I do not agree that a student "must be absolutely fluent in the
alphabetic principal in order to advance their reading skills" or that
"fluency in the alphabetic principal needs to be rock solid by third
grade or students will fail at reading and eventually at school."
Are they important? Yes. Can some students advance their reading skills
without being fluent in reading nonsense words? You bet. I don't think
such blanket statements are fair to students or anyone else. These are
the kinds of statements that lead to unfairly labeling students as
failures.
Renee
On Aug 28, 2009, at 4:59 AM, Amy McGovern wrote:
Hi Jennifer,
I did not read all the posts leading up to this--but thought I'd share
something on the reading/testing of non-sense words. My school
district invited Dr. Ted Hasselbrin ( I may have misspelled his last
name) to give our key note this year. He did an excellent job of
delving into the science of reading.
One of the things he shared is that the best way to be sure students
have become "fluent" with the alphabetic principal is to test them on
non-sense words. He works with mostly middle and high school kids who
did not master the alphabetic principal in elementary school. When
these kids were given a list of site words, many of them would be
extremely accurate. When they were given a list of non-sense words,
they had no idea how to attack them.
Here's my point: any multisyllabic word, or any word that you may
have never seen before has a lot in common with non-sense words.
Students must be absolutely fluent in the alphabetic principal in
order to advance their reading skills. A non-sense word test does a
very good job of mimicking what kids need to be able to do when they
have no where else to look but at the word...no pictures, no adult
help, nothing but their own tool box of skills...and keep in mind that
at some point, even context will break down as a way to figure out
meaning...
Fluency in the alphabetic principal needs to be rock solid by third
grade or students will fail at reading and eventually at school.
Non-sense word tests have there place in the testing arena because
they give us good information on how kids attack words they have never
seen before.
Amy McGovern
Reading Teacher
Direct Instruction Specialist
Educational Consultant
715-966-6645
"Learning isn't a means to an end; it is an end in itself."
~ Robert A. Heinlein
_______________________________________________
Mosaic mailing list
[email protected]
To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to
http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org.
Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
