“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you'll go.” This quote by Dr. Seuss explains the importance of reading. Knowing how to read is very important to be successful in life. In 2009,a nationwide study by the National Center for Educational Statistics recorded that sixty-seven percent of 4th grade students, seventy-five percent of 8th grade students, and seventy-four percent of 12th grade students were not reading at a proficient level. This will cause many problems as the child progresses through life and later on to adulthood. According to the National assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), forty-three percent read at the lowest 2 literacy level ("Who Needs Phonics"). They will not be able to apply to jobs, stigmatized in society, and may result in their children being illiterate also. In order to decrease the alarming rate of seven million illiterate children and give them a chance to have a better life is by integrating a method to teach them how to read better.
There are numerous ways to teach a child how to read. Yet most of the methods can be divided in two groups; the whole-language approach or phonics. There has been and still is a major debate about which method is best. The method that is the best strategy to teach children ages six-ten to read is phonics. Phonics teaches people to read by linking sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system. Phonics helps to improve a learner’s sense of phonemic awareness; the ability to hear, identify, and the use of phonemes; the simplest sound a letter makes. The main objective of phonics is to assist beginning readers how to identify new written words by blending the sound-spelling patter...
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...me." Overcoming Dyslexia: Phonics Help Dyslexics Learn. Reading Horizons, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Shanahan, Timothy. THE NATIONAL READING PANEL REPORT: Practical Advice for Teachers. Digital image. Http://www.learningpt.org. Learning Point Associates., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Sweet, Robert W. "NRRF - Illiteracy: An Incurable Disease or Education Malpractice?" NRRF - Illiteracy: An Incurable Disease or Education Malpractice? Www.nrrf.org, 1996. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
"The Verdict Is In: Phonics Is the Way to Teach Reading." Ashbrook. Ed. Terrence Moore. N.p., Jan. 2004. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
"What Is Phonics?" Reading Worksheets Grammar Comprehension Lesson Plans. K12reader.com, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
"Who Needs Phonics." Who Needs Phonics. A Ministry of 40L, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
"Whole Language vs Phonics." Whole Language vs Phonics. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Phonemic Awareness and Alphabetic Principle in addition to Phonics and Decoding Skills provide students with early skills of understanding letters and words in order to build their reading and writing skills. Students will need to recognize how letters make a sound in order to form a word. While each word has a different meaning to be to format sentences. While reading strategies for Reading Assessment and Instruction, I was able to find three strategies for Phonemic Awareness and three strategies for Alphabetic Principles which will provide advantage for the student in my research and classroom settings.
National Early Literacy Panel, 2008. Developing early literacy. Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.
Reading is an integral aspect of succession in life and is required to complete the simplest of tasks. Therefore the teaching of reading, which in England is done mainly through a programme of systematic synthetic phonics, is of great importance in all primary schools. The word phonics, “describes the letters or symbols used to encode a language’s spoken components” (Venezky, 1999. Cited in Mesmer and Griffith, 2006) and the “importance of systematic phonics instruction in relation to the teaching of reading has been increasingly recognised by English-speaking countries” (Wyse and Goswami, 2008). This is most likely due to as Venezky (1999) states, because English as a language is made up of an alphabetic code.
Six principles for early reading instruction by Bonnie Grossen will be strongly enforced. It includes Phonemic awareness, each letter-Phonemic relationship explicitly, high regular letter-sound relationship systematically, showing exactly how to sound out words, connected decodable text to practice the letter phonemic relationships and using interesting stories to develop language comprehension. Double deficit hypothesis which focuses on phonological awareness and rapid naming speed.
In the essay “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society,” written by Jonathan Kozol, and published in Readings for Writers in New York in 2013, the author raises awareness to those willing to take action against the dangers of illiteracy in a society where one cannot thrive without such an ability. Throughout the writing, the author uses many powerful and intimate accounts of people who are illiterate and the times in which they were deemed helpless, as a tool to help the audience better understand the problem at hand. Mr. Kozol implements statistics as definitive evidence to show just how many persons are unable to read the written word. As another illustration of the dilemma still plaguing America to this day, he brings to light the
With such high numbers of adolescents falling below basic in reading, illiteracy is a battle that must be fought head on. The largest dilemma with the struggle is the number of variations that cause adolescents to become reluctant, unmotivated or struggling readers. Fortunately, a large number of strategies exist to encourage and strengthen readers of all ages, proving that adolescence is not a time to give up on faltering students. Rather, it is a time to evaluate and intervene in an effort to turn a reluctant reader into an avid one (or near enough). Ultimately, educators must learn to properly assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses (Curtis, 2009) and pair them with the proper intervention techniques. If one method does not work, countless others exist to take its place.
Simon, Ruth. “Illiteracy: The Downfall of American Society.” Education Portal. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. < http://education-portal.com/articles/Illiteracy_The_Downfall_of_American_Society.html>
Tompkins, G. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach. (5th ed., pp. 12-286). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
Four phases of reading development have been established (Ehri 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999) : pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic and consolidated alphabetic. These phases has led to the core understanding of children's reading development, apart from the pre-alphabetic phase phonological awareness skills are seen throughout the phases.
On the contrary, a person that is illiterate has many limitations in their life. Limitations can consist of any disadvantage that can stop a person from becoming successful in their life. For one of many examples, illiteracy has a significant impact on the economy, because it affects the jobs and basic living skills that people need to survive. Mental disorders can possibly ensue in an illiterate person’s life. In some cases, it is like they live in a world of their own and alienate themselves from other individuals.
The five key elements are one, Phonemic Awareness. This is when a teacher helps children to learn how to manipulate sounds in our language and this helps children to learn how to read. Phonemic Awareness can help to improve a student’s reading, and spelling. With this type of training the effects on a child’s reading will last long after training is over. The second key is Phonics. Phonics has many positive benefits for children in elementary schools from kindergarten up to the sixth grade level. Phonics helps children who struggle with learning how to read by teaching them how to spell, comprehend what they are reading, and by showing them how to decode words. The third key is Vocabulary. Vocabulary is important when children are learning how to comprehend what they are reading. Showing children, the same vocabulary words by using repetition will help them to remember the words. The fourth key is comprehension. Comprehension is when a child’s understanding of comprehension is improved when teachers use different techniques such as generating questions, answering questions, and summarizing what they are
According to Bursuck & Damer (2011) phonemes are “the smallest individual sounds in words spoken.” Phonemic awareness is the “ability to hear the phonemes and manipulate the sounds” (p. 41). Phonemic awareness is essential because without the ability students are not able to manipulate the sounds. According to the National Institute for Literacy (2007), “students with poor phonics skills prevent themselves from reading grade-level text and are unable to build their vocabulary” (p.5) Agreeing with the importance of phonemic awareness, Shapiro and Solity attempted to use whole class instruction to improve students’ phonological awareness. The intervention showed that whole class instruction assisted not only the students with poor phonemic awareness, but also on-level developing readers.
It is a “reading world” we live in and students should be guaranteed every opportunity to succeed in this information driven society. Children today are overwhelmed with more reading material than ever before on billboard, television, the Internet and at school, causing reading to become a relevant and essential need in the life of every child (Lumpkin 1972). Being able to read has become the core of our information driven society. Yet, reading difficulties continue to plague the foundation of our education system creating a problem that only seems to be escalating. Hasselbring affirms that reading difficulties are a serious concern to our nation’s students claiming that, “as many as 20 percent of 17 year olds... [are] functionally illiterate and 44 percent of all high school students…[are] described as semi-illiterate”(2004). This is a harsh reality to face – a reality that stems from difficulties developed at the elementary level where reading complications arise and usually go unchecked. These reading difficulties are carri...
Reading and writing is a key part of everyone’s life. There has been some encouraging levels of reading development in primary school assessments. According to the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy report (2015), 95.5% of students achieve at or above the national minimum standard of reading. It is important to know effective ways to teach reading so children can become active problem solvers to enable them to read for meaning or for fun. Over the years, there has been a big amount of research into the most effective ways to teach reading skills to students. There are some systematically taught key skills and strategies that help achieve these levels of reading. Some of these skills include phonological awareness, phonemic awareness,
“The single most important activity for building knowledge for their eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children,” a report from 1985 by the commission