Fox writes that when the teacher is familiar with, “the stages and understand the knowledge and abilities that underpin the use of strategies in the different stages, you can make decisions that will help children move from one stage to the next” (Fox p. 20). As I read this I couldn’t help but remember when I sat with 4th graders from my main placement school to give them a test that dealt with writing words with certain vowel sounds.
Now these students are smart! As we went over the vowel sounds and I asked them to give me examples, I was surprised that they were not able to. I wouldn’t consider them at the “low” end of their reading or writing skills, but these students did come from homes where another language was spoken. It hit me then that for them to use phonics would be harder and that it was probably easier for them to “memorize” the spellings of words then to sound them out. I believe they have phonemic awareness (awareness of the sounds in words) but did they really know the phonics part?
Yes, phonics is one of the basic skills that supports oral reading and also helps children learn new words, develop a larger reading vocabulary, contributes to fluent reading and helps them to become independent readers but when you are teaching an ELL student you have your work cut out for you. Which leads me to ask do students not learn to read or write if they aren’t able to pronounce vowels properly?
When my youngest daughter was in second grade she was having trouble with some of the testing in phonics. She was a bright student and could read and write quite well, her problem was that she had developed an accent and couldn’t sound out her letters properly. The school referred her to a speech therapist because the teacher felt it was harming her performance in phonics testing. When her father and I came to the speech therapist for a meeting, they soon discovered that her accent was a New York one, one that she had picked up because her father talks with an extremely thick Bronx accent. We placed her in speech therapy for a few months, but then withdrew her from it because we didn’t feel her reading/writing was being affected due to her accent, only her phonics tests were.
I guess my point is that while I think teaching kids to read and write based on phonics is a great way to do it, I also think we have to keep in mind those students that have accents or come from ELL homes and don’t pronounce words the same as the school community does.
Knowing how to sound out vowels is difficult even for adults, when reading an unfamiliar word, so I can understand that learning how to read all the different vowel sounds will be challenging for beginning readers.
ReplyDeleteFrom my experience as an ELL student in 3rd grade, I enjoyed learning how to spell (spelling rules, tests, activities), because that helped me understand the meaning of the words, and made me feel a little less scared about writing. Practicing spelling and sounding each part of the word out, gave me more confidence in reading unknown words by myself, guessing and checking along the way.
What I was puzzled by is why your daughter wasn’t seen as a good reader—in terms of reading out loud—when she could read (comprehend) and write well. How could the teacher regard her accent as a weakness and hindrance in her ability to read? There are plenty of students that come from different countries, and/or from homes that speak another language that will have an accent. I think we, as teachers, need to be careful not to make quick judgments on students’ speaking/reading ability or inability due to the way they speak. I think that proper guidance and support can be given by taking time to get to know them, and by getting a correct assessment of their skills.