“Daddy Where Did the Words Go?”

Study Guide: Daddy, Where Did the Words Go?  (Flanigan, 2005)

Name: Stacy Oxford

Please answer the following questions BEFORE you read the article.

1.  Is it a good idea to have young, beginning readers use their fingers to point to words as they read (finger-point reading)? Why or why not.  I believe it is important for children to use their fingers to point to words because it helps them make a connection with what they see as they are reading. 

According to the article having beginning readers use their fingers to point to words is not such a good idea after all.  What the reader speaks and what he/she points to may not always match up, which throws the reader off and negatively affects their ability to read accurately and effectively.

2.  Do most kindergarten students know what a word is (have a “concept of word”)?  I don’t feel that most kindergarten students understand the concept of what words are.

After reading the article I found my assumption was true.  Young children do not know what a word is or have any understanding of the concept of word.  There are no spaces found between spoken words, however we do find spaces between written words.  We are also programmed to acquire language without having t consciously think about it.  We tend to focus on the entire message instead of the separate words that are being spoken.

3.  Do most kindergarten students know what a phoneme is (an individual sound unit, often represented by a letter in writing)?  I think they have a basic understanding of what a phoneme is.

According to the article children do not have knowledge of what a phoneme is.  Children confused syllable and phonemes with spoken words and children under the age of 6 often confused words with non verbal sounds, phrases, and sentences.  Young children view words as tools they can use to communicate, without a conscious awareness of their existence.

4.  How do children become aware of words and phonemes?  By listening to others say them and also by sounding out the letters and saying the words themselves.  I also feel it is important for children to practice using words in different contexts.

The article states that children learn through “hands on” experience.  They learn the sounds letters make and how to put them together to form words.  Another way of teaching children words is by having the teacher read a  word then have the child “echo” the word that the teacher said. 

 

Answer the following questions AS you read the article.

5.  What happened with Jack’s finger pointing?  What Jack was pointing to and what Jack was saying wasn’t matching up.  He ran out of printed words before he ran out of words to say.

6.  What differences are there between speaking and reading?  Usually there are no “spaces” between successive spoken words as there are in printed words.

7.  What is phoneme awareness (phonological awareness)?  The ability to consciously attend to and manipulate the sound structure of spoken language.

8.  Describe the 4-stage model of early literacy.  (1)Beginning consonant knowledge:  at this stage readers begin using letter-sound knowledge to attend to the first letter or sound of a word.  (2)Concept of word in text: at this stage the reader will begin to match spoken and printed words and the reader is also able to attend to the word boundaries.  (3)Phoneme segmentation ability:  this stage focuses on the internal parts of words, such as the medial vowel.  The reader is able to segment his/her stream of speech in to words, thus able to segment the word into its constituent phonemes.  (4)Word recognition:  at this stage the reader is able to fully segment a word into its constituent phonemes which provides the necessary foundation for an increase in sight word knowledge.  This allows complete processing of all letter sounds in words which allows the beginning reader to accurately store words in memory.

9.  Describe what this means: “It is not in the telling, but it is in the very act of reading that Jack will actually learn how to read.” p. 10. Jack cannot learn to read by simply being told how to read, he has to use his knowledge of letters and letter sounds to construct his own way of putting words together and reading in an accurate manner.

10.   What instruction helps develop beginning readers’ awareness of words and phonemes?  Model finger-Point Reading of Familiar Texts, the adult points to the word and sounds out the first letter to help the student identify the words in context.

11.   Go back and look at the questions you answered BEFORE you read and adjust your answers or elaborate on them. Briefly describe here how you have changed your thinking about the process of learning to read.

12.  What questions do you have from the article? List them here.  I would like to elaborate more on phonemes and how to better teach those concepts to beginning readers.