Clippings: 1.21.10

New research is shedding light on Broca's area, a center of reading activity in the brain.

Braille is being replaced by technology that many consider far superior.

Grow Up With Books offers Netflix-style children's book rentals.

Researchers in the UK argue that "textisms" such as LOL might bolster phonemic awareness, and thus general reading ability.

Numerous studies are decrying the death of recess in American primary schools.

Babelhut discusses the literacy benefits of learning to cook.

And Free.edu lists their 100 Best Education Blogs of 2009.

(Illustration by Flickr user Labguest. Thanks!)

Game: Erase The Face - CrossWord Edition

All Ages

10-20 Minutes

Best in Small Groups

A month ago I told you about "Erase The Face," a variation of Hangman that my students love. It's a great game, but I found that my more-advanced students guessed the words too quickly, negating much of the benefit for them and for the younger students.

So, I invented a new version. I got the idea while doing last Tuesday's NYT crossword and I am calling it "Erase The Face - CrossWord Edition" until I think of a better name.

Materials

All you need is a writing utensil and a surface. Since I'm working with small groups of students, I use my whiteboard. This could easily be done with paper and pencil, of course.

Directions

First, you need to make your grid. I have found that grids containing six or seven words can be constructed

in five minutes or so. I try to use high-frequency words, or "sight words." I use a list in the back of "Word Matters" by Pinnell and Fountas, but you can find all kinds of lists online. Pick a long word to start, and then build off of that.

On the board, draw your grid, a box for wrong answers, a "Word Bank," the alphabet, and any kind of face you like. I started writing the alphabet on the board because it greatly reduced the amount of time it took my

students to guess a letter.

One by one, students guess letters. If they guess a letter that is in your grid, fill in the boxes. If not, write the letter in the Wrong Answers box and erase part of the face. If you want to really get them going, make them erase their own facial features at the same time. For example, erase the nose and say, "Everybody erase your nose!" Guaranteed giggles all around.

When a student completes a word, make sure everyone can see it and then write it into the Word Bank. I do this to make sure everyone gets a good impression of the word. Also, some students might have trouble seeing through all of the boxes or reading vertically, so this will help them get something out of it.

The game ends when the grid is filled in or when the face is erased, whichever comes first. I have played this game a hundred times and I have never let the students lose. What would be the point of that?

Benefits

I think this game has a lot going for it. It is a great way to reinforce vocabulary. I use it in conjunction with my "Word Wall," which has the 100 most frequently-used words Velcroed to it. My students have spent hours studying this board as a result. You could do this for new vocabulary from a textbook or a story just as easily.

Furthermore, I think that this game teaches some

essential word-solving skills. The students really want to know what that word is, and as they try to figure it out they are compelled to imagine what sounds and letter would fit with the ones already guessed. It's kind of like sounding out words in reverse.

The CrossWord Edition of this game is an attempt at differentiation. I can incorporate words of varying difficulties, and I have found that I can get students of many different reading levels (including adults) engaged simultaneously.

I would welcome suggested variations. Also, if you can think of a catchier name, feel free to suggest it in the comments.

Update 1/19/10: After trying it a few more times, I've decided to use 4-5 words in a puzzle instead for 6-8. If you have older students or especially engaged ones, you can use more, but I've found that I lose them towards the end.

Phoneme Breakdown - Woodchuck Twister

Here's a breakdown of the phonemes present in a popular tongue twister. I am not a linguist, speech language pathologist, or anything else with an 'ist' on the end, so this should be considered a rather crude analysis. Still, I thought it might help me be more intentional about what sounds I'm strengthening in my classroom.

I am still learning about the phonetic alphabet. For this post, I am using this English phoneme chart. I am open to information and advice about how I might refine my knowledge. In this post, I will use my best approximation of the symbol on the chart and also provide a word that exemplifies the sound I'm referring to. /e/ means 'e as in pet', for example. The number behind the phoneme show us how many times it appeared in the passage.

OK, we'll start with a classic:

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Breakdown

/h/ 'hat': 1

/au/ 'cow': 1

/m/ 'man': 1

/^/ 'luck' : 5

/tf/ 'chop': 5

/w/ 'wet': 4

/u/ 'good': 6

/d/ 'door': 6

/k/ 'cat': 6

/ago/ 'ago': 2

/I/ 'pit': 1

/f/ 'fan': 1

So there you have it! I don't expect this be a revelation to you, but I think that if we had many rhymes and tongue twisters broken down in this way, we would know where to turn when we encounter students struggling with certain sounds.

Game: Erase The Face (AKA 'Hangman')

All Ages

10-20 minutes

Best for individual students or small groups.

Hangman has been a go-to activity in any class I've led. I used it with middle schoolers and middle-aged housewives in Japan, it was invaluable in my one-on-one tutoring sessions with struggling sixth graders, and my current groups of seven and eight year olds can't get enough of it.

Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who isn't at least a little fond of Hangman. Heck, the US's longest-running game show is basically Hangman with a wheel.

I only have one problem: I think there might be something slightly wrong about drawing an execution scene step-by-step in front of groups of children. Read this guide to setting up the game from Wikipedia and tell me it doesn't creep you out a bit:

The exact nature of the diagram differs; some players draw the gallows before play and draw parts of the man's body (traditionally the head, then the torso, then the left arm, then the right arm, then the left leg, then the right leg). Some players begin with no diagram at all, and drawing the individual elements of the gallows as part of the game, effectively giving the guessing players more chances. The amount of detail on the man can also vary, affecting the number of chances. Many players include a face on the head, either all at once or one feature at a time.

In my classroom, I've replaced the body and gallows with an obnoxious smiley face. My kids literally beg me to play this game. I can put it on the agenda every and guarantee myself at least twenty minutes, of

happy, focused students. Here's how we play. (January '10 Update: Click Here for Erase the Face CrossWord Edition)

Materials

All you need is a writing utensil and surface. Since I'm working with small groups of students, I use my whiteboard. This could easily be done with paper and pencil, of course.

Directions

Draw a face on the board. Clumsy artists are welcome. Include as many facial features as you like; the more you include, the more guesses your students have.

I like to write the entire alphabet on the board. This way, the students have an easy letter bank to choose

from. I found that some students took forever to search their brains for a letter. This speeds up the process.

Technically, when the face is gone before the word has been solved, the game is over. But I never beat my students at this game; I will draw it out while they guess more letters. It's fun to watch them figure it out, and it gives them more practice.

When I erase part of the face, I ask my younger students to pretend like they are erasing theirs as well. Much giggling ensues.

Benefits

I think this game has a lot going for it. It is a great way to reinforce vocabulary. I use it in conjunction with my "Word Wall," which has the 100 most frequently-used words Velcroed to it. My students have spent hours studying this board as a result. You could do this for new vocabulary from a textbook or a story just as easily.

Furthermore, I think that this game teaches some essential word-solving skills. The students really want to know what that word is, and as they try to figure it out they are compelled to imagine what sounds and letter would fit with the ones already guessed. It's kind of like sounding out words in reverse.

As the year has gone on, students have become increasingly capable of running this game by themselves. They take turns picking a word, drawing a face, and eliciting guesses from their classmates. I can pull students out for one-on-one time or just sit back and enjoy the show.

Readings: 20 Sounds, 5 Letters

From the fascinating (really)History of English by Jonathan Culpeper, an explanation of why English speakers have a particularly difficult phonemic system to wrestle with:

Why has the spelling system become less phonemic? Why is it now so complicated? History, as we shall see, can provide an explanation. Initially, English was written in a germanic alphabet - the Runic alphabet. Only a few Runic English texts survive, such as the inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross, thought to date back to AD 700. Christian missionaries, arriving in Britain in 597 and spreading literacy, used forms of the 23-letter Roman alphabet: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z. And this is the first problem for English spelling: it adopted the Roman alphabet, in other words, the alphabet of another language -- Latin. Today, we have over 40 phonemes in English, but only 26 letters by which to represent those phonemes. In particular, note that we have about 20 vowel sounds in English, but only 5 vowel letters...

I have addressed the importance of conquering this phonemic dragon quite a few times, including games and activities to strengthen phonemic awareness.

Game: Construct - A - Word

All Ages

5-15 minutes

Best for individual students or small groups.

Construct-a-Word is meant to bolster phonemic awareness by way of Analogy Phonics, which the National Reading Panel defines as "teaching students unfamiliar words by analogy to known words." It also strengthens PA by giving students repeated opportunities to manipulate onset and rime.

Materials

Post-It Notes, marker or pen, notebook

I stole this idea from the online game that I featured here last spring. I was working with a 5th Grader who needed some help with her basics, but we did not have Internet access, so I converted the game to Post-its. It turned out quite well; the Post-its are colorful, inexpensive, portable, and good for use on almost any surface, be it a table top or a whiteboard. If you do not have Post-its at hand, you could substitute index cards.

Directions

On individual Post-its, write each letter of the alphabet and the phonemes "ch," "bl,""sl,""dr,""cl,"and "sh." Using a different color of Post-it, if possible, write the endings "ig,""ot,""ed,""et,""in,""un,""op,""an," and "at." You can add or substitute any other endings you like. When finished, the complete set should look something like this:

Your student should be intrigued about the colorful array of letters in front of her. Invite her to select an ending from on the yellow Post-its. Tell her that her challenge is to use the other Post-its to make as many real words as she can. When she finds one, invite her to set the onset letter aside and write the word in a notebook.

When there are real words left on the board that the student does not see, I suggest providing clues and, eventually, pointing out the new word and encouraging the student to practice and writing it down.

Benefits

This game bolsters phonemic awareness by compelling a student to practice joining sounds together to make new words. It will also introduce or solidify the concept that words have a beginning and an end, which is a bedrock concept in PA.

This is also a good game for basic vocabulary.

There will inevitably be errors made and a few words that the student does not know. Both the errors and the new words have as much or more value than the correct answers. Even erroneous answers compel our student to practice joining an onset and a rime, strengthening phonemic awareness.

Game: Alphabet Words

10-15 minutes

I found "Alphabet Words" in Peggy Kaye's fantastic Games For Reading: Playful Ways to Help Your Child Read. It is incredibly simple to implement and I have been pleasantly surprised by how much my students enjoy it.

Directions
Simply write each letter of the alphabet on the board and tell your student(s) that the goal of this game is to think of a word for every letter. When you have them all, invite the students to repeat the words after you to review. That's it. The final product will look something like this:


This was the result of our Dictionary Alphabet Words game. As you can see, students come up with some strange words. Since this was a group of first and second graders, we were not striving for comprehension of words such as "helenistic." Simply compelling the students to look through the dictionary and spell new words is enough for me.

This game can be done in small groups or with an individual student. With a group, I assign each student a letter, which maintains a bit of order and gives them time to think. With five students, for example, the first will have A and the last will have E. Once we've filled in those blanks, I assign F through J.

Variations
It is easy to think of variations for this game. The first time I used it, we just thought of any old word for each letter. A week later, I included it in my "Introduction to Dictionaries" lesson. With a dictionary in hand, students had to find an interesting word for each letter. I was delighted by the way this game motivated them to dig into their dictionaries and by how excited they were by the strange words they found.

Kaye recommends the use of categories for this game. For example, you might set out to find an animal name or a food that begins with each letter. This might also be useful as a review for a particular subject or book for older kids. For example, challenging your students to think of alphabet words related to Charlotte's Web or American History might help them review the material and provide cues for recall later on.

Benefits
This is a great way to build vocabulary. It also can help with phonemic awareness and strengthen skill with specific letter sounds. As I mentioned, it could also be a way to review material and build comprehension. Additionally, as mentioned, I have used it to introduce students to their dictionaries.

Readings: The Importance of Phonemic Awareness

The concept of phonemic awareness has been discussed a few times on Literacy Log. The U of Oregon's Big Ideas in Beginning Reading page has a great rundown of what phonemic awareness is. Basically, phonemic awareness is the knowledge that words are made up of sounds and the ability to hear and manipulate those sounds.

This may seem pretty basic, but if students get off on the wrong foot with phonemic awareness, it can seriously hinder their journey toward literacy. In Word Matters: Teaching Phonics and Spelling in the Reading/Writing Classroom, Pinnell & Fountas make a great argument for the importance of phonemic awareness:

Why is knowing about the sounds in words so important for literacy learning? In English and in many other languages, there is a close relationship between the sounds we speak and the way in which they are represented in written symbols. The relationship is not a perfect one; but in an alphabetic written system, it is critical for the users of language to recognize this relationship and use it to write and read. Children who realize that words are made up of sequences of sounds, called phonemes by linguists, can more easily relate these sounds to the sequences of letters and to letter groups. As children learn to read and write, understanding the sound-letter relationship is key, and this understanding begins in oral language experiences.

I am in the process of designing an after-school literacy program for young readers, so phonemic awareness is going to come up again and again. Having established its importance, I hope to find a ton of good lessons, activities, and games to bolster phonemic awareness. I'll keep you posted, and I welcome your contributions!

Tongue Twisters As Phonemic Awareness Tools

Kids love tongue twisters. They are catchy and giggle-inducing. Most importantly, they present a challenge. As a result, tongue twisters can be an easy way to help children learn various literacy skills.

Here, we'll talk about phonemic awareness. Any activity that encourages students to isolate or repeat small sound units can help with phonemic awareness. Tongue twisters, especially alliterative ones, can be an easy way to accomplish this.

For example, here's one I hadn't heard before from The Tongue Twister Database. Imagine using this to reinforce a student's concept of the "b" sound:

Betty Botter had some butter,
"But," she said. "this butter's bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter,
it would make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter--
that would make my batter better."

So she bought a bit of butter,
better than her bitter butter,
and she baked it in her batter,
and the batter was not bitter.
So 'twas better Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter.

Tongue Twister Collections:

• The Tongue Twister Database
• Here's one from Hello Circle with audio recordings.
• Spanish Tongue Twisters!

Here's a set of lesson plans from a group of elementary school teachers in West Virginia. Tongue twisters are only a small part of this unit; there's a lot to like here.

And I can't resist; here's Steve Martin showing off for Bernadette Peters.

Strategy and Web Resource: Construct A Word

Read Write Think offers a free, online game called Construct A Word. It is intended to bolster phonemic awareness by giving students practice with onset and rime. I found myself playing this game for about 15 minutes after I discovered it. Try it out!

This game could be adapted for environments where Internet access is not available. A teacher would simply need to write the onsets and rimes on 3x5 cards and ask students to match them up and say the words they have created.

Web Resource: Big Ideas in Beginning Reading

Associated with the University of Oregon, Big Ideas in Beginning Reading is a great site for those who would teach young readers.

These are the Big Ideas:

• Phonemic Awareness
• Alphabetic Principle
• Fluency With Text
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension

For each of these, the site provides definitions, teaching strategies, and videos of the strategies being used with young children.