Word Study

After reading Cunningham and Cunningham and Yopp and Yopp I've learned there are several different ways to teach vocabulary and word knowledge. In the Yopp and Yopp article the teachers had students pick what they thought were the ten most important words in a story and then describe the story in one sentence. I thought this example was just ok. There was probably a plethora of words that the students thought were important and other students didn't. I don't really think that helps a ton with learning new words and their meaning. Students could just pick words that they've seen frequently before. In the Cunningham and Cunningham article, they described having children make words from a list of letters. I actually really liked reading about this study because I use to do this on my own time and not in school. It was always fun to see how many words you could come up with from a list of letters or from another word. I also liked the fact that the teachers would increase the number of letters the students had to use so they couldn't just make words that were 3 or 4 letters every time. I think this study is way more creative and fun for students than having them pick out words in a story.

Teaching Phonics

After reading this week's articles, I've learned about all the various ways of teaching students phonics instruction. I found the article about coaching instruction to be very interesting. Many people can say the phrase "sound it out," but there is so much more behind the phrase. The teachers in the coaching article were well qualified in the area of phonics and are well aware of each individual student in their reading and instructional histories. I think that is really important when it comes to coaching students how to read, not every child is the same. Besides coaching to teach students about phonetics, they used various activities, also. In the article by Yopp and Yopp they provide several activities to do with students to help them understand phonics. I really liked the activity "How many syllables are in a name?" I feel as if students would be more interested in figuring out how many syllables are in a word if it is their own name. Then have them share with the class how many syllables are in their name and sit in groups with students who also have the same number of syllables. Teaching students phonics and providing different practice reading and various activities will really help children develop better fluency so that their word recognition is automatic.