Phonics #12

·         Structural analysis is a word identification skill that involves the use of prefixes, suffixes, root words the “words” in compound words, and the apostrophes in contractions to identify unfamiliar words.

·         A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning.

·         Prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes.

·         An inflectional suffix changes number, affects verb tense, indicates comparison, or denotes possession.

·         A derivational suffix affects meaning and may change grammatical category.

·         When adding an affix to a word, the spelling may or may not change.

This section of reading was all about the structural analysis of words.  All of these word changes have their own rules to abide by.  I already knew how to convert many words using analysis, but never knew the technical rules behind the changes.  These could be important to teach to students because students need to know the technical reasons for changing a word.

Phonics #11

·         Each syllable contains only one vowel phoneme. If you hear two vowel phonemes, you may be sure the word has two syllables.

·         In general, affixes form separate syllables. The accent usually falls on or within the root word.

·         If a syllable ends in a vowel, it is called an open syllable.

This section of reading was all about accenting syllables.  Most of this was just review for me, because I remember having to do this in elementary school.  Knowing all of the syllable accent rules will come in handy while teaching because giving students part of a word, instead of the whole word, can help with sounding out and spelling.  These rules could also be important to teach to kids because it will help them to read words correctly.  Also knowing where the accent falls, will help students read the context of the word.

Phonics #10

·         The consonant phoneme at the beginning of a word is called a onset, while the vowel and consonants that follow the onset are called rime.

·         Phonogram is another term for the rime in a syllable.

                This chunk of reading was all on Onsets and Rimes.  Onsets and Rimes are basically just the names for the different portions of a word. I remember learning about these as a kid, but had completely forgotten about them. These could come in handy while teaching students on how to split words into different sounds.  I will need to be conscious of this while teaching because I will want to make sure that my student’s split the words in the correct place.

Phonics #8

·         A diphthong is a single-vowel phoneme, represented by two letters, resembling a glide from one sound to another. Ex. Oil, house.

·         A vowel digraph is a two-letter grapheme that represents one phoneme. Ex. Food, School, Through, Hook.

·         Vowel pairs are when a word has 2 vowel graphemes. One vowel presents the long sound, while the other vowel is silent.

After reading this portion of the Phonics book, I realized how much Phonics is almost a language of itself.  After rereading all of the Phonics rules, I am beginning to realize why we do not use Phonics as the main basis for our reading instruction; kids would get too confused!  All of these vowel rules will be handy to know when I start teaching because it will help me understand how to help student’s read words with uncommon vowel rules.  With these uncommon vowel rules, I believe the best way to teach these words would be through “writing until it looks right”.

Phonics #7

·        The schwa is used to indicate the pronunciation of the vowel phoneme in many unaccented syllables (these syllables tend to make the “uh” sound).

·        Vowels can be affected by the consonants surrounding it.

This portion of reading taught the differences in vowel sounds.  These differences can be because of surrounding vowels, consonants, or the general nature of the word.  These could be very hard to teach students because all grammar rules seem to have “but not always” tagged to the end of them.   As a teacher I will have to work on finding strategies to help my students understand these vowel changes.

Phonics #9

·          The 44 phonemes are represented by 251 graphemes.

·         There is no general rule for every letter pattern; each letter has its own.

This section reviewed the earlier parts on phonemes.  The sounds of letters can change depending on the word and the letters around them.  This will be a hard thing to teach to children, because we as people want something to always be constant.  The rules of phonemes are something that need to be studied, so correct spelling can occur.

Phonics #6

·         Y’s are vowels when they are pronounced as i’s or e’s; and W’s are vowels when they are combined with another vowel.

·         The most common vowel-consonant pattern is that of CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant), in which the Vowel represents its short sound.

·         When one-syllable word has two vowels, one of which is the final e, the e is silent and the first vowel usually represents its long sound.

      This reading portion spoke of the vowels and their sounds.  The vowels include a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y and w.  Vowels, depending on the form of the letters, can have long or short sounds.  Vowels can also be silent.

Phonics #5

·         The combinations ch, sh, and zh do not have their own sound. They are a combination of sounds.

·         The combinations th, tk, and wh change sounds, depending on the word.

·         The combination can represent a single phoneme or two separate phonemes.

·         A consonant cluster is composed of two or more consonants that blend together when sounded to form a consonant blend.

This section of Phonics spoke of combinations of consonants with entirely different sounds.  These combinations are where children have the most difficulty in learning how to read; this is why students will write in invented spelling.  This kind of spelling is good for children to learn that they can write, even if they need a small amount of help making it correct.  I will need to remember this as a teacher, that children are not born knowing how to sound things out and spell them correctly.

Phonics #4

·         C, g, w, and y are all very irregular, but have consistency within their inconsistencies.

·         S, t, and x are unreliable.  These letters will not always sound the same. Their sounds change with the word.

·         We use two-letter combinations called consonant digraphs to stand for the seven phonemes not represented by single-letter graphemes.

This section spoke of more irregular consonants and consonant digraphs. Irregular consonants and consonant digraphs will affect my teaching because these combinations and letters without specific sound rules will be hard to teach to students.  How do you explain that a letter might have a "c" sound now, but an "s" sound in a different word?  This will take much time on my part, to make the most knowledgeable curriculum to teach the students.

Phonics #3

Things I want to remember:

·         Consonant phonemes can be divided into two major groups: eighteen consonant phonemes identified by key symbols composed of single letters and seven consonant phonemes identified by key symbols composed of two-letter combinations called digraphs.

·         As single letters, c, q, and x do not represent distinctive phonemes.

·         The letters m, v, and r represent distinctive sounds of their own, while q always represents the same sound as k.

·         The consonants b, h, k, l and p as single letters are very reliable, but all these consonants still have their own “silent letter” patterns.

·         The consonants d, f, j, n, and z tend to be very reliable consonants, with minor sound differences.

            This third portion of the Phonics book talked about consonants.  These letters hold different sound and writing patterns then vowels do.  I loved reading about all the differences in the consonants. I knew these difference exsisted, but never stopped to actually think about it.

Phonics #2

Things I want to remember:

·         The Roman alphabet had only 26 letters to represent apprx. 44 English sounds.  English made up for this by combining letters to make the missing sounds.

·         Phonemic Awareness; The understanding that words consist of sounds and the ability to act on this understanding

·         The grapheme is the written representation of the phoneme. As the phoneme is the unit in the sound system, the grapheme is the unit in the written code.

·         The three types of cues used to identify unfamiliar words are graphophonic cues, which consist of letter to sound relationships, syntactic cues, which consist of grammatical relationships, and semantic cues, which consist of meaningful relationships.

After reading the first chapter of the “Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading”, I felt like my knowledge of phonics had greatly increased.  I did find the book a little hard to follow; due to the way it is written.  The chapter spoke of how there are 26 letters in the English language, but 44 phonemes.  With so many sounds and so few letters, Americans need to get creative.  Some of these creative graphemes are /th/ and /ch/.  This chapter also looked like there is a science to reading, instead of just “knowing” the words.  I have always been more of a “sound it out” reader; hopefully, this book will help me with my phonics.

Phonics Assignment #1

For this assignment, I was required to take the Phonics Pre-test in the book Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading by Barbara J. Fox and reflect upon it. The test consisted of 75 multiple choice questions.  After answering and grading my test, I was really surprised at my score.  I thought the questions really stretched my thinking.  Most of these things I have not thought about since grade school.  My score was 19/75.  Pretty pathetic for a college student.  After taking with many other students who have taken this test, we were all surprised at how low our scores were. One comment each person made was that we looked insane trying to sound out the consonants while sitting in the Joust.  After taking this test, I am secure in my ability to read and sound things out.  I definitely need to improve my knowledge of the specifics of Phonics.