A Final Reflection: "What Words Do You Want?"

In one of the first blogs of the semester, I tried to explain to you my reasoning for making this Word Collector blog one your assignments for the course. Back then I wrote the following:

“The blog you create over the course of this semester asks you to make decisions about words! It asks you to become curious about words! It asks you to enjoy words! It asks you to think about words from a child's perspective! It asks you to see teaching as decision-making: how you choose texts and words for your students will make a difference in their learning!”

For this final blog, I want you to reflect on how this blog has worked for you – and why it matters that you have found lots of your own words, (hopefully!) enjoyed these words, and used them in your own learning. To do this, I want to first share with you a short story from Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s wonderful book called Teacher in which Ashton-Warner describes the importance of children using their own words to learn. In her book, Ashton-Warner describes her method of teaching reading to a group of Maori children in New Zealand this way …

Children’s first words and first books, she writes, “must be made out of the stuff of the child itself… words that have intense meaning to [them], from which cannot help but arise a love of reading. For it’s here, right in this first word, that the love of reading is born …"

Because of this, her method of teaching reading is based on the following question that she asks children each and every morning: “What word do you want?” No matter what the word children give her – “Mommy,” “Daddy,” “ghost,” “kiss,” “jet” – she writes it down on a large, heavy-duty card for them and asks them to learn it that night. The next morning she finds that the card is usually dirty and worn from the child’s “passionate usage” of it!! Children never seem to need help learning these words from her!

So … my final questions for you on this blog are as follows:

How will you find out what words children want? Can you see yourself using superhero words and environmental print and poems and magazines and so forth in your literacy teaching? Will you rely on what a prepackaged program tells you are important words for kids to know, and/or will you also rely on your own decision-making based upon what I know about children (and specifically my group of students)?

What words have you enjoyed the most this semester? Do you think that finding and using your own words in your blog has made a difference in your understanding of the content (e.g., vowels, root words, CVC/CVCe patterns)?

Rhyme Time!!

This week, I hope you will enjoy reading Chapter 8 about teaching phonics in the context of rhymes and poetry!! There are so many wonderful ideas from that chapter that I think would work for children of all ages!!

For our last "official" blogging, I will ask you to pick a favorite from the two poems/rhymes I have posted here or to share one of your favorites! And then, after you have read Chapter 8, I will ask that you think through how you might use one of these poems to teach phonics in context (after you have enjoyed it first!!!)!

The first is "Sick" by Shel Silverstein, who is a favorite of so many children I know! Find the text of the poem below:

"I cannot go to school today,"

Said little Peggy Ann McKay.

"I have the measles and the mumps,

A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,

I'm going blind in my right eye.

My tonsils are as big as rocks,

I've counted sixteen chicken pox

And there's one more--that's seventeen,

And don't you think my face looks green?

My leg is cut--my eyes are blue--

It might be instamatic flu.

I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,

I'm sure that my left leg is broke--

My hip hurts when I move my chin,

My belly button's caving in,

My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,

My 'pendix pains each time it rains.

My nose is cold, my toes are numb.

I have a sliver in my thumb.

My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,

I hardly whisper when I speak.

My tongue is filling up my mouth,

I think my hair is falling out.

My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,

My temperature is one-o-eight.

My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,

There is a hole inside my ear.

I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?

What's that? What's that you say?

You say today is. . .Saturday?

G'bye, I'm going out to play!"

Another favorite poem is "Porcupine" by Roald Dahl, as mentioned in the chapter! Here's a link to a video rendition of that poem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xr7vV40tNg

Finally, here's a simple rhyme that my students loved to read with me when I taught 1st grade! It's called "Bloop Bloop":

Bloop Bloop
Bloop bloop went the little green frog one day,
Bloop bloop went the little green frog,
Bloop bloop went the little green frog one day,
And they all went bloop bloop blop.
But!
We all know frogs go,
Lahdeedahdeedah!
Lahdeedahdeedah!We all know frogs go,
Lahdeedahdeedah!
They don't go bloop bloop blop.

So ... which poem/rhyme is your favorite? Or do you have another favorite of your own that you'd like to post? Make sure to share which one you enjoyed most (or tell us about a different one!).

After reading Chapter 8, how would you use this poem with your case study student? Report back on the following:

- Tell about a specific idea that you liked from Chapter 8 in which the teacher first focused on playing with the poem and enjoying. How would you adapt that idea with either "Sick" or "The Porcupine" (or your own favorite) if you were reading it with your case study student?

- Also tell about the specific phonics feature or word study feature from the poem that you might highlight for your student after you have read and enjoyed the poem together. Why did you pick this element?

Word Hunting!!

A-hunting we will go this week for two of the most common vowel patterns that kids will encounter! Word hunts are right up there with word sorts when it comes to teaching phonics and word study elements in a way that gives kids a chance to be active word solvers!

This week, I want to try a word hunt that will hopefully help folks to feel more comfortable in teaching vowel patterns. Let's start by watching a hilarious video that appeared on the Electric Company on the silent "e."



You might recognize the silent e from other words:

like
bike
gave
name

An abbreviated form of these words that you'll see in your curriculum/standards is this:
CVCe pattern (which stands for consonant, vowel, consonant, silent "e").

(Yes, they are also called split vowel digraphs, if you've read this week's Assignments and Commentary already or if you remember this from Chapter 5.)

What I want you to do this week is hunt for words that fit this CVCe pattern. You can hunt for these words in anything you're reading at the moment. You can hunt for CVCe words in People magazine, your phonics textbook, The Hunger Games, or espn.com! Whatever you're reading will work! Try to hunt down at least 15-20 of them and post them on your blog -- and let us know what you're reading these days!

After you've found 20 CVCe words, see if you can find one-syllable CVC words without the silent "e."

Examples of CVC words from the video are fat (consonant-vowel-consonant) and glob (consonant-vowel-consonant with the l-o-b). Hunt for 15-20 of these as well. Make sure to post your words on your blog.

And then tell us what you noticed about the words you found! What do you notice about the vowel sounds in CVC words? How about CVCe words? What makes them different?

Finally, report back what you thought about going word hunting. Do you think students might like this activity? Was it easy/hard? How might you use this with your students?

P.S. Here's the old school version of the silent "e" segment on Electric Company, in case anyone is interested! (Yes, that is Bill Cosby!)

Name Game!

For those of you working with young children, the most important words you collect and work with will be their names (and the names of their friends, classmates, and family members)! This week, I hope to use our names to show you what a wonderful resource they can be for phonics and word study! While young children use them to learn the alphabet and also their initial and final consonant sounds, we will use them to do some advanced word study learning.

For those of you who have Eden as your case study student, you will need to learn about accented and unaccented syllables. Because Eden is a very good speller, this is where she is making a lot of her mistakes. (And this is where a lot of adults still make a lot of mistakes, too!)

So ... what are accented and unaccented syllables, you ask! Let's start with our names. I have a name -- well, actually two names -- that are constantly misspelled. My first name is spelled Meredith, not Merideth! My last name is Whittaker, not Whitiker! One reason that the e in Meredith gets misspelled a lot in that it is a vowel in an unaccented syllable that doesn't make a true long or short vowel sound. Instead it's more of what's called a schwa sound. It's the same thing with the a that gets misspelled in Whittaker. It doesn't make a true long or short vowel sound anymore!

Remember how hard it was for some of us to distinguish between long and short vowels a few weeks ago when I asked you to create the word sort? That's because a lot of you were selecting really cool long words that had multiple syllables, including unaccented syllables in which there wasn't really a true long or short vowel sound. (Folks who chose one-syllable words seemed to have very little trouble!) For advanced spellers, long words with unaccented syllables is where spelling often gets tricky!

So how do you tell what the unaccented syllables are in your name? Here's a trick from the authors of Words Their Way that you can teach students .... Put your hand lightly under your chin. When you say your name, feel for when you jaw drops. Try it with my name, "Meredith." Do you feel your jaw drop slightly when you say, /Mair/? That's the accented (or stressed) syllable. That is the part of my name that usually gets spelled right!! Your jaw doesn't drop for the final two syllables so they are both unaccented syllables. (Try it with Molly. Do you feel your jaw drop for the first syllable? This is the accented one.)

For this week's post, let's use our names to do some advanced learning and also some review. Here's what I'm looking for:

1. See if you can figure out what the accented syllable is in both your first name and your last name. (Buddies, make sure to check your partner's work and to help, if needed!) Do people ever misspell the vowels in your name? Is it in the accented or unaccented syllable?

2. Review the key terminology below by finding a name on our class roster that fits the category.

• Can you find 3 names that have consonant digraphs in them? (Make sure to write both the number and the actual names.)

• Can you find 3 names can you find that have consonant blends in them?
  

• Can you find 3 names that have a two-letter vowel team in them? (Check Chapter 5 if you need clarification. I'm looking for vowel teams, not just words that have two vowels in them.)

• Can you find 3 names that have r-controlled vowels in them?
  

• Give one name with a true long vowel sound in it.

• Give one name with a true short vowel sound in it.
  

BONUS (for an extra credit point!)

• I could only find one name with a split-vowel digraph in it. Can you find it? The first person to find this (judged by the time stamp on the blog) wins a bonus point!

Here are the names:

Alyssa Brooks

Caitlin Collins

Jessica Collins

Marlaina Cruz

Marcy Ebel

Kim Griffith

Terri Houdeshell

Heather Johnson

Jennifer Maclean

Erica Mathie

Zenaida Ortiz

Kelly Rigda

Jerica Schick

Brianna Schnur Meredith Whittaker

Susan Widener

Joe Yagielo

Good luck! Please consult Chapter 5, if needed!

Word Fugitives!!

Let's see if we can have a little fun this week (maybe more so than last week for some of you!) -- and also think about how meaning patterns in language can be useful for our students (especially those who are more advanced in their reading/writing/spelling)!!

Here are a few questions for you:

• Does anyone know what the word is that describes the momentary confusion that is experienced by everyone in a room when a cell phone rings and no one is sure if it is her/hers or not?!

• Does anyone know what the word is when you're hoping you get someone's voicemail but instead you get the actual person?!

• How about the term for always forgetting your umbrella?!

• Or the term for that frantic period in the morning that many families experience in the morning prior to leaving home when you're trying to get everyone ready?

• How about the term for when that traffic light knows just when YOU are approaching so it can turn red?!
  

These are things that happen everyday, but there are no words that describe them yet!! No one has really invented a word for them yet!!! That means they are "word fugitives" -- they are "wanted words" waiting for someone to capture them!!!

For this week's blog, I have for you a list of word fugitives that some people have been trying to capture! For example: The act of entering a room and forgetting why! (This one has been happening to me quite a lot recently!) Take a look at the word fugitives. Then I want you to work with a buddy and take the Word Fugitives Challenge!

NOTE: Blogspot won't let me post a document here, so you will find the Word Fugitives Challenge posted on ANGEL. Just open up the document that is called Word Fugitives in Module 8. See how many ideas and terms you can match up just using a meaning pattern, or a root word or chunk that you know! I bet you'll figure out #1 just by using the base word!

(Answer: The act of entering a room and forgetting why is "destinesia" because it's destination and amnesia put together!)

Just have fun with this and see how many you can match up!

Then report back: Which ones could you figure out? Which ones were challenging? Were there any that didn't have a meaningful root word you knew? How does this activity connect to helping kids to use meaning patterns in their reading?

Sorting Out Word Sorts!

This week, we're going to look back on all the words we've found so far for our blogs this semester and see if we can create a closed word sort with these words!

Here's what I'd like you to do. Let's imagine that we are working with a "Within Word" speller. (We'll learn more about the different stages of spelling in a later module.) This speller needs work examining long vowels.

• Choose one long vowel on which the student will focus. Go back through your words and try to find 10 words that fit this pattern. (You may need to brainstorm more words, e.g., superhero or grocery words that would fit if you don't find enough.)
  

• The key to a good word sort is setting up a scaffold of support for your student. So you'll want to choose a contrasting category so your student can contrast a pattern he knows with this new one. For long vowels, a good contrasting pattern would be the short vowel, e.g., contrast cat (short vowel) and cape (long vowel). Again, go back through your blog and try to find 10 words that fit this pattern.
  

• Choose a key word for each category to establish the categories clearly for your student. (Note: If you were actually doing this sort with a young reader, you'd likely want to start with one-syllable words.)

In your blog entry, make sure to include the following information:

• What long vowel phonics element did you decide on as the focus of your study?
• Does your sort focus on the alphabetic, pattern, or meaning layer of spelling? (Revisit the article on what teachers ask about spelling or our tags posted in the last module if you're still working out the difference.)
• What are the words you'll use (including the key word)? List them all and sort them into the two categories. (Or see if a friend can sort them!)
  
• What did you discover when you sorted your words into two categories?
  
• Can you think of a meaningful text you could give children in which they could follow the sort with a word hunt for the features you've focused on?
  

Have Derivational Patterns Taken Root For You? :)

In this week's blog, I want to recap a very important point from our readings: Children learn pattern by pattern, not rule by rule or skill by skill.

As we have learned, the rules for phonics are very unreliable because the letter-sound relationships in our language do not match perfectly and are quite complex. Does it really help to tell a student that when "two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking" if that rule is only true about half of the time? Does it really help to tell a student to "sound it out" if they are working on a "ch" digraph where the "c" and the "h" actually make one sound together (rather than blending two sounds together)?

So as teachers, what we need to know and highlight with our students are the consistent patterns in our language. These are the patterns we have been learning about for the past two weeks. (And remember that a "rime" is a pattern that helps children attack vowels; this is different than a "rhyme"!) Over the past two weeks, you have hopefully added a great deal of "teacher knowledge" about letter-sound patterns!

We want older students who have mastered most of the sound patterns to begin focusing on meaning patterns in their spellings. For example, knowing that words like "photograph," "telephoto," and "photosynthesis" are based on the Greek word "photos" (meaning light) helps advanced students learn the meanings of words and enables them to spell them. (Joe and Marcy have given us a great start in the Week 5 tags by pulling out some of the key points about derivational patterns.)

This week, I want you to work a bit with root words and meaning patterns -- and hopefully have some fun, too! -- so you're going to play Brainburst! The directions are posted below:

Brainburst

Players compete to brainstorm as many words as they can that are derived from the same root in this game. Unique words are the only words that will earn points.

Materials

Different roots should be written on cards such as phon, dict, port, graph, scope, struct, spect and so on. (For this assignment, just choose two of these roots and play two rounds of the game!) Roots that have a wide variety of possible derivations should be chosen. Each player or team needs to have a piece of paper and a pencil. A standard dictionary and a timer are needed.

Procedures

1. The timer is set for 2 to 3 minutes and a card is turned over. Each team or player attempts to think of as many words as possible derived from that root. (E.g., for phon-, I'd begin my list with phonics, phonemes, telephone, etc.)
   
2. Players draw a line under their last word and count the number they have when the timer goes off.
3. The player with the longest list reads the list aloud. If another player has the same word, the word is crossed off of everyone’s list. Words that are not on another list are checked.
4. Each player reads aloud any words that no one else has called to determine whether he or she has a unique word. A dictionary should be used to help settle any disputes.
5. The winner of the round is the player or team with the most unique words.

Report Back

How did you and your partner do? Include the lists that you came up with and make sure to tell us the unique words from each of your list. Include in your post what you found out about the meaning of each root that you chose.