Reading is Like Driving a Car! By Jackie Teplitz

Reading is like Driving a Car

The Road to Understanding When Reading One must recognize letters and then produce the sounds of the letters and then put meaning to the word and meaning to all the words in the sentence at a pace so you can understand what you’ve just read.

Warning Signs on the Road to Reading They can read a word on one page, but won't recognize it on the next page. When they misread, they often say a word that has the same first and last letters, and the same shape, such as form-from or trial-trail. They may insert or leave out letters, such as could-cold or star-stair. They may say a word that has the same letters, but in a different sequence, such as who-how, lots-lost, saw-was, or girl-grill..

Warning Signs on the Road to Reading When reading aloud, reads in a slow, choppy cadence and often ignores punctuation. Becomes visibly tired after reading for only a short time due to spending so much energy trying to figure out the words. Listening comprehension is usually significantly higher than reading comprehension. Directionality confusion shows up when reading and when writing b-d confusion is a classic warning sign. b-p, n-u, or m-w confusion.

Substitutes similar-looking words, even if it changes the meaning of the sentence, such as sunrise for surprise, house for horse, while for white, wanting for walking. When reading a story or a sentence, substitutes a word that means the same thing but doesn't look at all similar, such as trip for journey, fast for speed, or cry for weep.

Dyslexia What is it all about???

Where is the problem? The deficit lies in the language system, NOT in the visual system -- NOT an overall language problem… IS a localized weakness within a specific component of the language system: the phonologic module Dyslexia represents a specific disability with reading… NOT with thinking skills

What is a Phoneme? The smallest sound in a word…. It is a fundamental element of the language system, it is an essential building block of all spoken words…

The Phoneme the Gas Needed to Drive There are 44 phonemes in the English language which produce tens of thousands of words! A word must be broken down into phonemes by the brain before it can be identified, understood, stored, or retrieved. It is necessary for speaking and reading.

What about the Dyslexic Individual? His phonemic awareness is less developed. He has difficulty retrieving a set of phonemes that are similar in sound: he will say ‘passion for ‘fashion’. He knows what he wants to say, but cannot retrieve it from his long term memory.

Learning a Second Language If the individual had problems learning his first language because of a phonological disability…… He will have difficulty learning a second language!

Candy Can’t Do It! Whole Language vs. Phonic Instruction

Knowledge of Spoken Sounds When we teach phonemic awareness we ask the student to provide the sounds/phonemes of spoken language. Children who lack phonemic awareness are unable to distinguish or manipulate SOUNDS within SPOKEN words or syllables.

Manipulating Sounds or Better Known as Phonemic Awareness Phoneme Segmentation: What sounds do you hear in the word hot ? What's the last sound in the word map?

Phonemic Awareness Phoneme Deletion: What word would be left if the /k/ sound were taken away from cat?

Phonemic Awareness Phoneme Matching: Do pen and pipe start with the same sound?

Phonemic Awareness Phoneme Counting: How many sounds do you hear in the word cake?

Phonemic Awareness Phoneme Substitution: What word would you have if you changed the /h/ in hot to /p/?

Phonemic Awareness Blending: What word would you have if you put these sounds together? /s/ /a/ /t/

Phonemic Awareness Rhyming: Tell me as many words as you can that rhyme with the word eat.

What is Phonics? Phonics deals with the graphemes which make up written words. Phonics allows readers to crack the reading code.

Phonics Just Like Driving a Car! Phonemic awarenessPhonemic awareness must exist or be explicitly and directly taught BEFORE phonics instruction begins. Otherwise, the phonics instruction will not make sense.

Phonics Just Like Driving a Car! The goal of teaching phonics is to link the individual sounds to letters, and to make that process fluent and automatic, for both reading and spelling. But for phonics to work, a student must first have solid phonological processing and phonemic awareness.

Phonemic Awareness or Phonics: Which One Is it? How many sounds in bat? Sound out this word: rug What silent letter is at the end of game? What letter makes the sound /s/? /f/r/o/g/ What word is it? Spell the longest word you know. Tell me the middle sound in mom. Tap the sounds in lake. Find another word that ends with an –m

What does the research say about reading? The two best predictors of early reading success are alphabet recognition and phonemic awareness. Systematic explicit phonics instruction and whole language instruction need not be foes but allies. They both are essential components of beginning reading instruction. Adams,1990 Stanovich, 1992;Chall, 1996;Beck and Juel, 1995

The “GPS” of Reading computer shop the familyfamily (e)(e) sky (i)(i) fight (K)(K)

Words that Trigger Consonant Sounds c /s/ C /k/

Use of Trigger words Trigger or key words serve as a memory device to unlock letter sounds and as a trigger for rapid elicitation of letter sounds. A key word provides the sound of the letter and a connection to the graphic symbol.

Words that Trigger Consonant Sounds g /g/g /j/

Words that Trigger Consonant Sounds M m L l

Three Important Things Use the trigger word: To get to the first sound: And to name the letter: /k/ offee “SEE”

The “GPS” of Reading computer shop the familyfamily (e)(e) sky (i)(i) fight (K)(K)

a u e i o Diacritical Markings for Vowels

The use of diacritical markings for vowels provides students with additional visual and kinesthetic information to reinforce the letter sounds.

Other Visual and Kinesthetic Information computer shop the familyfamily (e)(e) sky (i)(i) fight (K)(K)

The ABC Ruler

Blending Once the students have mastered the letter-sound relationships of a word, they must blend the sounds to produce a word. The blending of sounds in a word is a critical component of learning sound-symbol correspondences. Fluid blending helps students produce recognizable words.

Syllables Knowledge of syllable types is important as an important organizing tool for decoding unknown words because of the instability of the vowels in the English language. Once students can group letters into known syllable types they then receive clues about sounds of the vowels.

The Hickey Method Adapted for teaching a foreign language. A method that works well for LD students will work for all students. This method teaches decoding and encoding and enables all students to become independent language learners.

I teach all my students like they are LD students! Beginning learners of a second language do not have native speaker competence in English phonology. Thus, their language and literacy development must take a somewhat different path than from a native speaker's development. Many believe their path takes on qualities of a L1 learning disabled student, demanding a highly individualized approach with linguistic instruction and remediation (Jannuzi, 1998).

i, t, s, p It’s Sissi. Sit, Sissi, sit! Sip,Sissi Sip! Sit, Sissi, sit!

Hickey Order i t p n s st sp sn a d h th e sh c k b r m ck y- l -y f -ar o g u j w sw v x z qu

So Drive that Car!