First let’s look at the teacher. He must believe in himself, knowing that he has the capabilities to perform the task (teaching reading to the reluctant reader). If he believes, he then will look for and try different methods, materials, and procedures. He will need a willingness to look beyond what is at hand, and he should be willing to pilot ideas and new materials. This enthusiasm can trick down to the class or student. There is a constant search for ways to teach the same skill in an interesting way until that skill has been mastered. The student must be made to feel at ease with the teacher. He must sense the sincerity and the genuine sincerity interest.
In our classroom we show not only enthusiasm but love to our students, and their achievements have been most rewarding When the students start putting sounds and symbols together to make words, their spelling grades improve noticeably.
In September we found that students reading on 2’ and 3’ level, and shown growth to levels 3’ and 4’. In The Craft Inservice Reading Program, Louis J. Cooper and Marion L. McGuire state “This transition from a nonreader to an efficient reader brings to mind a number of questions:
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1. How does a nonreader learn to identify the thousands of printed word forms that make up the reading vocabulary of an efficient reader?
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2. When a child encounters a word he has never before seen in print, how does he go about finding out what the word says?
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3. Are all printed words merely memorized, or are there certain tools one can use for unlocking words that are strange in form?
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4. What specific skills are needed if a child is to learn to work out strange words for himself?
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5. Is there any logical sequence for teaching these skills?
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6. What procedures are appropriate for teaching the wordattack skills?”
Let us stress that a teacher must recognize and answer these questions before she can do an efficient job.
Here are our answers to these questions. We teach non readers to identify printed word forms by phonics.
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1. First, through the sounding approach, we teach them alphabetizing; that is, putting words in alphabetical order. Secondly, we teach the sounds they make. Then we teach the single consonants, and then we teach them how to sequence vowels with first letter consonants. Since we have taught the single consonants, we can sequence the short a with b, c, d, l, and p .
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Example: ab, ac, ad, al, ap, at, etc.
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With these combinations, the child should be able to work out such words as
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cab, lad, pal, tap, cat, etc.
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2. When a child encounters a word he has never before seen in print, he visually divides the word into syllables, and pronounces each syllable as if it were a word. Then he puts the syllables together, and blends the sounds together as he says them, thus forming the word.
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3. No, all words are not merely memorized. There are certain tools for unlocking strange words, such as using the closedonesyllable method. The student learns the role for a closed syllable. Rule: A syllable is closed if it has one vowel, followed by at least one consonant. The vowel sound is short: for example,
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nin, deb, strok, phel, dock, flim.
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This teaches the student to put the correct sound on the syllable.
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Another way to unlock strange words is to learn the sound of the long vowel in words. First, he should learn that the long vowel has the same sound as its name, The long vowel has a long sound when the vowel comes at the end of a onesyllable word: for example,
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be, he, me, go, no, my, try
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Rule: A single vowel at the end of a onesyllable word is usually long.
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The student will learn also that sometimes the long vowel comes in the middle of a word.
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The silent e type method is another tool the student can use. The student learns when the letter e comes at the end of a onesyllable word it is usually silent.
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Rule: In one syllable words in which there are two vowels, the first vowel is long, the e at the end of the word is silent: example,
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ape, bake, cake, date, dope, slide
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4. The child needs decoding skills to help him work out words for himself. One is lettersound associations. He puts the sound that letters make together to make syllables and the syllables together to make words. When the word appears in context, he uses the sense of the other words in the sentence and what he has already learned about letter sounds and syllables to decide what the word is. He can also use what he has learned about base words and affixes as a tool for a decoding skill. The strange word could very well be a base which he already knows, with a prefix or a suffix added on. The strange word could also be a familiar word the child already knows but is used in the context in an unfamiliar way. He recognizes the base word, and uses what he has learned about affixes to help him. The same applies to inflected endings on a base word. These are some of the tools a child can use to help decode strange words encountered in print.
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5. Yes! There is a logical sequence. The approach we would use is to first introduce the vowels as a package team. Namely: the Sound Pack. (a, e, i, o, u, y, w) We will introduce the vowels and give the sounds. Teacher will put vowel on the board. Explain the diacritical markings. Then teacher will give symbols for sounds. Teacher will say sound. Students say name of letter. Teacher will write on the board alphabet in manuscript (capitals and lower case). Students will copy from the board alphabet in manuscript (capitals and lower case). Teacher and students will drill.
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6. What procedures are appropriate for teaching the word attack skills?
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First, we would teach the association of letter and sound pattern, because the student should be taught to associate specific letters in words with specific sounds. By the learn these sounds, they can deal with phonograms1: Example,
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ate, eb, ib, ob, ub
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ac, ed, ic, od, ud
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ad, eg, id, og, uff
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These are all of the short vowel sounds. After learning the phonograms we introduce the vowel diagram:
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ai, ay, all, aft, alk.
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Then we go on into other aspects of phonics such as syllable types, consonant blends, diagraphs, prefixes, suffixes and inflected forms.