Jennifer (pseudonym) is a first grade student who I’ve worked closely with and monitored as my focus student. It is evident that she has a few challenges when it comes to academic core subjects but specifically, reading. She is not reading on the first grade reading level and is considered Tier 2. Although she enjoys reading at home and school, she revealed that she did not enjoy reading books that did not have pictures or if the pages were full of words on account of the pictures being her guide. The pictures made it easier for her to follow the storyline, which is reasonable for a first grader. When she reads for pleasure, she is able to select the material that she prefers to read compared to when she is given material to read during the guided reading group or the reading lesson. Therefore I developed the following wondering question: How can I help my student develop phonemic awareness?”
Based on assessments, guided reading group activities, independent work and inventories it is evident that Jennifer is struggling with identifying words as well as spelling them. There have been times that I have witnessed her reading a story aloud with other students or reading a paragraph with me where she would come across a word that she does not recognize and says something completely different. Jennifer utilizes a personal tactic that includes the aid of the picture that is provided on the page to figure out an unfamiliar word rather than using context clues from the text that she read or morphemic knowledge (prefixes, suffixes and root words). For instance, while she was reading independently during center time, I asked her to read the story aloud. When she encountered a word that she did not know, she would mumble lowly or bypass it completely. I proceeded to stop her and ask her to repeat the word. I then noticed her personal tactic; the particular word was shirt but when she glanced at the photograph, she was under the impression that it was a sweater so that is what she plugged into the sentence. There are other times that the word that she would say has no relation to the original word. I administered the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation, which measures a child’s ability to identify and separate the sounds of a word in the appropriate order. The student was able to articulate the correct segments of about half of the twenty-two words that were listed. Yopp (1995) states, “Students who correctly segment some items (7-16 correct) are displaying emerging phonemic awareness.” I believe that one of the problems that she is facing relates to the idea that she believes that a letter can only sound one way; she is not aware of the short and long sounds that one letter is capable of sounding like when saying different words. For instance, when we reached words such as she, that, and three I could detect that she was hesitant with the beginning sounds since those phonemes are joined. She was not able to determine that they should be recited together so when she began to tell me the sounds, she said the sound of each of the letters rather than placing them together. To a certain extent I believe that she is lacking phonemic awareness due to the fact that she is not aware of the different sounds that letters could make. I think this could hinder her writing, as I have already witnessed, when she begins to produce sentences independently. They are taught to stretch out words to the best of their ability before asking for help so this could be a problem if she cannot identify the sounds that she is making. When I’ve looked over her writing, letters tend to be missing especially if it is a blended phoneme or one that is usually silent. “Phonological awareness develops gradually over time and progresses from a sensitivity to big chunks of speech sounds, such as syllables and rhymes, to smaller parts of speech sounds, such as individual phonemes” (Pufpaff, 2009; Pulleen & Justice, 2003). One method that would be effective is to help Jennifer identify syllables by conducting an activity that includes deciphering the difference between short and long words. Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston (2012) suggest that teachers use picture cards to display the difference clearly. For instance, the teacher could use a picture of a man and snow to represent the short words and then a picture of a snowman to represent the long word. This will show Jennifer how compound words are created. She can then clap her hands for each words; further showing her that words can contain different syllables. Another method that could be effective is matching rhyming words so she could begin to recognize the different sounds. As the school year progresses, I plan to collaborate with my collaborating teacher to create a list of site words that could be utilized every week with my focus student. Every day that I am present in the classroom, we will review at least five words from the list; stretching each sound out, spelling them out repeatedly, and producing quality sentences. Since she is in the first grade I do not want to overwhelm her with a variety of material. A copy of the sight words could also be created to be sent home with the student so she can practice the words at home as well with her family.
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