SNAG Curriculum Guide for Spoken Language and Word Recognition Supported by Research-Based Practices

Note from Instructor: Your guide should be a how-to-guide that can be utilized by yourself or other colleagues. You may format the assignment in a chart form or any other way you feel would be the easiest to understand and use. Please be sure to use headings and titles so that the information is clear and easy to find.

Assignment: A curriculum guide is a how-to guide of practical ideas for teaching that is written in a convenient format as teaching notes for use in the future by either you or your colleagues. The guide includes:

Steps for achieving specific objectives Principles governing behavior, or descriptions of effective teaching strategies, interventions, and accommodations that special educators can use in their classrooms. Title of the strategy or principle Explanation of its educational purpose (goal or objective) Task analysis of teacher and student activities Student assessment procedures

In 1,250-1,500-words, develop a curriculum guide for spoken language and word recognition that addresses the following:

Grading criteria that accurately, thoroughly, and clearly guides the reader in the implementation and application of the strategies you have designed. This should be usable by any of the teachers in the school. Be in a format that provides you and your professional colleagues with practical information necessary for effective teaching of students with learning disabilities. Include a minimum of three references.

Prepare this assignment according to the APA guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to Turnitin.

Reading Strategies for Students With Mild Disabilities

Boyle, Joseph R. Intervention in School and Clinic44.1 (Sep 2008): 3-9.

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Teaching children with mild disabilities to read can be a challenging task for even the most seasoned teacher. In order to be successful, teachers need to be knowledgeable about the big five of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000). While the ultimate goal of reading is comprehension, several of the aforementioned skills must be in place to meet this goal (Tolman, 2005). Despite knowledge of the big five, other skills such as syllabication and structural analysis, subsumed under phonics and vocabulary instruction, are needed in order for children to progress from word-callers to becoming fluent readers who can efficiently comprehend text. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

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Keywords: comprehension; reading; reading intervention(s); learning strategies; academic

Among students with disabilities, research has shown that they perform poorly on various phonological tasks such as (a) phonological deletion, (b) phonological detection, (c) phonological oddity, (d) phonemic segmentation, (e) knowledge of letters, (f) blending phonemes, (g) phoneme counting, (h) rapid letter naming, (i) syllabication, and (j) pronouncing nonwords (Bhattacharya, 2006; Manis, Custodio, &Szeszulski, 1993; Manis, Doi, &Bhadha, 2000; O’Conner & Jenkins, 1997). Some claim that phonological skills are the best predictors of success in learning to read words (Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson, 2004). Yet others (Hammill, 2004) have found phonemic factors were only a moderate predictor of reading success and, in fact, found the largest predictors of reading to be writing conventions (spelling and punctuation), written language, and letter knowledge. What many of these studies point toward is that early reading activities should be composed of a variety of integrated activities that include phonological awareness, syllabication, print awareness, and early writing skills.

Teaching Early Reading Skills

For teachers, the research on learning how to read means that they should teach skills and activities that assist children in breaking the code of reading. It is important to remember that reading involves more than just teaching students a collection of phonological skills in daily activities. Reading is a combination of skills that build slowly over time. It is a combination of reading activities: phonological awareness activities (i.e., learning the code), sight words, and connected reading (i.e., using words in context) that enable children to actually read. The end goal of teaching phonological awareness and structural analysis strategies is for children to apply these skills during reading. Therefore, teachers should present phonological awareness activities prior to reading so that students can integrate them into their reading. Similarly, teachers should present syllabication and structural analysis strategies prior to reading so that students can become fluent during reading as they encounter unknown words.

Before discussing how to teach early reading skills, some common terms that help clarify their use in this article are presented in Table 1.

The key to reading seems to be frequent exposure to reading skills and strategies, particularly those skills that will cross over or generalize from one activity to another. For example, if working on the phoneme m during a phonological awareness activity, use it in context with words as children learn sight words or as they read m words in basal stories. The more generalization that can be taught in class, the easier it will be for students to use that skill or strategy in a new context. Of course, drill and practice activities with immediate feedback will ensure that children master skills and prevent them from practicing errors or miscues. As most teachers know, it is much harder to fix a well-learned error than teaching it properly the first time.

For many students with disabilities, teaching reading skills and strategies involves explicit instruction. Direct instruction can be used whereby the teacher models the skill or strategy, uses guided practice with feedback, and uses independent practice to assess how well the student can independently use the skill or strategy (Strenge, 2002). For instance, in a phonological awareness activity, the teacher would model the word by pronouncing the letters b-u-m-p sounds to make bump or for more advanced instruction use onsets and rimes (e.g., b and ump make bump). Students would also practice (i.e., guided practice with feedback) the b, u, m, and ?sounds while pointing to each letter. Finally, the teacher would ask each student to point to the word and pronounce the letters while reading the word (i.e., independent practice).

A sight word activity might follow this phonological awareness activity in which the teacher would review common sight words on flashcards. These sight words would contain words like bump or other words from the prior activity. If teachers wanted students to practice phonological awareness, they would allow students extra time to apply phonological rules to pronounce words. If, on the other hand, teachers wanted students to learn these words as sight words, students should be expected to say them on sight (i.e., within 3 seconds or less). Finally, a connected reading activity might be incorporated in which students would read common sight words in sentences or in stories from beginning basal readers. Any errors (or miscues) that a child would make while reading would immediately be corrected. During or after reading, the teacher should check for comprehension by asking questions.

Reading Techniques and Strategies for Word Identification

To help students with vocabulary development, fluency, and comprehension, they can be taught to use the strategies presented in this article. The three methods described here are the phonological awareness strategy, a graphosyllabic procedure, and the word identification strategy. All of these procedures are useful at different stages of reading development and are dependent on the student’s prerequisite skills. Typically, students proceed in their learning from phonological skills, to syllabication, and finally to structural analysis skills.

First, when children learn to read, they learn by using phonological awareness skills to help pronounce words. Using phonological skills or rules, children simply pronounce the phonemes based upon letter-sound correspondence. Often when teaching these phonological awareness skills, they are combined with the teaching of sight words as well as reading words in context. Second, as children learn phonological awareness rules for pronouncing monosyllabic words, they will soon have to learn the rules for syllabication. Obviously, as word length increases, students will become more reliant on syllabication rules. Third, as these rules are mastered, students are typically taught structural analysis rules for breaking down longer multisyllabic words and determining the word meanings based on prefixes, suffixes, and root words. There are three strategies that correspond to the aforementioned areas and are meant to supplement current reading programs, not to supplant them. The purpose of the first two strategies (i.e., phonological awareness strategy and word identification strategy) is to teach students common rules for pronouncing words but framed within a strategy format. The purpose of the third strategy is to teach children a procedure for breaking polysyllabic words into easier to read units that can be blended together to pronounce the word.

Phonological Awareness

Phonemic awareness refers to segmenting a word into letters with its corresponding letter sounds and then blending those sounds together to pronounce the word. The phonological awareness strategy described in the following incorporates both segmenting and blending skills.

STOP-A phonological awareness strategy. The purpose of the phonological awareness strategy (Boyle & Seibert, 1998) is not to teach initial letter sounds (i.e., students should know most of their letter sounds) but to teach the next logical steps-segmenting and blending. Therefore, as prerequisite skills, students are required to know at least 80% of the initial letter sounds (phonemes) from a list of all of the phonemes (i.e., consonant and short vowel sounds).

Because students with disabilities in first through third grades will be using this strategy, each step incorporates familiar keywords that they could easily understand and use. The phonological awareness strategy incorporates both segmenting and blending skills through the mnemonic STOP (see Figure 1). The specific steps of the strategy were developed because previous research has demonstrated that segmenting and blending were two skills essential for pronouncing words. Training students in one subskill (e.g., segmenting) did not result in increases in other subskills (e.g., blending), and segmenting and blending must be taught together to assist students in pronouncing words (O’ Conner, Jenkins, Leicester, & Slocum, 1992; Torgesen, Morgan, & Davis, 1992).

The steps for STOP are as follows.

The first step, Stare, cues the student to look at each letter of the unknown word (i.e., the first step of segmenting). The second step, Tell, cues the student to tell or silently say each letter sound (the second step of segmenting). The third step, Open, cues the student to verbalize aloud the segmented sounds. The fourth step, Put, cues the student to blend the letter sounds together to say the word.

Strategy instruction consists of introductory and mnemonic practice training, during which students are instructed on the components of the phonological awareness strategy. Initially, the teacher describes and models the strategy to students and then they begin using the mnemonic, STOP, while the teacher provides feedback to them.

The initial phases involve using the strategy with monosyllabic words (about 10 three- to four-letter words that contain short vowel sounds) per lesson. Each monosyllabic word should be placed on individual index cards. Every subsequent session should use 10 new words. During the sessions, teachers should incorporate 2 or 3 nonsense words to be certain that students are pronouncing the words using phonetic rules and not just remembering the words as sight words. Once students master proper strategy use with monosyllabic words, multisyllabic words should slowly be introduced during subsequent lessons. All the words should follow similar phonetic rules as the monosyllabic words. As with the monosyllabic word phase, each session should include 2 to 3 multisyllabic nonsense words.

Syllabication

Syllabication is considered an important skill for children to read multi- or polysyllabic words (Bhattacharya, 2006). When students use syllabication procedures, they are trying to break the word into recognizable chunks or consolidated units (e.g., est, ock, or, ing) in order to pronounce it. These consolidated units come from their knowledge of other known words. For instance, a child uses the consolidated unit of est from his or her knowledge of best, rest, nest, and vest. The assumption is that skilled readers have a store of consolidated units formed from other known words that they can piece together to determine an unknown word (Ehri, 1998). When a child comes across the word restoration, it can be pronounced using prior knowledge of consolidated units of rest, or, a, tion. Consolidated units can be made up of morphemes, syllables, or partial units, such as onsets and rimes. For skilled readers, most master this procedure and apply it on a consistent basis. Unskilled readers, such as students with mild disabilities, try to process letters rather than syllables within words and this often leads to errors in the pronunciation of polysyllabic words (Bhattacharya, 2006).

Several studies have been conducted that taught syllabication techniques to students with mild disabilities who used it to successfully read polysyllabic words (Bhattacharya, 2006; Bhattacharya &Ehri, 2004; Ciinningham, 1980; White, 2005). In one study, Bhattacharya and Ehri (2004) taught students a graphosyllabic procedure for determining unknown polysyllabic words.

Initially, students learned three basic rules:

* Every syllable has a vowel or vowel pair in it and there is only one vowel sound per syllable.

* Each vowel or vowel pair can go with only one syllable. In other words, the student cannot use the same vowel sound for two different syllables.

* The sounds of the syllable should be as close as possible to the whole word (e.g., mustard should be pronounced like must-ard or mus-tard, not like muse-tard).

After students learn these rules, the following five steps are used to teach the graphosyllabic procedure:

* The teacher explains and models the correct way to segment a word into syllables. In doing so, he or she presents the student with a model word, finish, on an index card, and reads the whole word aloud.

* The teacher explains the meaning of the word.

* The teacher then divides the word in syllables (i.e., finish) by raising one finger for each syllable. The teacher tells the student that there are two syllables to the word finish and reads the word again.

* The teacher looks at the word, says each syllable by exposing only that part of the word while they are to say it. They keep the other part of the syllable covered until they say it.

* The teacher blends the syllables together to say the entire word.

Using this technique, several different ways of dividing words are considered acceptable (finish could be pronounced fin-ish or fi-nish). Acceptable forms follow these rules: (a) each syllable contains one and only one vowel sound, (b) the letters in the syllable that are showing match the sounds that they pronounce, and (c) it forms a legitimate pronunciation. Throughout the training, teachers should provide students with immediate feedback about their pronunciation of words and syllables. In the aforementioned study (Bhattacharya &Ehri, 2004), the researchers used 25 two- to four-syllable words per training session and had the students use the five-step procedure four times for each of the 25 words during the session.

Structural Analysis

The word identification strategy, developed by Lenz, Schumaker, Deshler, and Beals (1984), provides students with another method for breaking down polysyllabic words into pronounceable units. This strategy should be taught to students who have difficulty pronouncing large polysyllabic words, particularly those words that show up as vocabulary words in content area reading materials.

As a prerequisite, students should know common prefixes and suffixes before beginning instruction in this strategy. Throughout the strategy training, the teacher keeps a record of the number of word identification errors made as the child orally reads passages as well as the student’s level of comprehension on the passages. This strategy follows an eight-stage process (Deshler, Alley, Warner, &Schumaker, 1981) of (a) pretest and obtain commitment, (b) describe the strategy, (c) model the strategy, (d) verbal rehearsal of strategy steps, (e) controlled practice and feedback, (f) grade-appropriate practice and feedback, (g) posttest and obtain commitment to generalize, and (h) generalization.

DISSECT Strategy

Each key word used in the acronym DISSECT is a trigger word that prompts the student to perform a certain action in the step. The word identification strategy uses the first-letter mnemonic DISSECT (see Figure 2) and helps students to dissect or cut apart unknown words to read them. The first step, Discover, prompts the student to skip an unknown word, read the rest of the sentence, and then use the information to guess the unknown word. If the student still has difficulty, the student should proceed to the next step, Isolate. In the Isolate step, the student looks at the first few letters to determine if he or she can identify a prefix. If a prefix is present, the student draws a box around the prefix. If not and if the student still can’t identify the word, the student should go to the fourth step, Separate. In the Separate the suffix step, the child boxes off the suffix, if any. In the next step, Say, the student should try to say the stem. If recognized, the student should say all three parts (prefix, stem, and suffix) together. If unable to pronounce the stem, the student should move to the Examine step of the strategy. In this step, the student examines the stem using the rules of twos and threes. If the stem can now be read using these rules, the student then combines the prefix, stem, and suffix together to pronounce the word. If, however, the student cannot pronounce the stem, the student should Check with someone. The student is taught to check with either the teacher or, if appropriate, another student. If no one is available, the student should Try a dictionary. In this final step, the student looks up the word and uses the pronunciation guide to say the stem.

For example, say the child comes across the word reincarnation. First, the student should discover the context by skipping the word and continuing to read until the end of the sentence to see if he or she can determine the unknown word. If the word is still unknown, the student would move to the next step, isolate the prefix, to box off (i.e., by using a backwards L) the re from the rest of the word (i.e., re I incarnation). If the student can pronounce the rest of the word, he or she should read the whole word with the prefix as part of the sentence. If not, the student would move to the next step, separate the suffix, by looking at the word ending tion (i.e., re I incarna I tion), boxing off the suffix, and then going to the next strategy step, say the stem. If the student can say the stem, he or she should say the prefix, stem, and suffix together. If not, the student should proceed to the examine the stem step. During this step, the student should use the rules of twos and threes to break down the word into syllables or pronounceable units. For the unknown stem, the student would look at the word to determine if the stem or any part of the stem begins with a vowel. If so, the student should separate the first two letters and pronounce them. If the stem begins with a consonant, the student should separate the first three letters from the rest of the stem and pronounce them. As applied to the example stem, incarna, the student would place a slash after the first two letters (i.e., in / carna) and continue using the rules of twos and threes with the rest of the word, resulting in in / car / na. Once the student can read the entire word, he or she should go back and read the entire word in the sentence. If the student still cannot read the word, the next rule of check with someone is used. The child is instructed to check with someone but is also instructed that the student should not interrupt someone who may be busy. If after he or she checks with someone and that person tells them the word, the student should go and read the word in the sentence. Finally, as a last resort if he or she cannot find anyone or people are busy, the student should use the last step, try the dictionary. For this last step, the student should look up the word, use the pronunciation guide to pronounce the word, and read the definition for the word. Once the definition is known, the student is instructed to reread the word in the sentence.

After modeling and after students have mastered the strategy step, students move on to controlled practice. During this stage, students practice the strategy with various activities. For example, they can practice the strategy as they read a story aloud, read sentences with underlined words (i.e., targeted unfamiliar words) in them, or skim through passages to find unfamiliar words. Once students reach mastery by correctly pronouncing 99% of the unknown words, comprehending with at least 60% accuracy, and reading fluently, they can proceed to the next stage, advanced practice. In this stage, students begin using the strategy with grade-level passages, some of which are selected from their textbooks. Finally, once students reach mastery in this phase, they proceed on to the posttest and generalization stages. Generalization takes place by having students use the strategy independently with other materials as part of planned assignments. Generally, these assignments incorporate materials from outside of the training sessions such as newspaper articles, magazine articles, or passages from textbooks and research materials.

Conclusion

The big picture of reading should be clearly understood. Skills should build in a natural progression from segmenting and blending letters, to syllabication, to more advanced skills, such as structural analysis of unknown words in stories. As these skills build, the teacher should consider how these individual skills could be integrated to reading activities and generalized to students’ basal readers or textbooks. Integration and generalization are important components because without them students are simply left with individual skills that are not connected to actual reading (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2002). Because the end goal of reading is comprehension, early in the reading process, teachers should consider how individual skills could eventually be linked to the larger process of reading and that with practice, these skills could lead to improved comprehension. Table 2 outlines research that supports these specific strategies. And while being able to read words automatically is the first step in reading, being able to read words fluently represents an ever-important second step that over time will lead to improved comprehension of text. This comes about with much practice of phonological awareness, syllabication, and structural analysis skills. On a daily basis children need to be reminded how each activity or skill can contribute to a larger group of skills that will allow them to read fluently and comprehend text.

References

References

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bhattacharya, A. (2006). Syllable representation in written spellings of sixth and eighth grade children. Insights on Learning Disabilities, 3, 43-61.

Bhattacharya, A., &Ehri, L. C. (2004).Graphosyllabic analysis helps adolescent struggling readers read and spell words. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37, 331-348.

Boyle, J. R., & Seibert, T. (1998). The effects of a phonological awareness strategy on the reading skills of elementary students with learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 8, 145-153.

Bremer, C., Clapper, A., & Deshler, D. (2002). Improving word identification skills using strategic instruction model (SIM) strategies. Minneapolis, MN: National Center on Secondary Education and Transition.

Cunningham, P. (1980). Applying a compare/contrast process to identifying polysyllabic words. Journal of Reading Behavior, 12, 213-223.

Cunningham, P., & Cunningham, J. (2002). What we know about how to teach phonics. In A. E. Farstrup& S. J. Samuels (Eds.), What the research says about reading instruction (3rd ed., pp. 87-109). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Deshler, D. D., Alley, G. R., Warner, M. M., &Schumaker, J. B. (1981). Instructional practices for promoting skill acquisition and generalization in severely learning disabled adolescents, Learning Disability Quarterly, 4, 415-421.

Ehri, L. (1998). Grapheme-phoneme knowledge is essential for learning to read words in English. In J. Metsala& L. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 3-40). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hammill, D. (2004). What we know about correlates of reading. Exceptional Children, 70, 453-469.

Lenz, K., & Hughes, C. A. (1990). A word identification strategy for adolescents with learning disabilities.Journal of Learning Disabilities, 23, 149-163.

Lenz, K., Schumaker, J., Deshler, D., &Beals V. (1984). Learning strategies curriculum: The word identification strategy. Lawrence: University of Kansas.

Manis, F., Custodio, R., &Szeszulski, P. (1993). Development of phonological and orthographic skill: A 2-year longitudinal study of dyslexic children. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56, 64-86.

Manis, F., Doi, L., &Bhadha, B. (2000). Naming speed, phonological awareness, and orthographic knowledge in second graders. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 33, 324-374.

Muter, V., Hulme, C., Snowling, M. J., & Stevenson, J. (2004). Phonemes, rimes, vocabulary, and grammatical skills as foundations of early reading development: Evidence from a longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 40, 665-681.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

O’Conner, R., & Jenkins, J. (1997, March). Early and later prediction of reading disabilities. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association annual conference, Chicago.

O’Conner, R., Jenkins, J., Leicester, N., & Slocum, T. (1992, April). Teaching phonemic awareness to young children with disabilities: Blending, segmenting, and rhyming. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association annual conference, San Francisco.

Reutzel, D. R., &Cooter, R. B. (2004). The essentials of teaching children to read. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill.

Strenge, J. (2002). Qualities of effective teachers. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tolman, C. (2005). Working smarter, not harder: What teachers of reading need to know and be able to teach. Perspectives, 31, 16-23.

Torgesen, J. K., Morgan, S., & Davis, C. (1992). The effects of two types of phonological awareness training on word learning in kindergarten children.Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 364-370.

White, T. (2005). Effects of systematic and strategic analogybased phonics on grade two students’ word reading and reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 234-255.

AuthorAffiliation

About the Author

Joseph R. Boyle is currently an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. His research interests include note-taking, cognitive strategies, and reading techniques. Address: Joseph R. Boyle, PhD, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Graduate School of Education, 10 Seminary Place, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183; e-mail: joseph.boyle@gse.rutgers.edu.

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Indexing (details)

Cite

Subject

Learning;
Phonetics;
Skills;
Reading programs;
Letters

Title

Reading Strategies for Students With Mild Disabilities

Author

Boyle, Joseph R

Publication title

Intervention in School and Clinic

Volume

Issue

Pages

3-9

Number of pages

Publication year

2008

Publication date

Sep 2008

Year

2008

Section

Lead Feature

Publisher

SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Place of publication

Austin

Country of publication

United States

Publication subject

Education–Special Education And Rehabilitation, Psychology

ISSN

10534512

Source type

Scholarly Journals

Language of publication

English

Document type

Feature

Document feature

Tables;References

ProQuest document ID

211721671

Document URL

https://library.gcu.edu:2443/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.library.gcu.edu:2048/docview/211721671?accountid=7374

Last updated

2012-02-09

Database ProQuest Central

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SNAG Curriculum Guide for Spoken Language and Word Recognition Supported by Research-Based Practices

SNAG Curriculum Guide for Spoken Language and Word Recognition Supported by Research-Based Practices

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