Lecture Notes on Developmental Reading

Reading Readiness

– is a complex of many abilities, skills, understandings, and interests.

It refers to the period when the child is getting ready to read..

It starts at home, becomes more organized in the guidance of teachers in school, in nursery or kindergarten.

A child engages on varied activities using real and concrete objects such as toys, tools, etc.

A child acquires skills in auditory, visual, motor-ocular coordination and critical thinking.

Theories of Reading Rediness by Charles Fries

Stage 1. The Transfer Stage – the period during which the child learns a new set of signals – the visual symbols (letters,
spelling, patterns, punctuation marks) that stands for auditory symbols (the oral language) he knows.

Stage 2. The Productive Stage – the child’s reading becomes fluent and automatic that he no longer pays conscious
attention to shapes and patterns of the letters on a page.

Stage 3. The Vivid Imaginative Realization of Vicarious Experience (VIRVE) – the reading process becomes automatic.
Reading is now used for different purposes and as a tool for learning a broad range of information.

The Reading Readiness and Emergent Literacy by Cox

Reading Readiness

1. Reading instruction should begin only when children have mastered a set of prerequisite skills
2. Children should learn to read before they write.
3. Reading is a subject to be taught, involving a sequenced mastery of skills.
4. It is not important what children know about the language before formal teaching and practice of a sequence of skills
begin.
5. Children should move through a scope of sequence of readiness skills, and their progress should be measured with
regular formal testing.
 Emergent Literacy

1. Reading and writing are language processes and thus learned like spoken language through active engagement and the
construction of meaning
2. Young children have been actively engaged in functional reading and writing experiences in real-life settings before
coming to school.
3. The literacy experiences of young children vary across families, social classes, racial/ethnic groups, and age groups.
4. Young children actively construct concepts about reading and writng.
5. Reading and writing are interrelated and develop concurrently.

Filipino children whose first language (Filipino or any of the Philippine dialects) is different from their language of instruction
(English) do not have chance to engage themselves in the functional use of the language in real-life settings. Thus, the
principles of reading readiness as had been practiced in the traditional way would still apply to the Filipino child who is just
learning to read. Other children coming from more affluent homes which will have a socio-cultural environment similar to that
of their American or English counterparts will best learn how to read based on the emergent literacy perspectives.

Indicators of Readiness

Gray has listed indicators to gauge the child’s readiness to read:

1. general ability
2. background of previous experiences
3. range of speaking vocabulary
4. accuracy of pronunciation and related speech habits
5. ability to express oneself clearly to others
6. Habit of observing details and forming associations with things seen or heard
7. Ability to perceive likeness and differences
8. Ablility to recognize relationships
9. Ability to keep in mind a series of events or other items
10. Ability to think clearly and in sequence
11. Ability to make choices and decisions
12. Good health
13. A well nourished body
14. Freedom from fatigue
15. visual effeciency and discrimination
16. Auditory effeciency and discrimination
17. Emotional balance
18. Social adjustment and feeling of security
19. Ability to focus on specific learning activities
20. Ability to work effectively in a group
21. Interest in pictures and the meaning of written printed symbols
22. A desire to learn to read.
Skills of Emergent Reader

Right-Handed – the dominant part of brain is the left hemisphere

Left-Handed – the dominant part of the brain is the right hemisphere

Left-to-Right Progression – reading starts from the left of the page going to right

Visual Discrimination – is the ability to differentitate differences in size, shape, color, etc.

Auditory Discrimination – is the ability to differentitate differences in the animal sounds, sounds of different musical
instruments, sounds of different means of transportation, sounds of that people produce, other sounds may hear in
surroundings.

Sounds and Letter Names – The sounds of letters of the alphabet are introduced first. The children should master the
phoneme-graphemes (sound-letter) relationships.

Vowels: a,e,i,o,u

Consonants:

a. Ascending letters: b,d,h,k,l,t

b. Descending letters: g,j,p,q,y

c. One-space letters: c,m,n,r,s,v,w,x,x

d. Special letter: l

Comprehension Skills of the Emergent Reader

Emergent learners may start with skills in classifying pictures that are similar, shapes that are similar or different, colors that
are the same and those that are different.The skill in sequencing pictures may be taught, which picture should come first,
then the next, which should come last? Another skill is grouping pictures under one main heading.

Other Comprehension Skills to be Taught to Emergent Readers

1. Noting Details
2. Sequencing Ideas
3. Organizing Ideas
4. Classifying Ideas
5. Summarizing
6. Critical Thinking Skills
7. HOTS “ If you were the ____ what will you do?”
Teaching Beginning Reading

Teaching the Alphabet

The alphabet is best taught only after all the sounds have been mastered.

Learners are drilled on what comes before a letter and what comes after.

Using letter cards, the learner is asked to arrange the letters in alphabetical order, identifying the sound of each letter name.

The capital letters (uppercase letters) the small letters (lowercase letters) should also be introduced.

Matching uppercase letters and lowercase letters will be a good learning activity.

Teaching Word Recognition

Word Recognition refers to the ability to identify, read, analyze the meaning attached to the word.

Word Families

at family – bat, cat, fat hat, mat, pat, rat, sat

an family – ban, can, Dan, fan, man, pan, ran, tan, van

ad family – bad, Dad, fad, had, lad, mad, pad, sad, wad

ar family – bar, car, far, mar, par, war

ed family – bed, fed, led, red, Ted, wed

en family – Ben, den, hen, men ten, yen

in family – bin, pin, sin, tin, win

it family – bit, fit, hit, kit, pit, sit, wit

ill family – bill, fill, hill, kill, mill, sill, till, will

ell family – bell, dell, fell, hell, sell, tell, well, yell

air family – bear, dear, fear, hear, gear, near, rear, tear, wear, year

et family – bet, get, jet, let, metm net, pet, set, wet, yet

oat family – boat, coat, goat

 ore family – bore, core, fore, more, sore, tore, wore

one family – bone, cone, done, gone, lone, tone

ate family – date, fate, gate, hate, kate, late, mate, rate

at family – bat, cat, fat, hat, rat, sat, pat, mat

an family – can, Dan, man, pan

en family – hen, Ben, men, pen

in family – pin, tin, win, fin

Teaching the Service Words

Service words or sight words are to enable the learner to read phrases and sentences.

1. Articles : a, an, the

2. pronouns : he, she, it, I, my mine, our, ours, they, them
3. prepositions: on, in, for, to under, over, by, with
4. conjunctions: and, but
5. verbs: has, have, do, does, done

Five Main Categories of Word Analysis or Attack Skills

Configuration Clues – give the overall characteristics of how the word look like (e.g. Length of word ascenders and
descenders)

Context Clues – come from the meaning of the word as it is used in a sentence (semantic clue) or from guessing what
word is coming next according to the way a reader often uses oral language (syntactic clue)

ex. The barking (goat, dog, pig) chased the cat.

How much capital do you need?

( ) Money invested for business

( ) Most important town or city of a province

( )higher case or big letters

Phonetic Analysis – also called phonics, is the study of sound-symbol or phoneme-grapheme relationships.

a. Phonetic principles that govern articulation of consonants in English

ex. c – (hard c, heard as /k/)

– (soft c, heard as /s/)

b. Phonetic principles that govern the articulation of vowel sounds.

ex. a – able (long), apple (short)

e – evil (long), elephant (short)

c. Syllable generalizations – a division takes place between consonants

d. Stress rules – if a root has two syllables, the first is usually stressed

mother MOTH er

summer SUM mer

e. Blends or digraphs and vowel digraphs

1. When two or more consonants appear in succession in a word, they are referred to as consonant clusters. Ex. paragrph

2. When the consonant cluster is sounded as one, it is called consonant digraph. Ex. Think

Structural Analysis – refers to the anaylsis of larger meaning-bearing parts of words like root words, suffixes, prefixes,
word endings, appostrophe (possessive form), compund words, and contractions. It often referred to morphology, a study of
morphemes or the meaning-bearing units if a language.

Source:Teaching Reading in the Elementary Grades. Tejero, Erlinda G. & Catchillar, Gerry C.

PREPARED BY:

GLEN P. CORTEZANO, LPT

Instructor