Word Recognition Activities: Patterns and Strategies for Developing Fluency

by Fox, Barbara J.

• ISBN13: 9780130304513
• ISBN10: 0130304514
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: Allyn & Bacon

Summary

A supplemental text for the Reading Methods course. What classroom activities really help children in kindergarten through fifth grade become fluent readers? Developed with experienced classroom teachers, Fox provides numerous hands-on teaching activities that have been tested, over and over, in real classrooms with real children. They're solidly based in research; presented in the order in which children achieve fluency; and, tailored to the literacy abilities of the children at whom they are targeted. Fox's developmental view of fluency combines theory, research, and practice; and her thoughtful teaching guides pull it all together.

Table of Contents

1. Teaching Word Recognition and Fluency in Your Classroom.
2. Developing Fluency with Hands-on Activities for Teaching Phonological Awareness.
3. Developing Fluency with Hands-on Activities for Teaching Letter Names and Single Letter Sounds.
4. Developing Fluency with Hands-on Activities for Teaching Word Family Words and Pronounceable Letter Patterns.
5. Developing Fluency with Hands-on Activities for Teaching Structural Analysis.
6. Developing Fluency with Hands-on Activities for Word Meaning and Rapid Word Recognition.
7. Developing Oral and Silent Reading Fluency.
8. Developing Word Recognition and Fluency in Children who Speak a Language other than English at Home.
Appendix I: Reproducible Patterns.
Appendix II: Compound Words.
Appendix III: Root Words.
Appendix IV: Prefixes and Useful Examples.
Appendix V: Suffixes and Examples.
Glossary.

Excerpts

Word Recognition Activities: Patterns and Strategies for Developing Fluencyhas over 150 classroom-tested, hands-on activities for teaching word recognition and fluency in kindergarten through fifth grade. This book is unique in that it takes a developmental view of fluency that brings together theory, research, and practice. My perspective is that fluency develops sequentially and predictably during the elementary school years, and is a consequence of good teaching, experiences in reading and writing, and the acquisition of new knowledge, skills, and strategies. Fluent readers use all the cues available to them--graphophonic, syntactic, and semantic. A book that represents only codecracking information and activities would fall woefully short of explaining fluency development. I have, therefore, extended beyond the traditional word recognition topics of phonemic awareness, phonics, and structural analysis, and included explanations and activities for teaching word meaning, rapid word recognition, and fluency in oral and silent reading. A DEVELOPMENTAL ORGANIZATIONThe journey toward fluency begins in kindergarten as children read and write, and as they develop phonological awareness of rhymes, syllables, and sounds, learn letter names and sounds, and connect meaning with print. In the first chapter, future and practicing teachers learn about fluency, how children use context cues and sound-based cues to identify words, the stages of word fluency, and how children gradually move from one stage to the next. Chapter 2 describes teaching activities to develop phonological awareness of words, rhymes, and syllables; presents activities to develop phonemic awareness of sounds in words and the ability to blend. As children enter into reading, they combine phonological awareness with the understanding that written words consist of letters and that letters represent sounds. Children generally develop this knowledge in kindergarten, so Chapter 3 explains how to teach letter names and sounds, and presents teaching activities to stimulate, engage, and challenge these emergent readers.At first, children use only part of the letter and sound cues to identify and learn new words. But as children develop letter knowledge and awareness of the sounds in words, they begin to pay attention to all the graphophonic cues in the new words they meet in text. Word family words are one of the first ways that children and their teachers begin to explore the letters and sounds in words.Chapter 4 includes a variety of activities for teaching word families, such as theatincatandhat.Word families are a useful gateway into decoding, but word family knowledge alone is not enough to support identifying and learning many different words in text. If children are to become accomplished fluent readers, they must understand the more useful letter patterns in English. Therefore, Chapter 4 includes useful teaching resources: a table of letter patterns to use as a ready reference, guidelines for teaching phonics, and phonics activities.With reading and writing experiences, children's attention gravitates to the large and often meaningful letter groups that make up the basic structural units in words. Consequently, Chapter 5 focuses on structural analysis, which is the process of identifying and learning new words by paying attention to large, pronounceable units, such as prefixes (thepre- inpreheat), suffixes (the -fulinbountiful), syllables, and root words borrowed from Greek and Latin (themicro- inmicroscope). In reading this chapter, future and practicing teachers learn the structural units of words, and activities for teaching these word parts--from simple suffixes to syllables and root words.It would be foolish to assume that teaching the alphabet, phonemic awareness, phonics, and word structure is all that is necessary to build fluency