child language- literacy - reading & writing

emergent reader

a reader who is developing an understanding of the alphabet and shows some awareness of early phonics

alphabetic principle

the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds

grapheme

the letter or blend of letters that represent a sound (e.g. s or ch)

phoneme

the smallest individual unit of sound in a language which conveys a meaning, for example, in fell and well, the /f/ and /w/ sounds are phonemes

systemic phonics approach

an approach that encourages readers to break down words into individual graphemes and sound them out in order to read the whole word accurately in an organised and methodical order

look and say, whole-word or whole-language approach

an approach that encourages readers to identify familiar words as a whole in order to read them

diagraph

two letters making one sound or phoneme, e.g. ch in ‘chip’, sh in ‘shop’, ea in ‘eat’

split diagraph

a diagraph split by a consonant, for example, ‘note’

synthetic phonics

a part-to-whole approach. teaches children to translate graphemes into phonemes. e.g. children would pronounce each letter in ‘sip’ /s/, /i/, /p/ and then blend the phonemes into the whole word

analytic phonics

whole-to-part approach. children identify the word first and then consider the relationship between the individual letters and sounds. for example, the teacher might write the letter ‘f’ followed by several words that start with this such as ‘fig’, ‘fly’, ‘fit’, and ‘fat’

onset and rime

onset: the first part of a word comprising of the consonant or adjacent consonants at the beginning and before the vowel

rime: the rime of a word is the vowel and the rest of the syllable

the three-cueing system

meaning (semantic cue)

• does it make sense within the context?

• children use their knowledge of the associations between words and their meanings, and the ways that words fit into the context

structure (syntactic cue)

• does it make sense within the sentence?

• this relies on children understanding the functions of words such as nouns, adjectives and verbs, and the correct ordering of sentences in english

visual (graphophonic cue)

• does it look right?

• with visual cues, children call upon their understanding of the sounds of English and individual letters and letter combinations, as well as print conventions

miscue

a mistake that a reader makes when reading unfamiliar words

miscue strategies

correction: recognising a mistake and correcting it themselves

omission: leaving out a word completely

repetition: repeating words, phrases or sentences because they are confident with these but not with what comes next in the text

reversal: transposing letters such as ‘from’ instead of ‘form’

substitution: using a word they know might fit and can read instead of the actual word on the page

miscue analysis

an analysis of the cueing systems a child is using in order to identify the mistakes being made and to assess how they can be guided to improve

blend

build words from their constituent phonemes in order, all through the word, to read it

segment

break up a word into its individual phonemes

high-frequency words

words which occur frequently in a language

tricky words

words in which letter sounds do not give a perfect or regular guide to pronunciation

alliteration

repeated phonemes at the beginning of words

prosody

the patterns of stress and intonation in language

homographs

a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning

emergent reader

a young child in the very first stages of learning to write, where they begin to understand that marks on paper represent meaning and communication

morphology and syntax

morphology: the study of word formation

syntax: the study of how words form larger structures such as phrases, clauses and sentences

trigraph

a cluster of three letters that represent one sound (e.g. ‘igh’ - as found in night)

homophones

words that are pronounced the same but have a different meaning and may have different spellings (there and their)

homonyms

words that are spelt the same but have different meanings and may be pronounced differently (he took a bow, the archer amended his bow)

phonetic spelling

words that are spelt as they sound

the importance of teacher feedback ad self-evaluation

john HATTIE argues that feedback is crucial to enhancing student progress. feedback may take a range of approaches:

• providing a success criteria for particular styles of writing can encourage writers to include specific features of any given genre. this can then facilitate peer- or self-marking against the given criteria

• cold tasks (a test taken without being told about it)- progress can be monitored when comparing the attainment in the student’s hot task (a similar test taken after teacher input

• providing feedback as a two-way communication, so students can respond to feedback and improve their work after thinking about guidance on how to improve their writing in a specific way

• positive reinforcement e.g.WWW and EBI

• writing tends not to be marked with circles and underlining to identify all errors. it is more likely that key targets are identified so that the writer can focus on a specific area for improvement