Research Article 1
Roberts, T. (2003). Effects of Alphabet-Letter Instruction on Young Children’s Word Recognition [Electronic Version]. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95 (1), 41-51.
Title
The title of the article gave a fair representation of the topic as it was clear and concise in the wording. The title encompassed the idea that alphabet letter instruction on young children’s word recognition would be explored through experiments and analysis. Reading on through the article it was evident that the effects of alphabet letter instruction on you children’s word recognition were addressed.
Introduction
Experimental studies have been undertaken throughout the years in relation to alphabet letter instruction. The first of these experiments were undertaken with kindergarten and year one students in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The purpose of these early experiments was to examine the hypothesis that letter-name knowledge played a causal role in the relationship between letter-name knowledge and early reading. If knowledge of letter names was a causal factor, then instruction that increased children’s letter-name knowledge should increase early reading performance. It was concluded from these early studies that there was little educational benefit to be gained from letter-name instruction.
A man by the name of Ehri in 1983 critiqued these early studies and concluded they suffered from a number of methodological flaws. The concluded flaws included training may have been too short and not thorough, treatment groups differed, training did not include instruction in how to use letter-name knowledge for word reading and training the children in small groups resulted in insufficient learning.
Since the early studies and Ehri’s conclusions a great deal of research has demonstrated that letter knowledge is integrally involved in word recognition. The hypotheses and purpose of this later study was to examine anew the effects of letter-name knowledge associated with instruction on beginning phonetic word recognition with methodology correcting for the flaws of previous studies. After instruction the children’s ability to learn 3 types of word spellings was examined. An argument was then formulated that efforts to increase children’s attention to letter information are needed, given its clear importance in early reading.
Method
The subjects for this stud...
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...ponent. The core of this difference seem to centre around how children should be helped to read words not in their sight vocabularies, with parents highly valuing the use of word phonetics and teachers highly valuing the use of context. There were no limitations and future research noted in this study.
Critique
This article discussed the views and opinions of both parents and teachers in regards to beginning reading. Literacy development is a major issue within early primary classrooms. Parent’s views on this were that literacy development is the responsibility of the school. The foundation of literacy definitely comes from the school but it is at home where it is practiced and reinforce and may even overarch the schools responsibility. Children whose parents are unable to assist them at home with their literacy development definitely fall out in respect to ongoing help and support. Children in my primary school classes whose parents were unable to help them struggled with their reading, word recognition and literacy skills the entire way through primary school. This shows that literacy development is not primarily the schools responsibility but the child’s parents at home also.
Dr. W. Pringle-Morgan originally described dyslexia as “congenital word blindness,” in that he had a patient who was normal in all learning aspects other than his pronounced inability to read (Morgan, 1896). In order to test the severity of the child’s deficiency, Dr. Morgan devised a simple test to determine reading/writing capabilities in the patient, noting from his results that the patient was incapable of writing words exactly as they were spoken, as well as not being able to recognize all but the simplest words from a text. Other skills tested (arithmetic and algebra) fell within acceptable ranges of capability, and no other obvious deficiencies or defects were present. It was speculated that the child suffered a congenital condition similar to that described in adults to be “word blindness,” as his “visual memory for recalling written words” was absent. Anecdotal evidence, provided by the patient’s father in regards to teaching his son the alphabet, indicated that the child did suffer from an inability to map symbols (letters) to his memory for recall.
Support from parents has proven to be of extreme importance in the literacy success of a child. This often begins with the simple ritual of “bedtime stories” in the home. Studies show that children who are read to as infants perform better in literacy later in life. From a young age, children begin to understand the workings of the written word if they are exposed to it frequently. Babies who are nowhere near having the mental capacity to read and comprehend a book are still able to “follow along” when their parents or caregivers read to them. These children understand that each segment of writing represents a word and they are even able to recognize when a text is upside-down because they are accustomed to the appearance of writing. This puts the child significantly ahead when the time comes to learn to read.
The United States was a very divided country during this time. The North and the South both had their reasons on why they would want to abolish and keep slavery, respectively. The North very much wanted to bring slavery to an end because they felt it was very cruel, cold-hearted, and therefore wanted it abolished immediately. The South, however, really wanted
Torgesen. J, Wagner.R, Rashotte. C, Burgess. S & Hecht. S . (1997). Contributions of Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatic Naming Ability to the Growth of Word-Reading Skills in Second-to Fifth-Grade Children. Scientific Studies of Reading. 1 (2), 161-185.
This study looked at the role of sports in inhibiting the development of early social anxiety symptoms in children between 7 and 8 years old. With multiple hypotheses the researchers hoped to show that exercise and sports will have an anti-anxiety effect on this specific (social) form of anxiety. The specific hypothesis were as follows: children who participate in extracurricular sports should have less social anxiety symptoms one year later than a child practicing no sports, children on a team sport should experience less social anxiety symptoms after one year, children spending more time playing sports should show less anxiety symptoms after one year, and finally that children who participate on teams should have better social behavior in classrooms.
Looking upon my time here at Central Michigan, I recall in previous courses that phonemic awareness is how we interpret the sounds in a word. Essentially, being able to hear and identify these sounds of our language. After deeply focusing on Phonological and phonemic awareness over the course of a few weeks, it is clear that my prior knowledge isn’t far off. Both of these skills involve sound and can be processed with eyes closed—no printed material. After much research, these skills are vital to a child and their development; they aid in spelling, alphabetic principle, and letter-sound correspondence. If this skill is not obtained by a child, he or she will have a difficult time with reading and comprehension in addition to poor spelling.
These skills are an important core separating normal and disabled readers. According to Hill (2006, p.134), phonemic awareness is a skill that focus’ on the small units of sound that affect meaning in words. For example, the following phoneme has three syllables, /c/, /a/ and /n/. These letters make three different small units of sound that can impact the meaning of words. Seely Flint, Kitson and Lowe (2014, p. 191), note that even the Australian Curriculum recognises the importance of phonemic awareness in the Foundation year, due to the ‘sound and knowledge’ sub-strand. This sub strand recognises syllables, rhymes and sound (phonemes) in spoken language. Rich discussions about topics of interest to children as well as putting attention to the sounds of language can help encourage phonemic awareness as well as improve students vocabulary and comprehension development. It is important to make awareness of phonemes engaging and interesting in preschool and in the early years so children can learn these skills early and become successful
Surah an-Nisa (4):3 are mentioned about polygamy which stated, If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four, but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with them then only one that will be more suitable to prevent you from doing injustice. Surah an-Nisa (4):129 further states, You are never able to be fair and just as between women, even if it is your ardent desire.
The major differences in comparing his two studies, involved the setting and age level of the students. The students receiving this intervention were Turkish fourth graders at risk for failure in an English-as-a-foreign-language class, not kindergarteners learning their alphabet letters and sounds in their native language. Picture flashcards with imbedded lower case consonants were used in the treatment. Each lowercase consonant letter was fully integrated into a picture students could recognize, and was an essential part of the picture (e.g., c was part of the clock face). The letter was then highlighted with a 4 mythic black stroke. These cards were then used in the mnemonic strategy as the independent variable. Treatment procedures followed much the same pattern as in Belfiore’s earlier study. Generalization data included having students produce any words beginning or ending with the target consonant sound. Three students participated in the intervention and all progressed while using the mnemonic. Their improvement in letter naming ranged from 8 to 12.8, and in giving letter sounds from 4 to 7.8 (Sener & belfiore, 2005). Generalization data also indicated improvement in most categories, ending sounds being the most difficult. The effectiveness of this mnemonic intervention was believed to be tied to the stimuli
This chapter discussed some of the problems children encounter when children are developing literacy. There are different categories the article discusses of main reason children struggle. The first reason children struggle is that letter names can be confusing. Sometimes a name of a letter is not exactly how the letter sounds. For instance, the book mentions “w” which sounds like “double u”. I was so shocked when I read that because I never made that connection before. The letter name “double u” does not translate directly into the sound that “w” actually makes. The next reason why children struggle to grasp the alphabetic principles and phonics is because English is more systematic than we think and the English orthography is very complex. The English language is complex and full of rules and exceptions, but they are complex for various reason. One of the main reasons the book give as an example of why English is complex is simply because English has a long history. It has borrowed many different words from other languages and also the English language has changed over time. The next reasons word can be confusing is that letters don’t always represent one sound. Sounds can be represented in many different ways depending on the other letters in word. Sounds are strongly influenced by the other sounds around it. Sometimes multiple letters can represent one sound. Likewise, some letters say a special “new” sound when they are in pairs. This includes diphthongs, such as “oi” in boy, and r-controlled vowels, such as “ir” in girl. All of these different characteristics of the English language tend to confuse children and can interfere with literacy development.
The main purpose of this study was to examine how a blue petrel’s olfactory system works and to see whether the system they use is observed in other bird species. These researchers wanted to determine if they could propose a possible pattern for olfactory systems. These systems assist in chemical communication of kinship recognition and mate selection. Some of the methodological concerns the researchers had were the constraints of chemical analysis in the field and the difficulty of conducting field behavioral experiments. To overcome the methodological concerns they saw, the researchers decided to use mice instead of the blue petrel species. One of the main reasons that the researchers chose mice was because they hypothesized that petrels have a similar olfactory system to mice. This system enables mice to pick up non-personal scents and to recognize their mate’s odor. Researchers also chose to use mice because the petrels do not reach the age of first breeding until they are seven to nine years old which means it would take years to collect a large enough sample size. Petrels are monogamous partners and only have one chick per year. Mice breed quickly so it is easier to collect large sample sizes. In this experiment, however, there sample sizes are on the small side. At first, I questioned why they used mice instead of petrels but after reading their argument it seems that they are first testing whether chemical signaling occurs that there are chemical signals assisting in the process. However, this means that the findings they report on are not ecologically realistic.
Teachers also met weekly with student support services to talk about students that are of a particular need or on a “watch” list. At student support meetings, teachers discuss students with excessive absences and tardies, behavior issues, and come up with different levels of support for these students. These meetings are extremely helpful for teachers to make plans to help eliminate disruptive behaviors. Also, you find out in these meetings what administrators, counselors, and other teachers might have said or communicated with the students and or their
Potter, Wyble, Hagmann, & McCourt (2014) noted that it takes as little as 13 milliseconds to see an image although it takes longer to process the content of an image. This means a learner will read a flashcard significantly faster compared to reading text alphabetically. It has shown by several studies that visual learning is more effective compared to other learning techniques in early years (Glover, McLaughlin, Derby, & Gower, 2010). However, Budoff, & Quinlan (1964) argued that auditory learning was better among primary school children compared to visual learning in terms of learning to read new words. Yet, every brain works differently (Willis & Hodson 2013). Therefore, every child’s learning strategy needs to be considered while delivering lesson in class. If flashcard strategy does not work alone, other conventional strategies or, flashcard with audio (audio-visual teaching strategy), or combination of these strategies can be considered. In addition, audio-visual training prior to formal schooling has been found advantageous for children deemed to at risk of developing a reading disability (Magnan & Ecalle, 2006). In addition, flashcard with audio might improve reading skills by helping them to develop ortho-phonological representations. However, it will be essential to monitor the effectiveness of such strategies continuously. Again, it is possible to shape one’s brain through learning and practicing (Zull, 2002). However, educators might find it difficult to apply or select a strategy to teach as one particular strategy might not work initially but might be effective at later stages. Therefore, continuous monitoring of performance of the learners and effectiveness of teaching strategy would be essential for maximum
In the K class that I will be using Interactive Read Aloud, I will be specifically instructing those children (6 children - 2 boys, 4 girls - ages 5-7) with literacy skills in letter identification, alphabetic principle and sight word recognition and production. Given their needs (as a group), my instructional goals in reading instruction will include identifying letter names, identifying consonant and short vowel sounds, and in...
The analytical approach analyses a single phoneme within a word, and then other words are analysed to determine if it has the same phoneme pattern. Contrasting this is the synthetic approach, in which the individual phoneme of each letter is sounded out to decode the word. To compare the two, the synthetic method utilises blending of learned phonemes for decoding, whereas analytical connects a repeated singular phoneme or letter pattern in similar words allowing children to analyse the word for recognition of meaning. The synthetic method does not work however, when words are broken down out of context. For example, the word ‘wind’ can only be sounded out and read with the correct phoneme for ‘i’ within the context of a sentence. The analytic method also has disadvantages as it encourages a child to make generalisations or guesses on what a word may mean. Regardless of these gaps, research concludes the synthetic method both here and overseas is the most successful approach to the teaching of reading and spelling. It is logical to assume that this may be the most effective method for teaching phonics as one cannot begin to read a word without first understanding the phoneme that each letter represents, however, it does not necessarily mean it is the best method to