PART 2: WRITING
WRITING ACTIVITY 1: PHONICS, WRITING, AND SPELLING
Phonics/Writing/Spelling Script Links
WRITING ACTIVITY 2: WRITING STORIES
WRITING ACTIVITY 3: GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION
WRITING ACTIVITY 4: GAMES AND SOFTWARE
WRITING ACTIVITY 5: INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION
INTRODUCTION
All of the teaching material is in the accompanying scripts. Don't be afraid to try changes in the scripts that might work better for your learner. You may want to print out the lessons and especially the scripts and work from the hard copies rather than from the monitor.
Some of the explanatory material for the exercises may be difficult for a child to understand, but since the concepts are demonstrated in the exercises, explanations aren't really necessary.
We will now turn to the activities included in the writing part of the program. Go to Planning Instruction for suggestions on when to start each activity.
[Your feedback will be very welcome. Please send an e-mail message to me, Bob Parvin, at bandcparvinXhotmail.com (Substitute @ for X. I'm trying to hide my address from spammers.)]
To simplify the instruction for parents and tutors, instruction scripts are provided. You read the scripts aloud, and both you and the learner know what to do. Here are the links to the instruction scripts and exercises you will be using in my program for teaching phonics/writing/spelling:
English Spelling
English spelling gets a bad rap. Considering the fact that English is a linguistic stew consisting of remnants of Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Norman French, Latin, and Greek, it is more regular than one might think. It is complex, but only occasionally perverse and then most commonly in the small high frequency words like "one," which are easily learned as whole words. Here are some of the complexities of English spelling:
Also to see Dr. Louisa C. Moats' academic discussion of English spelling go to How Spelling Supports Reading, and Why It Is More Regular and Predictable than you May Think.
There are many different phonics and spelling approaches to deal with English spelling. When I started to school, the reading and spelling program began by teaching "the sounds that letters make," a letter-to-sound method (synthetic phonics) still often used. The teacher flashed letter cards, and for b, c, and d we were expected to bark out /buh/, /cuh/, and /duh/. When we learned the sounds, we were taught to sound out words letter by letter from left to right. We had to learn phonics rules to cope with the different sound spellings. Although we learned to read on schedule, this traditional phonics approach has these problems:
Writing Activity 1 teaches phonics, handwriting, spelling, and, implicitly, word recognition. Furthermore, it teaches them at the same time because they are mutually reinforcing and because it is more efficient to teach them together rather than separately.
I don't teach the names of the letters until we come to the "long vowels." At the beginning I don't want the learner to confuse the name of a letter with the sound it represents.
I don't like alphabet books and especially those that relate letters to pictures. When a child sees, for example, the letter "b," I want him to think of what sound the letter represents rather than thinking of a "bumble bee." It is acceptable to relate pictures to words but not single letters.
To cope with the duplicity of vowels, I teach spelling patterns in addition to (not instead of) sound-letter correspondences. First, I group the exercises according to the spelling patterns such as CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant pattern such as in "man"), CV, CVCe, and CVVC patterns and teach the learner to hear the individual speech sounds in a word (e.g., /m---/ /a---/ /n---/ in "man"). Second, I teach them how to "write the sounds." Third, I teach the rime in the word (e.g., the -an in "man") consisting of the vowel and any consonants that come after it in the syllable. Rimes are related to "rhymes" but are not the same. Confusing? Two words that rhyme may contain the same rime, e.g., "cat" and "rat," but other rhyming words, e.g., "fight" and "kite," have different rimes (-ight and -ite).
The behavior of vowels within a given rime is quite predictable. Therefore, it is helpful to teach in the context of words the "short" vowel rimes (_at, _ell, _id, _ob, _ug, etc.), the e-controlled rimes (_ate, _ete, _ide, _ome, _ube, etc.), the r-controlled rimes (_ar, _ard, _art, etc.), the l-controlled rimes (_all, _ald, etc.), and the irregular "long" vowel rimes (_ind, _old, _oll). Although there are hundreds of rimes, the learner doesn't have to memorize all of them because he will know how to sound them out until he is finally able to recognize all of them on sight. Furthermore, there is an easily manageable number of basic patterns, and you can see them in Basic Keywords.
The consonant, consonant pair, or consonant blend preceding the rime is called the onset. Although a learner should be able to sound out a two or three letter onset, e.g. /b//r/ in "br" and /th//r/ in "thr," he must also learn to take it in one chunk, /br/ and /thr/.
Knowing onsets and rimes facilitates sounding out syllables and words in reading. For example, try sounding out the word "slight." There are four sounds and corresponding graphemes (/s/ /l/ /igh/ /t/), but it is much easier to sound it out by onset and rime, /sl//ight/.
To make the terminology more kid friendly, I call consonants "mouthers" because they are made or shaped in the mouth. I call vowels "throaters" because they are produced in the larynx in the throat.
I also replace the "short" and "long" vowel terminology. I think it is useful to relate the type of vowel sound to the type of syllable and rime. Therefore, I call the so-called "short vowels" (as in bed) "closed off throaters" because they occur in closed syllables and rimes. I call those in open syllables or rimes (as in be) "open throaters" instead of "long vowels." Likewise, I call accented or stressed syllables "strong syllables" and unaccented syllables "weak syllables." The vowel sounds in weak syllables (such as the o in "wagon") are weak and neutral, so I call them "weak vowels," which is the schwa sound.
If you look at the reading instruction literature, you will see that teaching "phonemic awareness" is now a trendy subject. It is simply the awareness that spoken words consist of individual sounds. Of course it is important, but it is learned incidentally in whole-word phonics instruction. In the early exercises in my phonics/writing/spelling program the student quickly learns the concept as he learns to hear and say the sounds in a word.
"Writing the sounds" is a multisensory approach in which learners hear the sounds in a word, vocalize the sounds, see how the sounds are written, and feel the letters in their muscles as they "write the sounds." These sensations are mutually reinforcing. Whether they learn best through hearing, seeing, or feeling in the muscles, they are covered. Multisensory approaches are especially useful in helping so-called dyslexic learners.
To sum it up, I teach "phonics through spelling" rather than through letter-to-sound drills. Initially, the student is taught to hear the sounds in a real word and then to write/spell those individual sounds and to recognize the onset and rime. He is then able not only to write and spell the word but also to recognize the word in reading. In "Part 1: Reading," the student is taught to decode words by "chunking," first by chunking monosyllabic words into their onsets and rimes and later by chunking polysyllables into syllables and larger units.
Parents should know that phonics is taught in many different ways in the schools, some more effective than others and that many teachers may have been taught only a smattering of phonics of any kind. I suspect that all primary school teachers will say they do teach phonics, but this is meaningless until we find out when, how, and how intensively and comprehensively they teach it. Parents need to check their children in any of the elementary grades to see if they need supplemental work on phonics, handwriting, and spelling. One way to do that is to dictate keywords in the exercises for the learner to write until they find where the child needs more work. To find out more about the value of using explicit systematic phonics, go to Phonics Instruction.
It has been unfashionable to drill learners in phonics, handwriting, and spelling. Many have believed that skills should be taught indirectly and with games and cool computer programs. I have found that it is more efficient to teach skills with appropriate drills and reinforce the learning with games. However, drills should be made easy and made short at first and conducted with a light touch so that they seem more like a game than work. Drills should not be started before the child is developmentally ready. I would be cautious in drilling preschool children.
When should phonics instruction start? That's a good question to stir up an argument. The prestigious 2000 Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to Read says: "Although conventional wisdom has suggested that kindergarten students might not be ready for phonics instruction, this assumption was not supported by the data. The effects of systematic early phonics instruction were significant and substantial in kindergarten and the 1st grade, indicating that systematic phonics instruction should be implemented at those age and grade levels."
In England their prestigious "Rose review" has this to say: "Engaging young children in interesting and worthwhile pre-reading activities paves the way for the great majority to make a good start on systematic phonic work by the age of five. Indeed, for some, an earlier start may be possible and desirable. This is because it ill serves children to hold them back from starting systematic phonic work that is matched to their developing abilities and enables them to benefit from the wealth of opportunities afforded by reading from an early age. All that said, the introduction of phonic work should always be a matter for principled, professional judgement based on structured observations and assessments of children's capabilities." (See Phonics policy, 2006.)
I suggest that a parent of a typical child, if there such a child, try teaching the phonics/writing/spelling exercises during the summer preceding kindergarten. Tell him that this will make kindergarten easy for him. Just before school starts tell him that the teacher will teach letters and sounds in a different way, and he should happily go along with it even though he already knows about them. Talk about it with him from time to time after school starts to see that he is not confused.
Another issue is how fast sound/letter correspondences are taught. It is instructive for American reading teachers to learn that the Spalding Method ("The Writing Road to Reading," widely used by homeschoolers) instructions say, "Each day introduce four new phonograms [symbols for sounds such as b, th, igh] and practice all previous ly introduced phonograms for a few minutes." With each phonogram important variant sounds are taught. For example, three sounds are taught with "a" phonogram. With "Jolly Phonics," which is a popular phonics instruction program in England, beginners are taught to recognize, say, and write the main 42 sounds of English at the rate of one letter sound per day. In America the average rate is a snail's pace more like one per week, which may be because they are taught so inefficiently.
With preschoolers some of the most important things to do is to lay a foundation for writing and phonics are as follows: 1) Read to the child with Reading Activity 1, especially rhyming poems. 2) Encourage him to scribble and draw to develop his fine motor skill needed for writing.
These writing activities are intended as much to help older children having reading and writing problems as for beginners. Start at the beginning of "Closed Rimes, Section 2" dictating the keywords for the learner to write and move along rapidly until you find problem. Then follow the script.
Handwriting instruction should be coordinated with the instruction in school. Parents should get a handwriting style sheet from the teacher. Also get a sample of the way they write the ten digits.
It was once common for schools to teach beginners the "ball and stick" print-script style, which was a mistake. It is drawing rather than writing, and it requires a big jump when changing to cursive.
Many schools now teach a continuous-stroke, slanted style print-script such as the proprietary D'Nealian style, which has serifs or "hooks" ornamenting such as at he end of the stroke on "a" and "d." To see what a tracing model looks like, go to ABC's. As an example of how letters are made using a continuous stroke, notice how the small "k" is formed without raising the pencil. Unless the school uses another style I recommend using a continuous-stroke, slanted style print-script with serifs. Practice writing the letters until you learn the style. If you sit facing a student, which I recommend, then learn to write them upside down, which is easier than you might think.
The most common style of cursive is the traditional looped cursive, and if that is what your school teaches, that is what you should teach at the proper time. To see a what a tracing model of cursive writing looks like, go to ABC's. My preference for cursive is to start with the continuous-stroke, slanted style print-script with serifs and then simply link the letters. The serifs make the linking easy.
I used the looped cursive style until I graduated from college and had to hand write reports that had to be more legible than my cursive, so I reverted to continuous-stroke print-script and have never gone back to cursive. An elegant looped cursive was a sign of culture in bygone days, but I suspect it's on its way out.
Every child that I have given remedial tutoring holds the pencil by wrapping a couple of fingers around it. The "pinch and lean" grip in which we pinch the pencil between the thumb and index finger and support it with the side of the middle finger and cradle it between the thumb and index finger joints is a superior grip. Every child should at least try that grip to see if he can control the pencil better. For more on this go to The Correct Pencil Grip.
Here are some suggestions for the very important task of preparing young children for writing:
Think of ways to make these exercises seem almost like fun. Just a joyful attitude will help a lot.
Here is one idea for you to consider: Obtain a white hard hat used by construction workers and write the child's name and "Word Hat" on it with a Sharpie Fine Point Permanent Marker. Then write the words he has learned in lower case printscript around the hat from the bottom up, and then he can see for himself and show others the words he has "in his head that he can read and write." See Hard Hat.
Buy a writing tablet with 1/2 inch line spacing. With a ruler and pencil darken every other line. The undarkened line will be the midline. Tops of letters like "u" will touch the midline. Letters like "t" will start down from between the top line and the midline. The tops of letters like "b" will start at the top line.
You will need a supply of pencils. I suggest using No. 2 HB lead pencils. A fun way to keep the pencils properly sharpened is to buy an electric sharpener such as the Compact Battery Operated Pencil Sharpener. This also requires your teaching the child how to tell when the pencil needs sharpening and how to sharpen the pencil with short "bursts" and inspections so that it is not over-sharpened.
You will need a high-lighter to highlight letters. A yellow or orange one would be good.
Finally, you will need a loose-leaf notebook. On the cover paste on a label with the child's name and "Word Book." You will put a copy of the Basic Keywords in it along with the writing models which you print out. Later you have pages for problem words, etc.
Here are suggested general guidelines to follow in this phonics/writing/spelling activity:
Should we teach the letter-to-sound approach ("This letter says /b/.") or the sound-to-letter approach, which is a spelling approach, ("We write the /b/ sound in "bat" this way."). For a good discussion of this issue go to The Phoneme-to-Letter Route for Phonics Instruction by Patrick Groff, who is an outstanding authority of early reading instruction. He cites three assumptions supporting the spelling approach. He says, "A second defense of the phoneme-to-letter route to children's phonics knowledge attainment rests on the deduction that it is more time-effective. In this respect, it is said that as students learn to spell words, during the same time they will gain the phonics knowledge required for sounding-out letters in words. As proof for this contention is cited the fact that students always can read words they are able to spell." I agree with this assumption that is is more efficient and add that writing and reading are mutually reinforcing.
To see the views of Dr. Louisa C. Moats, an eminent reading instruction authority and author of Speech to Print (2000), on phonics, go to Teaching Decoding. Notice on page 3 she says, "One of the most fundamental flaws found in almost all phonics programs, including traditional ones, is that they teach the code backwards. That is, they go from letter to sound instead of from sound to letter." Dr. Moats also says on page 6, "Teach pattern recognition, not rule memorization."
Pat Wolfe and Pamela Nevills in their book entitled Building the Reading Brain, Prek-3, (2004), advocate the sound-to-letter phonics as a brain-compatible approach and cite with approval Dr. Louisa C. Moats' views on the subject.
Professor Diane McGuinness, author of Early Reading Instruction (2004), which discusses a ton of research, and Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It (1997), also advocates teaching phonics explicitly and systematically and also advocates the "sound-to-print orientation" rather than teaching "what the letters say." She also touches on this and other issues in A Prototype for Teaching the English Alphabet Code.
Another respected reading instruction authority, Dr. Marilyn Jager Adams, in Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print makes a strong case for using the onset and rime approach and for making spelling a major part of the reading and language program.
Professor Thomas G. Gunning also endorses teaching onsets and rimes in his "word-building approach" described in Creating Literacy Instruction for All Children, a college textbook on reading instruction.
"Part 2, Activity 1: Phonics, Writing, and Spelling" in my program can be included in the "spelling approach" genre of teaching reading/spelling. The mother of all spelling approach books is Noah Webster's (yes, THAT Noah Webster) "Blue-backed Speller," (first published in 1783 and in its final edition was called the The Elementary Spelling Book). If you think my drills are burdensome, it's spelling drills are daunting, yet more copies were sold than of any other book except the Bible (over 100 million copies). It is still being used by some home schoolers. To see the 1908 edition of the book on-line, courtesy of Donald Potter, go to The Elementary Spelling Book Being an Improvement on the American Spelling Book. (I hope you have broadband!)
Although the reading instruction method of the day was the "alphabet method," I would say that Webster used the syllable method. The order of lessons goes from syllables to one-syllable words to multi-syllable words of various patterns. Lesson 152 ends with "saponaceous' and "whortleberry."
The best known method in the spelling approach genre today is the landmark Orton-Spalding method, which is the basis for The Writing Road to Reading by Romalda Bishop Spalding and Walter T. Spalding and first published in 1957. The recently published 5th Revised Edition edited by Mary E. North has undergone organizational changes, but the essential method remains the same. This is a book and method that parents tend to either love or hate. Teaching Reading at Home & School by Wanda Kennedy Sanseri is an effort to make the writing road to reading "easier to travel" for the home schooler.
Spalding starts by having the student learn the shapes and sounds of the 26 individual letters by seeing them on flash cards and by writing them. Two or three of the sounds associated with each vowel letter are taught at the same time. For example, three sounds for the letter "a" are taught simultaneously. This is called vertical phonics as opposed to horizontal phonics that teaches one sound for a letter at a time. (She must have been from the Northeast because she doesn't include the /aw/ sound that we westerners use in "ball" /bawl/.)
Spalding orders the spelling words mainly by their frequency. Since they are not grouped by spelling pattern, the variant pronunciations and spellings are explained by 29 spelling rules and are marked by numbers to show variant pronunciations.
Another book often used by home schoolers is Phonics Pathways by Dolores G. Hiskes (2000). She starts by having learners hear, say, see, trace, and write short vowel sounds. She begins by teaching CV patterns by seeing and saying, for example, /a/, /s/-/a/, /sa/. The problem is that when we look at the "sa" pattern, we have no clue as to the pronunciation of the "a." (Look at sag, sage, and salt.) However, in the VC rime, "an," for example, we can be confident of the pronunciation. (Look at "can," "Dan," "Jan," "man," etc.)
Another popular book among home schoolers is Alpha-Phonics by Samuel L. Blumenfeld (1986). He uses an onset and rime approach and has the learner begin by seeing and saying /a/, /m/, /am/ and writing am, an, as, at, ax.
"Jolly Phonics" in a popular phonics program from England. To see the Handbook go to The Phonics Handbook (Jolly Phonics) (Spiral-bound). It teaches young children to recognize, say, represent with an action, and write the 42 main speech sounds of English (at the rate of one per day) in the context of a story. The Jolly Phonics Workbooks do the same thing in more detail. The Handbook also teaches 60 irregularly spelled words. For a brief description of the method go to Jolly Phonics. The Handbook, which has one set of workbook sheets, is suitable for the use of parents.
Another reading instruction program used by schools and parents that goes from sounds to letters is Reading Reflex by Carmen and Goffrey McGuiness.
This activity consists of two parts. One part is independent writing. Provide the learner him with a notebook and encourage him to write on his own about whatever he likes. He may add drawings or cut and paste pictures to illustrate his writing. Invite him to read them to you, but I suggest that you do not read them unless invited to do so and do not correct what he has written. You want him to write for self-satisfaction without any inhibitions penmanship, spelling, or grammar.
The second part of the activity is tutor-directed to provide both reading and writing instruction using the learner's own words. You begin by having the learner dictate something, and you transcribe it in a notebook and help him learn to read it. Using student dictated material for reading is part of what educators call the Language Experience Approach. This is a powerful holistic approach that complements the sub-skills approach in Activity 1.
Do not start this activity until after you have completed all of Spelling Script 1 in Writing Activity 1. He may dictate anything he wants to, but if he doesn't have something special to write, you may have him dictate a passage for a diary that he keeps up. You may need to ask leading questions to get him started. Another possibility is to have him dictate his reaction to a story he has just read and enjoyed. Have him dictate only as much as he will have time to learn to read.
If he dictates something that doesn't make sense, suggest a change. You may need to do some judicious editing to simplify the sentences and improve the grammar, but try to retain his style and most of his words. If, for example, a learner dictates "He don't---," you may write and say, without giving a grammar lesson, "He doesn't---." Some authorities say we must not change a word, but this is another case where we may need to strike a sensible balance.
Have the learner reread his entries in subsequent sessions until he can read them satisfactorily. Then put a check mark by the entry. The important thing early on is for him to learn to recognize common small words.
In this stage he dictates his story, you transcribe it in your notebook, and then you dictate it to him. He transcribes it in his personal notebook diary. Have him dictate only as much as time permits for the completion of the process. For a real beginner one sentence may be adequate. In this activity he has a chance to practice handwriting and to learn to spell the words he actually uses.
In the intermediate stage he learns to take responsibility for spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.
In the final stage the rereading is dropped, and he writes his story on his own. There is more focus on grammar and composition especially after he has started studying these subjects.
When you read a student's writing, respond first to what he has said and then deal gently with errors. We don't want to create a fear of making spelling or grammatical errors that may inhibit the desire to write.
At some point after the learner is able to hand write things fairly fluently, you might consider having him learn to keyboard and to use a word processor if a computer is available. For a program that teaches the keyboard and phonics, take a look at a review of Read, Write, and Type by The Learning company.
After he has learned the keyboard and is ready to do some writing, take a look at this review of the Amazing Writing Machine for children by Broderbund, which has a special template for journals and a read back feature. (Check e-bay for a used copy.)
Writing Activity 2 eventually requires the learner to have a grasp of the basics of grammar and composition, which are covered in this activity. At the appropriate stage you may teach this material systematically, and/or you may use the material to do "spot" teaching when a problem arises in the learner's writing. Some of this material is quite advanced, so you should only teach that which is appropriate. A school may start teaching a little grammar in the third grade.
For the introduction to grammar and composition and for the instructional scripts go to the following Web page:
It is difficult to find word games that are worth the time that it takes to play them. However, we should try to use word games to lighten up the instruction. You may find word games in children's magazines, in books, in software, and on the Web. A good source of games is Games for Writing by Peggy Kaye, which is available from online booksellers.
Try searching the Web for "spelling games," "word games," "phonics games," etc. One game that I enjoyed as a child was "Hangman."
There is plenty of interactive phonics software available that purports to teach phonics in an entertaining way, but I wonder how much of it is worth the money. The software needs not only to be appealing, but it should use an approach that is sound and consistent with your direct instruction. If you teach onsets and rimes, the software should do likewise.
The goal of public education should be to produce independent learners. The Internet has provided a great resource for independent investigation, but the learner must learn to evaluate what he reads and be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.
After the learner is able to write independently and has learned the basics of grammar and composition, a great activity is for him to investigate a topic that interests him and write a paper on it. This involves reading from several sources and making notes, thinking about the purpose and scope of the paper, organizing the material, writing a rough draft including quotes, tweaking it, writing the final paper including a bibliography. This is the basically same as writing a term paper except that the learner chooses what he wants to write about and the depth and style of his exploration.
If the learner has access to an internet service provider through his parent's account, he should think about "publishing" the paper on the Internet when he produces something worth sharing.