Transcript Teaching Reading Skills: Developing Spelling Skills

Developing Spelling
Skills Through Phonics
Advisory Teaching Team
NET Section, CDI, EDB
6 and 7 March, 2012
Objectives:
• To identify students’ strengths and
weaknesses in spelling
• To understand the importance of
applying Phonics Skills in spelling as
one of the major learning strategies
• To explore and to plan activities for
students to practise Phonics Skills for
spelling
Dictation Task One (seen)
• Study the dictation passage.
• You have 3 minutes to prepare and
familiarise yourself with the text.
Dictation Task Two
(unseen)
• Write the passage as it is read aloud to
you.
Teachers’ reflection
• Discuss in pairs possible problems students
would have in doing both seen and unseen
dictation. Are the problems the same?
Why/why not?
• Did you encounter any difficulties completing
either task? What were the difficulties?
Discuss in pairs.
How do most students
prepare for dictation?
• Look at the word and spell it, letter
by letter.
• Copy the spelling words numerous
times to help memorise the shape
of the word.
Student Weaknesses in
Spelling
• Lack of phonics skills (e.g. recognition of
letter-sound relationships, encoding skills)
• Inability to identify contextual clues to decide
upon the correct spelling (e.g. bare, bear)
• Lack of opportunities to apply the spelling
skills in writing for communication
What is Phonics?
• Phonics is the relationship between
letters and their sounds
• Phonics usually refers to a way of
teaching reading and spelling
According to the English
Language Curriculum
Guide 2004:“Phonics usually refers to a useful
strategy in the learning and teaching of
reading. It involves supporting learners to
recognise basic letter-sound relationships
in English words and to apply this
knowledge in reading and spelling.”
English Language Curriculum Guide (2004) P.171
Why Teach Phonics?
• To develop phonological awareness
• To provide strategies to decode and read unknown
words
• To provide strategies to encode and spell unknown
words
• To help readers make approximate pronunciations
of words
• To provide skills that impact positively on English
reading, writing, spelling and vocabulary building
Phonological awareness
helps readers:
• decode unknown words for reading
and
• encode unknown words for spelling
Why do students need
spelling skills?
• The ability to spell easily and
automatically enables students to
become more efficient writers
• Learning to spell is not simply
memorising lists of words. It is a
developmental process of learning
to apply different phonics skills
appropriately, so that the writer can
spell correctly the words he/she
writes.
How can teachers support
students in the development
of effective spelling skills?
• Be aware that students will
go through different stages
in developing spelling skills
Stage 1
The Child:
• Relies heavily on the most obvious sound in a word,
e.g. KT (kitten), WT (went), BE, (baby)
• Represents a whole word with one, two or three
letters. Uses mainly consonants,
(e.g. KGR(kangaroo), BT (bit)
• Recognises some sound-symbol relationships in
context, e.g. points to “ship” and says “sh” or
recognises first letter of name.
Stage 2
The Child:
• Chooses letters on the basis of sound
without regard for conventional spelling
patterns, e.g. kaj (cage), tabl (table)
• Chooses letters on the basis of sound
e.g. pepl (people)
• Represents all the essential sounds of
a word, e.g. spidr (spider), kitn (kitten)
Stage 2
The Child:
• Uses common English letter sequences, when
attempting to spell unknown words, e.g. thousend
(thousand), cort (caught), doller (dollar)
• Uses letters to represent all vowel and consonant
sounds in a word, placing vowels in every syllable,
e.g. holaday (holiday), gramous (grandma’s)
• Is beginning to use visual strategies, such as
knowledge of words, e.g. silent letters, double letters
Later Stage
The Child:
• Is aware of the many patterns and rules that
are characteristic of the English spelling
system, e.g. common English letter patterns;
relationship between meaning and spelling.
• Uses a multi-strategy approach to spelling
• Is able to recognise when a word doesn’t
look right, and to think of alternative spellings.
• Analyses and checks work, editing, writing
and correcting spelling.
Where do we start?
• What do we teach?
• How do we teach it?
Knowledge and skills to teach
•
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Letter-sound relationship
Sound blending
Sound segmentation
Syllable segmentation (Syllabification)
Phonics/Spelling generalizations
Letter-Sound
Relationship
• The English language is composed of
44 sounds
• Some sounds have more than one way
of being written
Phonograms for /f/ sound
• /f/ as in fish
• /ff/ as in off
• /gh/ as in laugh
• /ph/ as in phone
Phonogram chart
Steps of teaching
phonics
1.
Hear & discriminate the general sounds,
speech sounds & patterns
2. Hear the phoneme in the initial position
3. Hear the phoneme in the final position –
be aware of onset & rime
Steps of teaching
phonics (Cont.)
4.
Hear a short vowel sound in the medial position –
onset & rime
5.
CVC segmenting & blending – onset & rime
6.
CCVC segmenting & blending – long vowel sounds
7.
CVC segmenting & blending with digraphs and
trigraphs – long vowel sounds
Sound blending
Students need to develop an understanding of how letters
are blended
Cluster-2 or more consonants produced together but each
making a separate sound, e.g. /grab/, /black/, /school/
Digraph- 2 letters that represent 1 sound,
e.g. /chick/, /easy/
Diphthong – A vowel sound made up from two adjoining and
identifiable vowel sounds in the same syllable, both of
which contribute to the sound produced, e.g. how /ow/,
oyster/oy/
Sound segmentation
• Listen for sounds in words to spell
• Each sound in a word is represented by
a phonogram i.e cat –/c/ /a/ /t/,
shop - /sh/ /o/ /p/
• Each sound can be written
Syllable segmentation
• First, teach closed syllable of monosyllabic words
(CVC), i.e. cat, dog
• Next, teach two syllable words made up of closed
vowel pattern syllables
i.e. pup/pet, ban/dit, pic/nic
• After that, introduce long vowel sound patterns
i.e. go, ta/ken, tea, name
Spelling Rules
• Spelling rules that involve consonants
are usually reliable
Generalizations:
-When a word begins with kn, the k is silent. i.e. know
-When a word begins with wr, the w is silent. i.e. wrong
-The letter c followed by o or a is pronounced /K/ as in camp
Phonics Generalisations (con’t)
- i before e except after c. -receive
- When two vowels go walking, the first
one does the talking. -each
***Phonics generalizations that involve
vowels tend to be much less reliable***
We need to teach:
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Phonemic awareness
Blending spoken sounds into words
Segmenting spoken words into sounds
Syllabification
High frequency words
Onset & rime
Explicitly sound spelling correspondences
Good readers have:
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Phonemic awareness
Ability to decode simple words
Phonological awareness
Ability to rapidly name letters, words,
objects and colours quickly
• A good memory and are able to repeat
sentences, words, digits accurately.
Don’t Forget……..
• Good readers practice their phonics
skills through miles and miles of
reading.
• A Phonics programme should provide
students with the opportunity to use
all 4 language skills.
• Phonics work should be set within a
broad and rich language curriculum
that takes full account of developing
the four interdependent strands of
language; speaking, listening, reading
and writing and enlarging children’s
stock of words.
A key finding of the Rose Review. (2009)
Teach phonics in context
• Word attack skills need to be practiced
and applied when reading.
• Use authentic texts (examples include
poems, stories and other relevant texts)
• Phonics should be included throughout all
English lessons (part of the G.E.
programme)
Let’s take a break!
Guest Speaker
• Dermot Creagh - CUHK FAA Thomas
Cheung School.
.
Activity
• Keeping in mind what you have
learned from Mr. Creagh, create a
5-10 minute activity that you could
use in your classroom.
What we know about
spelling/final thoughts
The ability to spell easily and
automatically enables us to become
more effective writers. The less
energy and thought we have to put
into thinking about spelling, the more
thought we can put into what is said.
(J. Rivalland 1990, Spelling Zoom Notes)
What we know about
spelling/final thoughts
•
Spelling is only one aspect of effective writing.
• Good spellers are self-monitoring and self-regulatory. They
take responsibility for getting spelling correct. They look
for their own errors.
• The English language is not a regular language, but it is
systematic and patterned. Learning to spell is a process of
working out the patterns and systems of the English
language, then applying these understandings to new words
as we encounter them.
(J. Rivalland 1990, Spelling Zoom Notes)
Please, please, please
• Take the information and skills that
you have learned today and implement
them in your school-based phonics
programme
Thank you!
Special thanks to Mr. Dermot Creagh
and CUHK FAA Thomas Cheung
School.