Daddy, Where Did the Words Go: Article Reflection
Article Reflection: Daddy, Where Did the Words Go?
Megan Williams
RE 3030-350
Reflection 1
September 1, 2009
Daddy, Where Did the Words Go?
I really enjoyed the article. It was very informative and will help me become a better teacher. Finger-pointing is a concept that many children struggle with when they do not fully understand the meaning of a word. In the article, a boy named Jack knew by heart, a book that he and his dad had read many times before bed. When Jack tried to read the book and finger-point at the same time, he ran out of text on the page before he was done reading. He did not have an understanding of words and words in text. For example, the word ‘baker’ he separated into two separate words. I think the biggest thing I got from this article was that you cannot expect children to read words correctly without giving them some prior background knowledge about words in text. Morris developed a four-stage model of early literacy, which I found to be quite helpful. His first stage states that students use letter-sound knowledge to attend to the first letter or sound of a word. Once students can recognize the first letter and the sound it makes, they will have a better knowledge of reading. At this stage readers are able to begin matching spoken words to printed words while finger-point reading familiar text. In the second stage is the concept of word in text. Readers begin to match the first letter and the last letter of a word. In the third stage is phoneme segmentation ability. Now that the reader has recognized the first and last letters, they begin to look at the internal parts of the words, especially the vowels. The final stage is word recognition. Readers can fully dissect a word and read the word by recognition.
I believe that all four of these stages are very important for the reader. You cannot simply tell the students what the word is. I think it is good for them to figure out the word themselves. In the article a statement read, “It is not in the telling, but it is in the very act of reading that Jack will actually learn how to read.” This is very true. It is not in the students favor to tell them what the word is. If they can identify the first letter in the word and sound it out, they will be able to recognize this word, and other words that start with the same letter. I think this is true for anyone though. The best way to learn how to do something is to actually do it. For teachers, it is during our student teaching. We student teach because actually doing it will help us learn. Just sitting in a classroom having someone tell us how to teach is not going to be the biggest thing we benefit from. We have to actually be out there in the schools doing it. I think that it true for any profession. I believe that the student must develop a concept of word in text before they can truly recognize words. A study done by Morris found that, “children may profit most from instruction in a sight word vocabulary after they have attained a solid concept of word in text” (Flannigan 10). Many teachers have found this very helpful when teaching children sight words.
I really enjoyed this article and found it very helpful. I will definitely use this in my classroom when teaching children how to read and recognize words. I hope that they benefit from it as much as I did.
3 Comments »
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Heather Yarber Said:
on September 12, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Ok…after extended reading of pink on gray my eyes are going to fall out of their sockets. I totally agree with your statement that, “The best way to learn how to do something is to actually do it”. If I want to learn to do something new I have to do it myself, or I will never learn to do it.
Melissa Heller Said:
on September 15, 2009 at 1:20 am
Megan –
Heather took the words right out of my mouth! That was the best part of your reflection. You have to do to learn
Nicely done.
nortongene Said:
on September 24, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Who would think that this whole reading thing is this complex.