Reflection on Literacy Station 2: Onset-rime word making
Please note that all names used in the reflections for students, teachers and places alike are pseudonyms.
Reporting
Perfomed at Duckbourne Primary School on 29/05/2014, Literacy Station 2 was a 15 minute activity which involved having students build words from familiar segmented onset-rime components. The words used to generate 42 separate onset-rime cards were taken from the children’s current and past spelling lists; the Duckbourne M100 words. The students were given a brief explanation of the onset-rime concept followed by a demonstration on how to ‘make a word’. They were then presented with a mixed pile of blue ‘onset’ and orange ‘rime’ cards and were required to make as many real words as they could by combining the different onset and rime components. They were given table space to physically match the orange cards with the blue, and a sheet of paper to record their words.
Responding
Overall, the students performed the activity with ease and actually had fun experimenting with different onset-rime combinations. The children quickly became aware that almost all combinations of onset and rime components resulted in a plausible combination, and this caused weaker students to make many false words. The activity prompted stronger students to draw on their prior knowledge of phonograms, word families and blends and was thus a showcase of their well-developed vocabularies.
Images and work samples from the activity. Photo Credit: Author.
Relating
Underpinning the lesson was pedagogical phonological awareness theory. It is widely known that phonological awareness is an important aspect of literacy education and involves the understanding that speech can be broken down into smaller parts; words, syllables, onset-rime and phonemes (Fellowes and Oakley, 2014). Additionally, breaking words into their onset-rime components enables students to read by analogy when they come across a word which has the same rime or word family but different onset to a word they already know (Adams, 1990). Goswami (2008) and Trieman (1983) posit that dividing words into onsets and rimes is easier and more natural for students than dividing them into individual phonemes, which proved to be true in my experience of working with the Year 1 children during the literacy station. Well known phonics instruction text Words Their Way indicates that introducing students to word families and phonograms should precede the introduction of onset-rime teaching (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012) .
The lesson goals for Literacy Station 2 were based on skills listed in the language strand of the Australian English Curriculum. These skills include knowing that spoken sounds and words can be written down using letters of the alphabet and how to write some high-frequency sight words and known words; ACELA 1758, and know that regular one-syllable words are made up of letters and common letter clusters that correspond to the sounds hear, and how to use visual memory to write high frequency words; ACELA1778 (ACARA, 2015).
Reasoning
Upon reflection on the lesson and consulting the literature I realised that there are a number of things that I could have done to improve the outcome. Given that some students generated many false words, I should have focused on word families and phonograms instead of onset-rime, which would be best taught after the students gain a strong understanding of word families. If I had done this, I think that the weaker students would have also tried to generate other known words which are comprised of the same word families shown in some of the orange ‘rime’ cards. This lack of foundational knowledge resulted in an unsystematic and guessing approach to the construction of words with the onset-rime cards.
Additionally, the students were given too many onset-rime cards to work with and many cards were untouched. Each of the students seemed to use only a small set of the onset and the rime cards to make word combinations. My questions about this topic include how could I use ICT to help my students learn this topic in the future? How Could I demonstrate a systematic approach to blending different onset-rime components together? How can I encourage my students to check the validity of a word for a similar activity in the future? Perhaps I could do this with ICT, such as an online dictionary.
Reconstructing
In my future teaching of literacy, I will definitely ensure that the teaching of word families and phonograms precedes that of onset-rime. I can also confirm that the amount of cards shown to the children was excessive and in future I will focus on giving students a smaller range of learning materials -for all learning areas- to encourage the mastery of a smaller amount as opposed to misusing and being overwhelmed by a large amount.
References
ACARA. (2015, June 08). English. Retrieved from Australian Curriculum: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/englsih/curriculum/f-10?layout=1
Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2012). Words Their Way: word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction. Trenton : Pearson.
Fellowes, J., & Oakley, G. (2014). Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Goswami, U. (2008). Reading, complexity, and the brain. Literacy, 42(2), 67-74.
Trieman, R. (1983). The structure of spoken syllables: Evidence from novel word games. Cognition, 15(3), 49-74.
