Chapter 5: Phonics And Sight Words: Terminiology And Concepts

Question 1

Define the role of phonics and sight words in word identification.

Answer 1

Knowledge of phonics and sight word facilitates swift and accurate word identification, particularly of the words that appear most frequently in English texts. Swift and accurate word identification is a prerequisite for fluent reading comprehension.

Question 2

Describe the sequence and types of sound-letter correspondences you will teach, identify six rules for dividing words into syllables, and identify three types of sight words that must be taught to children in grades K-2.

Answer 2

Be sure you know the definitions of each of the following: consonant blends, vowel digraphs, and diphthongs.

Sequence of Phonics and Sight Word Instruction:

1. Consonant Sounds: Continuous and stop sounds
2. Common, Regular Letter Combinations: Consonant digraphs - ph - one sound two letters, Consonant BLends - two letters one sound, Vowels, Vowel Digraphs- two vowels go walking the first does the talking, Dipthongs - vowel combinations such as oi and boy - tongue starts in one position and rapidly moves to another, r-controlled vowels - neither long nor short (car), L-Controlled - neither long nor short (chalk, help, milk)

Six Rules for Dividing Words into Syllables

1. Compound words divide between the words (in-side, foot-ball)
2. Single-syllable prefix - divide between the prefix and root (un-kind)
3. Never divide a consonant digraph (bush-el, teach-er)
4. Two consonants in the middle of a word that are not digraphs - divide between the consonants (sis-tear, but-ter)
5. Single consonants in the middle of a word between two vowels - the vowel preceding the consonant is short, divide after the consonant (cab-in, lev-el)
6. Single consonant in the middle of a word between two vowels, the vowel preceding the consonant is long, divide before the consonant (be-long, fe-ver)

Three types of sight words that must be taught to children K-2

1. High-frequency words children need to know early on
2. Some sound-symbol relationship in the word will not be taught until much later ex: park is controlled r, but young students use this word a lot
3. Function words - no clear meaning: prepositions, pronouns or conjunctions (of, the, was)

Question 3

Describe the stages of spelling development and state the interrelationships between phonics development and stages of spelling development.

Answer 3

Precommunicative: no understanding of letters represent sounds. Pictures or make squiggles. Random letters. AaLLo Shav to represent: My Dad’s new car.

Semiphonetic: attempt to use letters to represent sound. Some sounds in words are not represented ex: baa for banana

Phonetic: letters represent sounds and at least one letter represents each sound. Somewhat difficult to read. ex: I lik two flip a kitt is I like to fly a kite. Many errors as they write.

Transitional: most of the orthographic patterns. Spelling is easy to read. The firefiters have to be able to climb up the sides of bildings. Mistakes occur with sounds that have several spellings such as long a.

Conventional: spells almost all words correctly. Mistakes occur when the child tries to spell new words with irregular spellings. Generally recognize that their word does not look right.

Question 4

7.1 Definition of phonics

Answer 4

A component of reading instruction teaching children to make the correct association between the sounds and letters of language.

Phonics lessons will help children decode words. A phonics skill, for example, is knowing that the letter c makes both the /k/ sound in car and the /s/ sound in city.

Essential part of beginning reading instruction

Question 5

7.1 Which words are taught as sight words?

Answer 5

1. High-frequency words
2. Irregular spelling
3. Words children want to know
4. Content-area lessons