WiFORT Study Materials

• Instructor: Annie Marcks (WI FORT Coordinator at UW-Milwaukee)

• Contact: marcks@uwm.edu

• Resources:

  • Right Start Courses: These courses offer interactive preparation materials designed specifically for teacher candidates, allowing for both theoretical knowledge and practical skills.

  • NES-Wisconsin Website: This includes the Foundations of Reading exam (190) with detailed content descriptions and test frameworks.

  • FoRT 190 Study Guide and Teaching Phonics Videos: Comprehensive guides and instructional videos focusing on phonics instruction and assessment strategies.

  • Cox Campus: Provides additional resources, including video tutorials and lesson plans aimed at enhancing literacy instruction and understanding.

  • Tutoring resources: Various platforms available to connect with trained tutors who can provide personalized assistance to enhance learning outcomes.

Content Overview

• Focus on important foundational reading skills that frequently appear in the exam, emphasizing their significance in developing literacy.

• The NES Right Start Course includes valuable checkpoints and assessments; it is highly recommended to purchase a 30-day course for thorough and targeted study preparation.

Objectives

• Objectives 1-4: These objectives center on promoting key foundational reading skills crucial for effective literacy instruction.

Phonological Awareness

• Levels of Complexity:

  • Less Complex: Focus on basic awareness skills, including word awareness, sentence segmentation, rhyming, alliteration, and the identification of syllables.

  • More Complex: Phonemic Awareness skills that delve deeper into understanding segments of words, including onset and rime.

• Examples of Phonological Awareness Questions:

  • Combine small words into a compound word: "base-ball" → "baseball."

  • Count words in a sentence: "The dog ran outside" → 4 words.

  • Identify syllables in a word: "yellow" → 2 syllables.

  • Identify the non-matching alliteration from a list of options.

Phonemic Awareness Subskills

• Isolation: The ability to identify and isolate phonemes in words, which can include recognizing the first, middle, or last sounds.

• Segmenting: Breaking down words into their constituent phonemes for enhanced understanding (e.g., "map" → "/m/ /ǎ/ /p/").

• Blending: The skill of combining separate phonemes to form complete words (e.g., /ch/ /i/ /p/ → "chip").

• Manipulation: Changing phonemes within words to create new words or forms (e.g., modifying "top" to create "stop" by adding /s/).

Phonological Awareness Instructional Approaches

• Explicit, Systematic, and Multisensory:

  • Explicit: Instruction includes clear objectives and well-defined instructional strategies promoting comprehension and engagement for all learners.

  • Systematic: The delivery of content follows a logical sequence that transitions smoothly from simpler to more complex concepts.

  • Multisensory: Instruction engages multiple senses to enhance learning experiences (e.g., utilizing Elkonin boxes for sound segmentation, clapping syllables, or using colored counters for visual representation of sounds).

Alphabetic Principle

• This principle states that letters and letter combinations serve as symbols that represent spoken sounds, forming the foundations for literacy and reading.

• Teaching Recommendations:

  • Begin with the basic sounds associated with letters, ensuring clarity between similar-looking letters to avoid confusion.

  • Introduce continuous sounds (e.g., /m/, /s/) before stop sounds (e.g., /t/, /p/) for better articulation.

  • Emphasize short vowel sounds early in learning before progressing to long vowel sounds to build a robust understanding of phonemic rules.

Phonics Instruction

• The instruction involves explicit teaching of letter-sound relationships to foster reading skills and confidence among students.

• Incorporate decodable texts aligned with new phonics concepts to reinforce learning outcomes and support reading fluency.

Morphological Awareness

• Understanding the structure of words and their components, which includes the identification of root words and affixes that modify their meanings.

• Morphemes: The smallest units of meaningful language; the principles of morphemes include:

  • Inflectional Endings: These endings mark grammatical features such as tense or number (e.g., -ed, -s, -ing).

  • Derivational Endings: These change the grammatical category of words and add meaning (e.g., -ful, -ness).

Contextual Analysis for Vocabulary

• Students learn to decode the meanings of words from the surrounding text and context. Strategies for this analysis include:

  • Definition: Identifying meanings embedded within the sentences.

  • Synonyms and Antonyms: Utilizing contrasting or similar terms to illuminate meaning.

  • Morphology: Understanding meanings derived from prefixes and suffixes in conjunction with root words to deepen vocabulary.

Syllable Types and Fluency

• Syllable Types: Essential for reading comprehension, they include Closed, Open, Vowel Team, VCE, R-Controlled, and Consonant + le syllable types.

• Fluency: A critical component of reading comprehension; students need to read with accuracy, appropriate speed, and expression.

• Early readers typically concentrate on letter naming before transitioning to oral fluency and a deeper understanding of text comprehension techniques.