Skills: Teaching and Reinforcing Literacy Skills Carol Nichols, Metropolitan State College of Denver, nicholsc@mscd

1. Skills: Teaching and Reinforcing Literacy SkillsCarol Nichols, Metropolitan State College of Denver, nicholsc@mscd.edu Using whole pieces of text to provide the foundation for skill lessons and skill practice activities

2. Why use a whole piece of text as the foundation for skill lessons? • 1. The skill lesson activity should “look as much like the reading act as possible. “Skill instruction should be based on examples taken from meaningful texts: the stories children write and read.” • Harp, Bill. “Why Aren’t You Using the Phonics Workbooks?” The Reading Teacher. International Reading Association, 1/89, p. 326.

3. Students should be able “to see the connections between word attack instruction and creating meaning when they read.” Harp, Bill. “Why Aren’t You Using the Phonics Workbooks?” The Reading Teacher. International Reading Association, 1/89, p. 326.

4. Phonics instruction “should be an outgrowth of ongoing reading activities, not something done apart with separate materials.”Harp, Bill. “Why Aren’t You Using the Phonics Workbooks?” The Reading Teacher. International Reading Association, 1/89, p. 326.

5. Method #1:Using pieces of whole text to teach or practice skills-- • Stories or other text which have multiple samples of words that contain the phonic element that will be taught can be used. On the next slide is a sample of a poem titled “Little Charlie Chipmunk” written by Helen C. LeCron, book source unknown. This is an example of an excellent text to teach the letter-sound association of “ch.”

6. “Little Charlie Chipmunk” by Helen C. LeCron, book source unknown Little Charlie Chipmunk was a talker. Mercy me! He chattered after breakfast and he chattered after tea! He chattered to his father and he chattered to his mother! He chattered to his sister and he chattered to his brother! He chattered till his family was almost driven wild! Oh, little Charlie Chipmunk was a very tiresome child!

7. “While the process may be broken down to examine the individual pieces, before the instruction ends the process should be ‘put back together’ so that children see the the relationships between the parts and the whole.” Harp, Bill. “Why Aren’t You Using the Phonics Workbooks?” The Reading Teacher. International Reading Association, 1/89, p. 326.

8. I Love Cats by Catherine Matthias, Children’s Press, Chicago.

9. Generalization: If the word has a vowel, a consonant, and a final “e,” the first vowel may be long and the final “e” may be silent. Sample words from the I Love Cats text: nice like mice I Love Cats can be used for the vowel generalization VC final E,

10. Identifying books containing text useful for analytical skill instruction or skill practice Some teachers collect and categorize their children’s and adolescent trade books according to skills that could be taught from text in the book. On the next two slides is a sample of one teacher’s categorization system. The source of this work is unknown.

11. Some of the abbreviations used by the teacher to categorize books according to skills and type of content: Al=Alliteration, H=Hyperbole, I=ImageryC=Circle story, NP=Narrative poemA=Antonyms, H=Homonyms

12. Samples of part of the teacher’s categorization of children’s trade books are on the next slide:

14. Method #2: Teachers can write short passage using multiple samples of words that contain the phonic element to be taught or practiced. Samples are on the next several slides.

15. A sample of a teacher-written passage to practice punctuation and capitalization is on the next slide. The 4th grade students had read If You Say So, Claude by Joan Lowery Nixon. The teacher pulled out a selection from the story for this worksheet.

17. Teacher-written passage written to practice prefixes.