Balancing Top and Bottom: Learner-Generated Texts for Teaching Phonics

1. Balancing Top and Bottom: Learner-Generated Texts for Teaching Phonics LESLLA 2009 Patsy Vinogradov Hamline University, University of Minnesota

2. Agenda • Balanced Literacy • Whole-Part-Whole method • Ways to elicit student generated writing • Specific activities to teach phonics and phonological awareness • Q & A

3. Balanced Literacy Instruction • Both bottom-up and top-down instruction are necessary for students to achieve literacy. • High interest, relevant, meaningful reading instruction should be included in contextualized lessons. • At the same time, nurture bottom-up strategies like decoding and phonemic awareness.

4. Whole-part-whole Method of teaching reading that starts with a whole text (ex: vocabulary from thematic unit or a story) then pulls out specific parts to analyze for phonics/phonemic awareness skills, then goes back to the text to practice in context.

5. Balanced Literacy with Adult Emergent Readers • In every lesson, keep going up and down the ladder. • Remember that phonics should only be one small part of a larger, meaning-based reading curriculum.

6. What are Student-Generated Texts? Why is this a good practice? Student-generated texts are derived from authentic learner language (written or oral) Student-Generated Texts

7. Types of Student-Generated Texts • Shared experience • Students’ newsletters • Picture stories • Responding to a visual • Using a volunteer/higher level student as a scribe • Transcribed taped conversations • Journal entries • Texts for wordless books • Photo books • Class posters • Overheard student stories

8. A few definitions… • Phonological awareness: “The ability to attend to the phonological or sound structure of language as distinct from its meaning...It includes word awareness, syllable awareness, rhyme awareness and phonemic awareness.” • Phonemic awareness: One kind of phonological awareness. It is the “ability to focus on and manipulate phonemes in spoken words.” • Phonics: Teaching reading by emphasizing the relationships between letters and sounds.

9. Faduma’s Story: Coming to America

10. Same first letter sound F A M I L Y F: family, Faduma, first, for A: am, America, apple, airplane M: money, month, my, mother etc.

11. Sort words by sounds Somalia happy came month money my country school husband

12. The Nine Patch

13. Nine Patch

14. Letter tiles

15. Dictation Begin with first or final letter, then learners can attempt to write the whole word.

16. The Lor Family This is the Lor family. There are 6 people. The grandmother’s name is Blia. She likes milk and fruit salad. The father’s name is Xue. He likes to play music and play airplane with the baby. The mother’s name is Angela. She likes to read books. The baby girl is Pa Nia. She is 1 year old. The older daughter is Phyu. She likes to play in the garden with the dog. The son is Too Aung. He likes to play basketball. The dog’s name is Ow Nai. The Lors are very happy.

17. Where’s the sound? beginning – middle – end /d/: /m/: /n/: dog milk son old name airplane daughter music name salad mother read

18. Manipulating sounds with large cards B – O – O – K → C – O – O – K → L – O – O – K M – O – T – H – E – R → B – R – O – T – H – E – R → F – A – T – H – E - R

19. Fill in the missing sounds fa __ __ er mo __ __ er grandmo __ __ er b __ by n __ me airpl __ ne __ lay __ eople __ a Nia

20. Sort words by sounds/letters

21. Emergency! 1. It’s June. Ali has a stomachache. He says “Ouch”! 2. It’s September. Ali has a stomachache. He says “Ouch!” Ali’s sister says, “Go to the doctor.” 3. Ali says, “No doctor. Too much money.” 4. It’s December. Ali has a very bad stomachache. He says “Ouch! Ouch! No doctor. Too much money.” 5. It’s January. Ali is in the ambulance. He goes to the hospital. 6. It’s February. Ali is in the hospital sleeping. He has a big bill.

22. Blend the word j – u –n b – i – l h – o – s – p – i – t – a – l

23. Circle repeated words in the story • Where do you see the name “Ali” in the story? Circle it. • Where do you see the word “doctor” in the story? Circle it.

24. Circle the word • Ali All Always • bad dad bill • honey tummy money • mother money Monday

25. Word families • goes – toes • ouch – couch – grouch • bad – mad – sad – dad – had – glad • bill – fill – hill – pill – will • starts – parts

26. Same or different

27. Community Garden(Minnesota Literacy Council, Andrea Echelberger, instructor)

28. Minnesota Literacy Council, St. Paul, Minnesota HOT DAY Today is summer.Today is sunny.Today is hot.Today we are sweating.Today drink water.Today wear t-shirt.

29. Beautiful Garden Mr. Jerry tiller on the dirt.Many students clean the stones and grass.Dirt in the pot and plant tomatoes, chilies, cilantro, eggplants.Put in the stakes and put in the fence.Plant broccoli, onions, green beans, flowers in the garden.Water the plants everyday.We like cucumbers, carrots, broccoli, onions, radishes.We feel happy.

30. What kinds of phonics and phonemic awareness items can we work on from this text? What ideas do you have for such activities?

31. Instructor’s comments: • “We wrote the stories as a group using the language experience approach, and then pulled specific words out of there to work on phonics with. We went through and practiced pulling the word apart and sounding out each of the phonemes, and then pushing it back together to say it fluently. We looked at words that have similar sounds and groups circled words or wrote word lists. For a follow-up, I have alphabet tiles, and so I would say a word and they would have to move the tiles around to spell out the word. The higher learners were able to sound out most of it, and the lower and pre-lit learners were doing really well with the initial onset and the final consonant sound. I didn't create any new resources for the phonics work, we just used the blog and the whiteboard, which made the activities much less prep-intensive for me. • It's a lot of what we've talked about doing with phonics, but it was fun because it was our own story. Also, I always worried about learners getting bored with phonics and everyone in my class LOVED the activities, especially the word tile one.”

32. Questions, comments? Thank you!