Literacy

Question 0

Describe Advanced readers:

Answer 0

Advanced readers understand the meaning of words from context clues in a sentence or paragraph even if not famaliar with the dictionary definition of the word.

Question 1

Describe role of phonemic awareness and phonetics in literacy.

Answer 1

Phonemic awareness (how sounds convey meaning), phonetics (how sounds are transmitted and perceived), and the alphabet, are critical first steps to literacy. As children recognize sounds & identify them with alphabetic letters & patterns word recognition & reading ability improves.

Spelling development depends on phonemic awareness.

Question 2

Describe a symptom of poor phonemic awareness:

Answer 2

Difficulty with reading usually stems from poor phonemic awareness. Children must be able to break down words into phonemes, and recombine those sounds into whole words, in order to read.

Question 3

Literacy assessment methods:

Answer 3

Observation
Standardized tests
Checklists
Student self-evaluation
Performance evaluations
Literature critiques
Conventional assessments assess listening, speaking and reading abilities. Tailor for student(s).

Question 4

Name the 5 Developmental Stages of Spelling

Answer 4

1. Emergent - age 1-7, pre-K to mid-1st grade
2. Alphabet/Letter Name - age 4-10, K to mid-2nd
3. Within Word Pattern - age 6-12, 1st to mid-4th
4. Syllables and Affixes - age 8-18, 3rd to 8th
5. Derivational Relations - age 10+, 5th to 12th

Question 5

Regular words

Answer 5

Regular words are best learnt by word-building using onset and rime to highlight word families using a multi-sensory approach. Promote visual memory and encourage child to remember letter strings and patterns, perhaps using color to highlight them. Help students generalize,e.g., if they can spell “and”, they could spell band, sand, stand, standing.

Question 6

Irregular words

Answer 6

Irregular words conform to a rare spelling rule. Most frequent error made by poor spellers is a phonetic approximation. It may be helpful to point out to the child whether a spelling is regular or irregular. Also helpful is to provide a list of high frequency, irregular words to be used as reference or memorizing. Limit # of irregular words to be learned to two/three per week.

Question 7

If a child is having difficulty spelling phonetically regular words, check the following:

Answer 7

• can hear individual phonemes.
• can hear them in correct sequence.
• is able to write the correct letter for each single sound.
• knows that letters (graphemes) represent speech sounds (phonemes)
• knows the difference between a letter and a word.
  If so, s/he is at the phonetic stage & ready for word-building work.