print.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Askew, B. J., Fountas, I. C., Lyons, C. A.,Pinnell, G. S., & Schmitt, M. C.(1999). Reading Recovery review:Understandings, outcomes, & implica-

tions. Columbus, OH: ReadingRecovery Council of North America.

Clay, M. M. (1991). Becoming literate:The construction of inner control.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (1993). Reading Recovery: Aguidebook for teachers in training.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Ehri, L. C. (1991). Development of theability to read words. In Barr, R.,Kamil, M. R., Mosenthal, P., &Pearson, P. D. (Eds.), Handbook ofreading research, Vol. II. New York:

Longman.Ehri, L. C., & Wilce, L. S. (1985). Does

learning to spell help beginners learnto read words? Reading Research

Quarterly, 22, 47-65.Lomax, R. G., & McGee, L. M. (1987).

Young children's concepts about printand meaning: Toward a model of wordreading acquisition. Reading Research

Quarterly, 22, 237-256.Melser, J. (1990). Little pig. Bothell, WA:

Wright.Pressley, M. (1998). Reading instruction

that works: The case for balancedteaching. New York: The GuilfordPress.

Randell, B. (1994). The merry-go-round.III. E. Lacey. Crystal Lake, IL: RigbyEducation.

Smith, A. (1996). Sally's new shoes.Crystal Lake, IL: Rigby.

Snow, C. E., Burns, M., & Griffin, S.(Eds.) (1998). Preventing reading diffi-culties in young children. Washington,DC: Commission on Behavioral andSocial Sciences and Education,National Research Council.

Stanovich, K. E. (1991). Word recogni-tion: Changing perspectives. In Barr,R., Kamil, M. L., Mosenthal, P., &Pearson, P. D. (Eds.), Handbook ofreading research, Volume 11. New

York: Longman.Torgeson, J. K., Wagner, R. K., &

Rashotte, C. A. (1997). Approaches tothe prevention and remediation ofphonologically-based reading disabili-ties. In Blachman, B. (Ed.),Foundations of reading acquisitionand dyslexia: Implications for earlyintervention. Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum.

Vellutino, F. R., Scanlon, D. M., Sipay, E.R., Small, S. G., Pratt, A., Chen, R. S.,& Denckla, M. B. (1996). Cognitiveprofiles of difficult-to-remediate andreadily remediated poor readers: Earlyintervention as a vehicle for distin-guishing between cognitive and experi-ential deficits as basic causes of spe-cific reading disability. Journal ofEducational Psychology, 88, 601-638.

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