Activity - Letter ID
Thinking Deeply About
Letter and Word Work
•
Lesson Requirements - Manipulate magnetic letters.
Known range extended in ‘compare and contrast’ tasks.
Speeded perception.
•
Issues - Linked to fast recognition of upcoming new text,
and rapid link of letter to sound. Use of letter-to-sound
consistencies, and forming letters in readable ways.
•
Lesson Records - speeded recognition of any form or
feature in isolation, among many and embedded in
words.
Letter Identification
This is a short segment of a lesson which children
learn to identify all the letter forms but the letters
must be overheard because as well as identifying
the letters, the children need to learn fast and
accurate visual responses which require only
minimal attention.
1
Acquisition of Letter
Knowledge
Letter Work should be part of EVERY
lesson in a child’s series of lessons
One of the strongest predictors of
future reading ability
What Children Have to
Learn
Learning Letters
Why letters are hard to learn
Attention
“Attention is a mental act of
keeping one’s mind closely on
something - mental
concentration - which is the
foundation of learning!
Lyons (2003). p. 26
•
Were not designed with an eye toward visual
distinctiveness or memorability
•
They are graphically abstract
•
They are graphically sparse - composed of minimal
visual features (arcs and line segments)
An efficient brain’s attention system…
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Constantly surveys the environment to determine what
is and is not important.
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Decides how much and what kind of sensory
information is needed to complete a task.
•
Exposure to letters is not enough
•
Children must pay attention to letters
•
In order to pay attention, the child must WANT to
pay attention.
An efficient brain’s attention system…
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Allocates varied amounts of mental energy depending
on task demands
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Sustains focus when the task is not interesting
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Determines if and when the task will be completed
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Persists in tasks long enough to finish them despite
distractions
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Disengages from a current task when something more
important requires immediate attention, response, or
action.
What hinders sustained attention?
Marie Clay tells us…
An efficient brain’s attention system…
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Too many teacher interruptions (LLDI, Part 2, p. 114)
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Difficulty dividing attention (BL, pp.262-263)
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Paying superficial or devoted attention to print (2001, p.
163)
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Have not learned an organized way of looking at print
(BL, p. 145)
Attention is learned and can be improved
Attention is increased when students are
motivated and successful
Active engagement is critical
What enhances sustained attention?
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Prevent wandering eyes (2001, p. 146, 155, 167) Teachers have to be sure that wandering eyes
become disciplined and notice the features of
letters. The order of inspection is critical.
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Use masking card (BL, p. 143)
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Teach directional things by demonstration
(LLDI, Part Two, p. 7)
“When a child is about to learn to recognize a
new letter, it must be in an obvious and easily
seen place and the child must direct his or her
attention toward it.”
COT- p. 158
Attending in a left-do-right sequence when reading
English is not something already programmed in the
brain. It must be learned.
p. 3, LLII
Learning to read is NOT natural
Learning Letters is not natural
Learning to Speak is Natural
Learning to speak IS natural
In the first year of formal instruction, children abandon
diverse ways of scanning print and gradually learn to
look at print in controlled ways. This is not a naturally
occurring set of learning, the rules of the code are
arbitrary. In the real world there are no fixed rules for
the way your eyes scan an environment.
Children have to learn to cope with learning about the
written code. None of them can be learned by just being
told what to do.
Why are there directional rules for reading and writing?
The orientation of a letter is very important; turn it
around and it may become a different letter.
How does the visual processing
system recognize letters
Theory 1: The brain memorizes the letter as a
holistic pattern. When faced with a new letter, the
brain compares it to each of the whole-letter
patterns it has learned and recognizes it as the one
that fits best.
Uses a bank of associated
feature recognizers
Theory 2: The brain analyzes each letter into it’s
elementary visual features —its horizontal, vertical,
and diagonal line segments and its arcs - and then
encodes the letter’s overall shape in terms of the
relative positions, orientations, lengths and sizes of
these elements.
Over time and with increasing familiarity with the
letters as a group, children also become sensitive to
the classes of spatial relationships that do and do not
distinguish one letter from another.
Theory 2 is more powerful because it addresses
the relative size, obliqueness and orientations of it’s
parts. Also it is a system about the relationships
between letter parts. A holistic letter recognizer
would reject any changes to letter features.
•
Eleanor Gibson’s research has shown that 5 year
olds attend closely to the gaps or openings
between letters (as in C and O; F and P; A and H.)
•
By the time they are seven, most children are
attentive to changes in rotation or orientation (as in
d, b, p and q.)
Letter Grouping Chart
•
•
Marilyn Adams states that a careful analysis of the
frequency and distribution of errors such as “d”
and “b” reflect nothing more than insufficient
knowledge of letter shapes.
Theory 2 supports this - a child learns separately
about the parts of a letter and about their spatial
relationship.
•
acodgfesqa
•
l i t j k (similar starting points)
•
nrmhbp
•
vywxz
•
U (doesn’t fit a pattern)
(similar starting points)
(down, up, over)
Teachers need a large clear
magnetic board placed so the child
can stand in front of the it and see
the letter clearly.
(angle letters)
Sensory Postural Awareness
Sensory Postural Awareness
If the letter is clearly demonstrated or modeled
for the child, he can imitate the pattern,
relating what he sees to the awareness of
the sides of his own body.
The teacher should give the child a slow deliberate
demonstration of the movements needed so the the
child can ‘get the feel of it.’ She should be careful
to place her body and arm in the same place or
orientation that the child will use, otherwise as a
model, she may confuse the child.
BL, p. 116
White Board
Choosing a Letter To Teach
When most of the letters are not known, the choice will
be guided by what might be easy to tackle next.
BL, p. 145
Let’s look at Letter ID
CAP
Teaching Letters
•
Introduce new letters
1.letter name
2.letter formation
3.Access through a known word
4.air/chalkboard/sand/felt/etc.
•
What the child knows should dictate which letter is
taught.
•
Teach a letter from child’s name
•
Teach letter from known text - gives students a reason
to learn the letter
•
Create books with letters or have student locate letter
in easy books
•
Alphabet book
How to Teach - Early, Early
Teaching Letters
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Movement: The teacher holds the child’s hand and
guides him. This identifies the letter by movement.
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Allow child to label letters in any way that the child
knows.
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Words: “down and around’ the teacher says. This is a
verbal description of movement.
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Visual Form: The teacher writes the letter. This provides
a visual model, and dramatizes the sequence of
construction. (The teacher may ask the child to write it
also)
Have the child run over the new letter (sandpaper letter,
magnetic letters, etc. Identify the letter by name. Talk
about the similarity/dissimilarity of the capital and
lower-case forms.
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Model the formation of the new letter on a whiteboard,
write in large print and match your movements with
talk.
LLI, Part II, p. 24
More
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Important
Give the child verbal instructions, and guide his hand if
necessary Have the child write the letter…in the air, …on
the blackboard,…in sand.
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Point to a letter to help the child recognize it in text when
it is the first letter in a word and when you know he
knows it. Use the term “letter.” Say…
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1. See this letter
2. Look at this letter
Should teachers be saying the sound of letters children
are manipulating? Not as a matter of habit - no. Value
whatever knowledge this child shows you he has. p. 27
The teacher will reinforce old learning or provide new
input according to what the child needs to learn next.
When the child is very confident the teacher may want
to call for either sounds or names for letters
encouraging flexibility. p. 28
Is visual information enough to
understand?
Tenslotte is de doorvoer - of transitohandel van
groot belang geworden.
Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo
Buffalo buffalo
3. Does this letter help?
The more non-visual information
you have when you read, the less
visual information you need - but
you still need it.
The less non-visual information
you have when you read, the
MORE visual information you
need.
You can read an easy book faster,
you can read it in smaller print, and
you can read it in relatively poor
light. A book that is difficult to read,
on the other hand, requires more
time, better lighting and far more
considerate printing.
The eyes have more work to do
if the book is difficult.
Choose a letter to teach that will be easy
for this child to learn - tricky but important.
What did we Learn About
Teaching Letters?
Three modalities - essential
Upright surface - IMPORTANT
As quickly as possible the learner should be expanding
a meagre knowledge of print so there should be many
opportunities for him to find letters and words he
knows in print he is trying to read.
Important
What efficient readers do:
Letter Sorts
Recognize letters correctly and
virtually effortlessly. This is why
letter sorts are important.
•
If it takes more than a moment to resolve the visual
identities of successive letters in a word, then the
stimulation of the recognition for the first letter will
have dissipated by the time the second letter is
addressed.
•
The more time a child takes to identify each
successive letter of a word, the less she/he can
learn from that reading about the spelling of the
word as a whole.
Bottleneck
The better you are acquainted with
the person, the easier it is to
recognize them at a distance.
The brain can very easily become
overwhelmed by visual information in
which case the ability to see will be
limited and may even ease for a while.
Visual
The fact that visual and non-visual
information can be substituted for each
other is critical for the following reason:
There is a severe limit to how much visual
information the brain can handle. p. 15
Non-visual
We generally assume that we can see
everything that is present in front of our
eyes - provided we have our eyes open.
Bottleneck
Reading
It is also our common belief that vision is
instantaneous that we perceive events the
moment they occur and see things the second
we turn our eyes upon them. And we certainly
tend to think that it is the eyes themselves that
are responsible for what we see.
The fact is that the eyes do not see at all. Their
sole function is to pick up visual information in
the form of light rays and convert it into bursts of
nervous energy that travel along the million or
so fibers of the optic nerves into the brain.
What we see is the brain’s interpretation
of the neural messages.
It is the brain that sees, the eyes merely
look, usually under the direction of the
brain. And the brain certainly does not
see everything that occurs in front of the
eyes. Sometimes as everyone knows, the
brain can make a mistake, in which case
you can see something that is not in front
of the eyes.
The brain needs visual information
to make these decisions and the
‘processing’ of this information
takes time.
2IO LION STREET
Visual perception involves
decisions on the part of a brain.
2IO LION STREET
If the brain has to choose between
two alternatives, say whether the light
is read or green, the decision
requires three tenths of a second.
Selecting among five alternatives
requires five tenths of a second, and
among eight alternatives over six
tenths.
Whether you saw figures or
letters depended on what your
brain decided what you were
looking at.
The amount of time required to make any kind of
decision is always affected by the number of
alternatives that are involved.
What we Know about the Brain
Different Letter moving right to left
Letter Features are Important
The beginning reader and writer has to learn how to
attend to the particular features that help all of us to
distinguish letters, one from another.
p. 25
The shape of a letter and its features may catch a child’s
attention; the lines, curves, tails, angles or critical size of
some part, the dot over the ‘i’, or the cross on the ’t’ these things help to distinguish one letter from another.
It is fair to assume that at first only a few details are
recognized, among other mostly meaningless squiggles.
Some Children’s Brain Take a
Passive Approach to Print
Magnetic Letters
•
Acquire at least 3 sets of lower case letters
•
Collect same letters in different colors and different
letters in the same colors
•
Varied positions, sizes and means of making letters
help the chid to achieve a knowledge of the
constant features and at the same time help to
avoid the child making an unimportant feature his
main signal.
Handout
Extend the child’s control from slow identification
of a few letters to rapid response to the entire
set of letters. Introduce new letters into an
array of letters the child already knows.
Movement
Movement of magnetic letters can be large and
bold at first and later become minimal. The
teacher can demonstrate the movement.
The child can build, dismember, and rebuild small
collections of letters several times. Pairing and
grouping are good activities.
p 26
p. 26
Fast recognition of letters allows the reader to
make faster decisions about words.
p. 24, LLII
Talk does not help much in making these distinctions.
The learner must attend to familiar letter features
until each letter can be rapidly distinguished
from all similar letters.
Variation
Varied positions, sizes, and means of making letters
help the child to learn the constant features.
Use known letters
Introduce new letters into an array of letters the child
already knows. Add easy-to-see letters first. Letters will
be easier to identify in isolation and hard when
embedded within words or within continuous text.
p. 26
p. 26
More things to do
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Attend to similarities and differences of letters
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Use three-dimensional forms such as magnetic letters
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Create clear demonstrations of any distinctions that the
child should learn
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Put four or five examples of the same letter onto the
magnetic board. Jumble the forms with a few known
letters and have the child find ‘all the Es’, and all the Rs’.
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Call for fast responses
Observe the child
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Intervene to prevent wandering attention
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Make sure the learner is visually attending to what he
needs to attend to. Check this. Telling is not enough.
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Control the task. Organize things so that the correct
response does occur.
P. 31
New Understanding
Linked to fast recognition of upcoming new text.
This is the time when teachers aim for fast recognition
of letters in isolation, knowing that the reader will use
this during text reading to pick up visual information in
upcoming new text.
The teacher expands the range of known letters, using
manipulation of magnetic letters in ‘compare and
contrast’ tasks, aiming for speeded perception and
discrimination of letters one from the other.
p. 229
a,m,e,t
There can be no rapid sensory association of letter form
with possible sounds without working through the
visual perception of letters.
The brief time given to speeded single-letter activities
expands, as competence increasing, to procedures on
pages 42-45 (LLII).
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Child is slow identifying e
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Child is slow identifying a and e
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Child SC a/e 2X
Behaviors to Watch During Reading
Ways to Sort - mix it up
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Wandering eyes
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Point to the letter ‘a’
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Hesitation (child doesn’t know letter fluently)
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Put all the same letters together. (same magnetic letters)
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Self-Correction (child doesn’t know 2 letters fluently)
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Errors in reading
Put all the same letters together. (variety of magnetic
letters)
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Put all the ‘a’s together.
We learned…
What have we learned about
letter sorts?
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Always include known letters
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Upright surface
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Few letters in the beginning
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Lots of letters after a while
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How to Choose letters for Sort
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Different prompts
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Have lots of magnetic letters
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EACH LESSON - LETTER COMPONENT
Breaking
Activity - shift to include breaking,
taking words apart in isolation
•
•
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Lesson requirements - take known words apart and
construct new from old. Avoid word families or
prescriptive sequences. Maximize the child’s construction
opportunities. Prompt and assist.
Betsy Kaye’s Research
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60 different ways to break words
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Issues - prompting for attention to detail in print;
segmenting syllables, clusters and phonemes; using what
is known to get to the unknown. Stress order and
constructing.
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in-dus-tr…industries
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intri…industries
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indu…industries
Lesson Records - Learners notice/use previously taught
cluster components during reading and writing. Learning
to use these and commenting.
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in…industries
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in- in-…industries
Reciprocity
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Peter tried to establish industries although he was not very
successful in doing this (sentence in text)
In reading, we break words to decode/read
In writing, we break words we want to write into units
that we can attach letters to.
Breaking is the connection between
reading and writing
Various ways to Break
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multi-syllabic units
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syllables
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morpheme stems (roots) - suffixes, prefixes
halves of compound words
Key Concepts
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Efficient Units
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Speed and Independent
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ALWAYS left-to-right analysis
Good readers NEVER…
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sounded letter-by-letter
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appealed before attempting a word or break
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stopped and failed to respond
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skipped a difficult word and kept reading
Breaking
Known
Always start from known!! This allows
the child to attend to breaks.
Developing an awareness of spelling patterns
(orthography) & taking words apart are closely related.
However a child’s in-depth awareness of spelling
patterns develops later in his program when he learns
to think about how words look. (letter boxes)
Taking words apart expands the child’s knowledge of
particular words, his concepts about words, his
awareness of clusters of letters within words, & the
strategy of using parts of known words to solve
unknown words by analogy.
What is breaking?
What isn’t breaking?
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Teaching how words work
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Not about learning new words
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Working from known to new
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Not a time to teach vocabulary for the new book
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Using magnetic letters and working on an upright
surface
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Not about word families
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Not about spelling lists
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Principles taught in breaking should not come from a
commercially prescribed scope and sequence of skills
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Teaching of principles during breaking should come
from the child’s processing on a series of running
records and from his writing over time.
Out of text and in isolation
PROCEDURES pp. 42-46
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Child knows 15-20 letters (including both upper and
lower case)
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Add breaking procedures
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Select words where the child knows most or all of the
letters.
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Run your finger under the word and ask child to watch
2.Can you hear the last part of ‘looking’ (I don’t ask student to
articulate)
3.Show the child how to break the word - move the first part to the left
2.Don’t choose a word where letters are dropped when
adding an ending (loving)
3.Don’t choose a word where the ending added isn’t
typical (loved - adding ed)
More Steps
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Choose a known word of one syllable + and inflectional
ending.
1.Don’t choose a word where letters need to be added
with the ending (running)
4. I then might put 2 known words on board and ask… Show me a short word.
Show me a long word
Ask:
1. What’s the first letter in ‘look’?
As child gains competence, ask questions like these:
3. Show me one word
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2. Show me one letter
Procedure
Assemble the word quickly with the ending (left to right is
under control)
Procedure 1 - build a word deliberately from left to
right. NOT TO TEACH A WORD
1. How many letters are in that short word (if the word is short)
Select words from familiar reading or the running
record from yesterdays book’s book or from yesterdays
writing.
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Adding an inflectional ending
Left to Right
Demonstrate - moving ‘look’ to left and bring the inflection to the
word.
Repeat this for a day or two with the SAME word or for a fast
learner with another known and common word. Then have him try
it alone on another word he knows.
Find further examples in writing or reading - today and for the next
few days.
Procedure 3
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Don’t move to this step too soon!
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Known one syllable word with no inflection
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Consistently break onset/rime but do not encourage
child to copy this.
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Onset/rime have 2 sets of letter clusters (i.e. cat = c at)
Procedure 3
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Be flexible! We only need the child to learn the general
principle - that words can be broken in more than one
way.
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Ask the child to:
1.Use the hand and eye together on the manipulation task. This is
important.
Procedure 5
Procedure 4
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Make a note of examples from other parts of the lesson
of the child’s current work in reading or writing which
lend themselves to this work on breaking. Spend a little
time on them here.
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Take occasional opportunities to break a word apart in
other lesson activities. Leave the chid free to break the
word anywhere, but make sure that his eyes move left
to right across the words.
I preplan based on previous lessons. Always with
known.
2.Assemble the intact word first. All the letters are supplied by the
teacher in the correct sequence.
Procedure 6
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Goal of Procedures
Finally we get to sounds.
As the child progresses through these steps the teacher
will be aware that both the visual forms of the letters
and phonemes they can represent are becoming more
familiar to the child.
Gradually help him to switch easily from letter name to
letter sounds so he develops two alternate routes to the
written language code.
The child will be learning how to work
with new words on the run as he is
reading texts.
When to move to ‘Attending to words in isolation”
After the processes are learned from each of the 6
procedures.
If you need extra time to work on words in isolation,
squeeze in a minute or two at the magnetic board after
letter work and breaking words apart have become easy.
LLI, Part II, p. 140
Easy to Difficult - make sure a child can hear the difference
between two words before teaching them to see the difference
go no
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can man map
me we
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the them then they
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me we he she
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got get
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and hand band
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be
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day play stay
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play plays playing
played player
day today yesterday
Sunday
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green play gray
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my tree try
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hat has had
behind before because
Plan for Breaking
12/12 rain/wind
storm/thunder
12/13 Kate/Come/T
Come/Look/SC
Integrate into reading continuous text
it/and
Nick/Kate duck/merry-go-round/SC
on/up/SC here/horse/SC
The learner who is familiar with breaking words apart in
more than one way is likely to take words apart while
reading. Prompting may be needed…. page 111
said/Kate/SC
2.What can you see that might help?
12/14
find/see
Writing f
all/them
them/all
d
find
cat can car
Scale of Help - pp. 132-133
The teacher constructs part of the word making larger in some
‘grand’ manner.
The teacher divides the word in print with finger or masking card.
The teacher articulates the part clearly (a hearing prompt) and the
child locates the part.
The child divides the word with his finger on print to mask it in
some way.
Prompt to the beginning or to the ending.
Let the child solve the word.
1.Look for something that may help you.
3.Do you know a word that looks like that?
4.Do you know a word that starts with those letters?
5.Think carefully and think what you know that might help.
WHAT DID WE LEARN
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not about teaching words - teach principle of breaking
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teach various ways to break words
❖
use procedures on pp. 42-46
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upright surface
The End!