Word Recognition

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Word Recognition
I can read all of these words!
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• The twenty-five most common words make up about
  one-half of our written materials.
• Fry, Kress Fountoukidis, 2000

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• We have over a half-million words to communicate
  with, but half of everything we write and read
  depends on only 0.02 percenton only those 100
  most frequent words.
• Frank B. May, Reading as Communication To Help
  Children Read and Write 1998

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• It appears that instant recognition of words,
  especially high-frequency words, develops best
  when students read large amounts of text,
  particularly text that is relatively easy for the
  reader (Cunningham, 1995).

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• The student who can read on sight 8 out of the 10
  words in the sentence before them can read that
  sentence and can usually decode the remaining
  words by using phonics, context or picture cues.
  Most importantly, they can understand the meaning
  of what they are reading.

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• Without adequate high frequency/sight word
  knowledge, a readers fluency, and therefore
  their comprehension, is impaired.

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Common High Frequency Word Lists

• Dolch
• Edward Frys Instant Word Lists
• San Diego Quick
• California Reading and Literature Results Project
• Rebecca Sittons Core Words

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Assessment

• High frequency/sight word knowledge needs to be
  assessed frequently and taught strategically.
• Students need to be able to read the word without
  sounding it out and with automaticity.

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Word Identification in a BalancedReading Program

• The focus on word identification is in line with
  a childs individual needs and skills.
• Teaching letter/sound relationships helps
  children build fluency, automaticity and
  independence.

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Word Identification in a BalancedReading Program
(cont.)

• Children are encouraged to use alphabetic,
  semantic and syntactic cues to identify
  unfamiliar words.
• Teacher modeling and multiple opportunities to
  interact with text leads to the development of
  word identification strategies.

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Becoming Aware of Language

• When beginning readers and writers explore
  written language, they develop critical concepts
  about print.
• When children explore oral language, they develop
  phonemic awareness and the ability to manipulate
  and play with the sounds of language.

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Becoming Aware of Language (cont.)

• Phonemic awareness is sequential. Children become
  aware of words, syllables, rhyme and eventually,
  to individual phonemes.
• A child who has phonemic awareness can identify
  the sounds he/she hears, segment words and blend
  sounds into words.

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What Does Research Say?

• Substantial evidence suggests that word
  identification skills should be taught directly
  rather than waiting for children to discover them
  on their own and that such skills should be
  taught early.
• Effective readers are also strategic that is,
  they learn how and when to use combinations of
  word identification skills
• (Adams, 1990 Anderson et al., 1985).

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Who Is At-Risk?

• Children who overuse context clues and fail to
  attend to letter-sound associations may
  misidentify words, and that could cause them
  difficulty in constructing meaning for a passage
  (Simon Leu, 1987).

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Who is At-Risk? (cont.)

• Children who do not effectively use meaning clues
  often sound out nonsense words or are so slow and
  laborious in word identification that they cannot
  simultaneously draw meaning from the words that
  they are reading (Biemiller, 1970 Samuels,
  1985).

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Why Develop Automaticity?

• The first 300 words make up 65 of all written
  material. (Frye)
• Comprehension begins to break down when students
  are focused on trying to decode or sound out the
  words.

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What Are High Frequency Words?

• High frequency words are phonetic and can be
  decoded, but occur with such frequency that they
  often need to be learned before their specific
  phonics pattern is taught.
• Examples of frequently occurring words the, in,
  I, a, go, to, that, with, about, please

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What Are Sight Words?

• Sight words are words, usually Anglo-Saxon in
  origin, that must be memorized because of their
  non-phonetic structure and high degree of usage.
• Examples of nonphonetic words come, said, was,
  two and through

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What Are High Interest Words?

• High interest words are words with special
  interest or emotional overtones and are
  frequently used and recognized by students in
  their personal reading and writing.
• Examples of high interest words mom, dad,
  dinosaur

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Importance of Recognizing Words for Independent
Reading

• Enables use of context clues.
• Increases fluency and ease of reading
• Children can read greater amounts and for longer
  periods.
• Focus can be more on comprehension than on
  decoding.

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California LanguageArts Standards

• 1.0 Decoding and word recognition
• Kinder 1.15 Read simple one syllable and high
  frequency words (i.e. sight words)
• 1st 1.11 Read common, irregular sight words
  (e.g. the, have said, come give, of)
• 2nd 1.6 Read aloud fluently and accurately with
  appropriate intonation and expression

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Instructional Implications

• Rhyme awareness activities
• Sound awareness activities
• Teaching onset and rime/analogy strategy
• Letter-sound activities
• Multi-letter chunking
• Visual discrimination and configuration
• Building words

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Instructional Implications (cont.)

• Word sorts
• Cross-checking and self-monitoring
• Context clues
• Cloze Activities
• Word Wall Activities
• Structural Analysis
• Phonetic cue strategies

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Ways to Classify and Sort Words

• There are many ways to sort and classify
  words on a word wall, in a literacy center, or in
  a whole or small group lesson
• Words that start the same (beginning blend,
  consonant cluster or onset)
• Words that end the same (rime)
• Words that rhyme
• Words that contain the same number of syllables

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Ways to Classify and Sort Words (cont.)

• Long words, short words
• Words I know, words I think I know and words I
  don't know at all
• Words with long or short vowels
• Words with schwa sound
• Synonyms, antonyms
• Compound words

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Word Walls

• Using word walls is an effective classroom
  strategy for learning and practicing HFW/sight
  words
• As new words are learned they are added to the
  wall in ABC order
• HFW words walls are added to and utilized all
  year
• If it is on the wall, they are responsible for
  knowing how to read and spell it correctly!

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Activities for Word Wall Practice

• Speed reading all words under one letter
• Read using different voices/expressions
• Guess my word
• Rhyming words
• Read the entire wall forwards or backwards
• Preposition/pronoun/noun/verb etc. hunt

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Whole Class HFW Practice

• Word wall games
• Slap
• I have_____, who has____?
• Wordo
• Word wall cards in ABC order
• Pass the cards

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Small Group HFW Practice

• Slap
• ABC order
• Pass the card
• Guess my word(s)
• Concentration
• Wordo

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Individual Student Support

• Word cards on rings
• Word lists on desk
• New words added to individual spelling
  dictionaries
• Word hunts while reading
• Practice, practice, practice!

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Practice at Home

• Flash cards
• Concentration
• Word hunts for focus words
• Make words with magnetic letters on fridge
• Words posted around the house
• Read, read, read!

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Beyond the Word Bank

• Match cards whose word begins with the same
  letter or syllable.
• Match cards whose word ends with the same letter
  or syllable.
• Match cards whose word is the same.
• Match cards whose words rhyme.
• Arrange cards according to alphabetical order.

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Beyond the Word Bank (cont.)

• Arrange cards according to the number of
  syllables in each word.
• Make up sentences using the words on the cards.
• Make up a story using all the words on the cards.
• Find synonyms, antonyms or homonyms.
• Find cards whose words have the same root or base
  word.

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Beyond the Word Bank (cont.)

• Find cards whose words have prefixes or suffixes.
• Find cards with compound or derived words.
• Arrange cards by the stress on the words.
• Make up a story or poem using all or most of the
  words on the cards.

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Designing Word Recognition Instruction

• Identify word recognition error types.
• Provide systematic word recognition instruction
  on specific skills.
• Pre-teach word types in the text prior to
  reading.
• Structure time for student to practice the text
  with a peer, adult, or tape.

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• High frequency/site words is, be, to, us, am, in
  
• High frequency phrases
• by the dog
• for the day
• on the bed
• over the top
• Source Building Fluency Do It Well and Do It
  Right! Molly McCabe

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Recommended Reading

• Behr, Donald, et al, Words Their Way
• Fox, Barbara, Word Identification Strategies
  Phonics from a New Perspective
• Frye, Edward, 1000 Instant Words, Laguna Beach
  Educational Books.
• Throop, Sara (1999) Success with Sight Words
  Multisensory Ways to Teach High Frequency Words,
  Creative Teaching Press.

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• For more information or explanation of ideas
  outlined in this presentation, please contact
  Cherry Carl atcarl1404_at_msn.com.