Phonics

Phonics Assignment #12: 5^th December 2011

In response to phonics assignment #12, I covered structural analysis for morphemes, prefixes, suffixes, contractions, and compound words. This information came from pages 185-209 of Fox’s textbook. On the reviews, #24, #25, and #26, I did well except that I had a few problems that required me to go back and study. An example, problem #4 of review #24 asks how to define an English word. Overall, I think I did great! I know that my knowledge has definitely increased when it comes to phonics!

Notes:

1.      “Structural analysis is a word identification skill that involves the use of prefixes, suffixes, root words, the ‘words’ in compound words, and the apostrophes in contractions to identify unfamiliar words,” (Fox).

2.      “A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning,” (Fox).

3.      “A bound morpheme must be added to another morpheme,” (Fox).

4.      “A prefix is placed before a root word to change its meaning or to make its meaning more specific,” (Fox).

5.      “An inflectional suffix changes number, affects verb tense, indicates comparison, or denotes possession,” (Fox).

6.      “A derivational suffix affects meaning and may change grammatical category,” (Fox).

7.      “A compound word consists of two or more root words that when combined form an entirely new word,” (Fox).

8.      “Adding a prefix does not affect the spelling of the root word,” (Fox).

9.      “Do not double the final consonant when a word ends in two or more consonants,” (Fox).

Work Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 185-209. Print.

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Phonics Assignment #11: 30^th November 2011

In response to this assignment, I learned about syllabication and accents. On both of the reviews, #22 and #23, I did well. I did recall the information required and it did help that I took the reviews right after studying the text. Below are my notes regarding this assignment. I felt like I understood the information covered in this section of pages 159-179 of Mrs. Barbara Fox’s textbook.

Notes:

1.      “The syllable is the unit of pronunciation,” (Fox).

2.      “There is one vowel phoneme in each unit of pronunciation, that is, in each syllable,” (Fox).

3.      “Each syllable may have more than one vowel letter but only one vowel phoneme,” (Fox).

4.      “One syllable in a two-or-more syllable word receives more emphasis or greater stress than the other syllables,” (Fox).

5.      “First, we consider one-syllable words to have a primary accent,” (Fox).

6.      “In compound words, the primary accent usually falls on or within the first ‘word’”, (Fox).

7.      “In most multisyllabic words ending in the suffix –tion, -sion, or –ic, the primary accent falls on the syllable preceding the suffix,” (Fox).

8.      “If the first vowel in a two-syllable word is followed by a single consonant, that consonant often begins the second syllable,” (Fox).

9.      “When two consonants appear together, the second is generally silent,” (Fox).

10.  “When two vowel letters are separated by two consonants, the syllable division is generally between the consonants,” (Fox).

11.  “Consonant clusters are often in the same syllable,” (Fox).

12.  “Prefixes and suffixes usually form separate syllables from the root word,” (Fox).

Work Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 159-179. Print.

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Phonics Assignment Review #10: 9th November, 2011

In response to the phonics assignment, I learned a lot about onsets and rimes. I do feel a little more comfortable with onsets and rimes after working on pages 149-157. Below, is a set of notes on the information that I learned from this assignment. The assessment, review number 21, asked questions about one-syllable onsets and rimes. On the review, I did not miss any questions. I felt like I understood this section better than some of the other assignments. I enjoyed the assignment and I am glad that it made sense to me!

Notes:

A.    Onset- “is the consonant letter(s) that precede(s) the vowel in a syllable,” (Fox).

B.     “Therefore, a syllable begins with an onset,” (Fox).

C.     The onsets for the selected words are bolded: thirteen, pumpkin, garden, and magic.

D.    Rime- “is a variation in the spelling of the word rhyme,” (Fox).

E.     “Therefore, the rime consists of the vowel and the final consonant(s) in a syllable,” (Fox).

F.      The rimes for the selected words are bolded: spend, beg, strut, drink, stop, flat.

G.    “Our written language has many words that contain the same rime,” (Fox).

H.    The rime does not always have one vowel letter but always have one vowel phoneme (Fox).

I.       “Therefore, in the teaching of reading, phonograms are words with a common rime and rhyming sound,” (Fox).

J.       “In the teaching of reading, we also use the term word family to describe words that share a common rime and a common rhyming sound,” (Fox).

Works Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 149-157. Print.

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Phonics Assignment Review #8: 10^th October, 2011

In response to this phonics assignment, I learned in detail about diphthongs, vowel digraphs, and other vowel pairs. An example of important information covered was that “a diphthong is a single-vowel phoneme, represented by two letters, resembling a glide from one sound to another,” (Fox). For the reviews, I did not miss any questions for review number 18. I only missed one question on review 19 concerning how you will know what a double-o sound represent; otherwise, I did well but I did not know the exact symbols for a couple of words for question number 6. I also did not miss any questions for review number 20. Overall, I think I did well on the reviews and I did learn a lot of information during this assignment.

Diphthongs

·         “A diphthong is a single-vowel phoneme, represented by two letters, resembling a glide from one sound to another,” (Fox).

·         “A study of phonetics (the science of speech sounds) would show that many single-letter vowels are actually diphthongs. They represent more than a single sound,” (Fox).

·         “We are recognizing two diphthongs. Each has two spellings,” (Fox).

·         “The key symbol for each diphthong is composed of two letters with zero diacritical marks,” (Fox).

·         “These letters will be either ou or oi because they are the key symbols,” (Fox).

Vowel Digraphs

·         “A digraph is a two-letter grapheme that represents one phoneme(s),” (Fox).

·         For oo with a line above the letters: “The key symbol we use to identify the vowel sound heard in food is oo. This is a two-letter vowel grapheme representing a single phoneme. We call it a vowel digraph,” (Fox).

·         For oo with a line above the letters: “Is the sound indicated by the key symbol oo always spelled with two os? No, (Fox).

·         For oo with a line above the letters: “Since the key symbol for the sound heard in food is two os covered by an elongated macron (oo), it is logical to represent the short phoneme heard in hook with an elongated breve over the two os (oo with a breve mark),” (Fox).

Other Vowel Pairs

·         “None of these pairs (words listed in frame 3) has a distinctive sound of its own. We will call them vowel pairs to distinguish them from the digraphs that represent distinctive sounds: oo (with a line across the top) and oo (with a breve mark),” (Fox).

·         “It is important to note, however, that some teachers’ manuals use the term vowel digraph or vowel team to identify two adjacent vowels that represent one long vowel phoneme, as in feet, coal, nail, and leaf,” (Fox).

·         “A syllable must have only one vowel phoneme,” (Fox).

·         “Many syllables (and one-syllable words) have two vowel letters. Note the words below: rain, feed, hue, and toe. In these cases, the first vowel represents its long sound and the second vowel is silent,” (Fox).

·         The generalization above concerning two vowel letters does not apply to boil and brook (Fox).

·         “If the only exceptions to the ‘first-vowel-long’ generalization were the diphthongs and the double-o digraphs, we might consider them ‘phonemes represented by single letters,’ because in each case only one of the letters is sounded,” (Fox).

Works Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 121-131. Print.

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Phonics Response #7: October 5, 2011

In response to phonics assignment number 7, I covered information on schwa and other single vowels. Key information to remember are listed in the bullet points below for each category. For review 16, I did not miss any questions and I noticed the subject of the question was repeated and was well defined in the section. On review 17, I did well except I wasn’t sure how to symbolize father correctly to represent how to sound the word out.

Schwa

·         “The pronunciation is shown by… (an inverted e),” (Fox).

·         “The sh and the consonant w form a blend. The a represents an ‘ah’ sound,” (Fox).

·         “The schwa is used to indicate the pronunciation of the vowel phoneme in many unaccented syllables,” (Fox).

·         “Almost all vowels in unaccented syllables represent one of these two short, soft sounds,” (Fox).

Other Single Vowels

·         For a (with two dots on top): “Dictionaries reveal anywhere from 3 to 11 different graphemes that represent this phoneme,” (Fox).

·         “Study the vowel phoneme in the word far. We can barely separate it from the following consonant phoneme, so we call it a(n) r –controlled vowel,” (Fox). The same as fur (Fox).

·         For o with arrowhead on top: “When a is followed by an l or w in the same syllable, the a may represent the sound we associate with the key symbol o {with the symbol},” (Fox).

·         “If the only vowel letter in a word or syllable is followed by r, the vowel will be affected by that r,” (Fox).

·         “If the only vowel in a word or syllable is followed by l or w, the vowel will be affected by that l or w,” (Fox).

Works Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 111-121. Print.

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Phonics Response #9: October 3, 2011

In response to Part IV, “A Review of the Phonemes”, I was given a review on the subject of phonemes. There were not any assessments to test my understanding of the content but this section was a review. In summary of my understanding of phonemes, phonemes are basically the smallest unit of sound. The phonemes (or sounds) differentiate one word from another word. In the English language, there are 44 phonemes to represent 26 letters. In other words, there are letters in the English language that has more than one sound; for example, the letter c can have a hard sound like the word car but it can also have the s sound like the word certain. Phonemes deal with the sounds of words.

Section Notes for Things to Remember:

Review of Phonemes

·         “It is a phonetic language in that there is a relationship between the letters of the alphabet and the phonemes of the spoken language,” (Fox).

·         “A letter may represent more than one sound,” (Fox).

·         “The same sound may be represented by more than one letter,” (Fox).

·         “A letter may represent no sound,” (Fox).

Review Outline

·         “Two like consonants appearing together in a word or syllable generally represent one phoneme,” (Fox).

·         “C usually represents the sound we associate with the k when it is followed by a, o, u or when it appears at the end of a word and when followed by any other letter,” (Fox).

·         “C usually represents s when it is followed by e, i, or y,” (Fox).

·         “H is silent when it follows a vowel,” (Fox).

·         “The letters a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w, and y are classified as vowels,” (Fox).

·         “The breve is the diacritical mark used to indicated the pronunciations of short vowels,” (Fox).

·         “The closed syllable ends in a consonant phoneme,” (Fox).

·         “An open syllable ends in a vowel phoneme,” (Fox).

Work Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 135-147. Print.

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Phonics Response for Assignment #6: September 26, 2011

In response to the sixth phonics assignment, I learned about short and long vowel sounds. The first section reintroduced key points that were already covered in the book to activate my prior knowledge before I studied the new content.  For review 13, I only missed two parts on number 3 when it asked for a c or v (consonant or vowel) for w and y words. I will need to restudy the content over that section because considering w and y as vowels is something new to me. The second section, Short Vowel Sounds, covered short vowel phonemes and patterns. I did very well on review 14 and I really enjoyed the second section because I seemed to understand the content. The third section, Long Vowel Sounds, covered key words such as macron and other information regarding long phonemes. For review 15, I did well on except I could not recall the generalization for a word that has two vowels with a final e for question number 3. Overall, I learned about key words such as breve and macrons, and I also learned about vowel phoneme groupings, patterns, and glided sounds.

Sections:

Introduction

·         “Two of the seven vowels are not identified by distinctive key symbols because they do not represent sounds of their own. These are the vowels w and y,” (Fox).

·         “For our study, we shall divide the vowel phonemes into two major groups:

1.       Those represented by single vowel letters

2.       Those represented by combinations of vowel letters

Each of the single letters (as in group 1) and each of the combinations of letters represent one phoneme,” (Fox).

Short Vowel Sounds

·         “The breve is a diacritical mark used to indicate the specific pronunciation of each vowel in this group,” (Fox).

·         “Because, in actuality, these sounds are not held for a shorter period of time than certain other vowel phonemes, some prefer to call them unglided phonemes,” (Fox).

·         “A single vowel in an accented closed syllable usually represents the short sound of the vowel,” (Fox).

Long Vowel Sounds

·         “One set of phonemes represented by single vowel letters is those that ‘say their own names’. The key symbol for these vowel phonemes is a macron,” (Fox).

·         “When a one-syllable word has two vowels, one of which is a final e, the e is silent and the first vowel usually represents its long (glided) sound,” (Fox).

Works Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 87-110. Print.

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Phonics Response for Assignment #5: September 21, 2011

            In response to the sections covered in assignment number five, I learned some very important information about: “ch”, “sh”, “zh”, “th”, “th”, “wh”, “ng”, and consonant clusters and blends. I also completed “Recap One” and I did fairly well on it but there were a few things I had to look up. I also did just fine on review nine that covered “ch”, “sh”, and “zh”. On review ten, I was very confused over the “th” and the “th” until I read the part about invented spelling. Review eleven tricked me over omitting the “q” and the “x” from all single-letter symbol consonants, but I end up doing well on this review. Review twelve was more of a memory review because it went over knowledge that was already covered in the workbook. Overall, I think I did well and I look forward to many new things I will learn soon!

The invented spelling idea is awesome! Invented spelling should be used for the students who struggle with spelling “Understanding the voiced and voiceless phoneme pairs will help you to interpret children’s misspellings. Sometimes, as children spell, they confuse phonemes that have the same articulation but differ in voicing,” (Fox). This method may also help a child when he or she mistakes a letter for another letter. I do want to learn more about invented spelling because it was something that I did during speech therapy and it does help!

Section summary:

Ch, sh, zh:

·         “We have no single letter in the alphabet to represent the first phoneme heard in the key word chair. We will use the logical two-letter combination, the ch, to identify this phoneme,” (Fox).

·         A person can’t hear the separate phonemes represented by s and h when those letters appear together, (Fox).

·         “We shall use the digraph zh as the key symbol to represent the phoneme heard in the key word treasure, although it is never represented in a word with the grapheme zh,” (Fox).

Th, th, wh:

·         “You have learned that the th digraph represents two phonemes. One phoneme is voiced (that); the other phoneme is voiceless (thumb). A voiced phoneme is produced when the vocal cords vibrate. A voiceless is produced when the vocal cords do not vibrate,” (Fox).

·         “We will use the key symbol wh to represent the sound of the digraph, although it actually is better represented by hw,” (Fox).

Ng

·         “The phoneme /ng/ is different from the others represented by digraphs in that it is never heard at the beginning of a syllable, or, to put it another way, it always follows the vowel,” (Fox).

·         “Recall that n generally represents /ng/ when followed by g or k,” (Fox).

Consonant Clusters and Blends

·         “A digraph is a two-letter grapheme that represents one speech sound. The word blue does not contain a consonant digraph. Neither the b nor the l loses its identity. Both are sounded, but they are blended together. We call such combinations of consonant letters clusters and the sounds they represent blends,” (Fox).

·         “A consonant cluster is composed of two or more consonants that blend together when sounded to form a consonant blend,” (Fox).

Work Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 71-86. Print.

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 Phonics Response for Assignment #4: September 19, 2011

                In this assignment, I learned about “c, g, w, and y”, “s, t, and x”, and consonant digraphs. Each section covers the symbol and sound focused in that particular section. I did have problems with the /s/ because I can’t hear the sound most of the time due to my hearing impairment. This assignment took me a while to complete because there were some materials covered that I just couldn’t understand. Regardless, I have my mind set at understanding and succeeding at phonics. With that said, I eventually need to go back and reread the information covered in the book so that the material may stay fresh in my mind and to make sure I understand the information. In the following bullet points is a simple summary of information covered in each section. Overall, I did well on review 6, 7, and 8; but I will need to spend more time working in the phonics book.

Sections:

·         C, g, w, y- covered this set of four consonants. Something I want to remember from this section is that “the consonants c and  g represent their hard sounds when followed by a, o, and u. They usually represent their soft sounds when followed by e, I, and y,” (Fox).

·         S, t, x- this section explained how this set of three consonants is unreliable. I want to remember how many different ways /s/ can be represented “the consonant s unreliable: It often represents the phonemes we associate with z, sh, and zh, as well as its key symbol s,” (Fox).

·         Consonant Digraphs- explained consonant digraphs and why we use this method in English language. Something to remember from this section is “we use two-letter combinations called ‘consonant digraphs’ to stand for the seven phonemes not represented by single-letter graphemes,” (Fox).

Work Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 50-70. Print.

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September 12, 2011:
Phonics Response: Reading Assignment number three & 2-5 Review Response

In response to phonic assignment number three, I learned a lot about phonics and I also was given a review on things that I learned when I was younger.  The first section covered consonants and I did well on review 2, the review for consonants.  I did not miss any questions on review three that covered single-letter consonants and M, q, r, v. On review four, for B, h, k, l, p, I struggled on question number one because I couldn’t understand what was being asked at first but I did end up doing well. It took a while to complete review five because I had to sound out each word within all of the questions and in the end I only missed a few questions. I had to take my time with this assignment because of my hearing impairment (having to sound out words especially the sounds I normally don’t hear when someone is talking. Overall, I did learn a lot about the topics in each section and I look forward to expanding my knowledge.

P.S. Following, is a list of things I would like to remember from each section of assignment number three:

 Works Cited, All information from each section is from:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 27-50; 230-231. Print.

1.       Introduction- A digraph is a two-letter combination that represents a single speech sound.

2.       Single-Letter Consonants- As single letters, c, q, and x do not represent distinctive phonemes.

3.       M, q, r ,v- The letters m, q, v, and r are very dependable. The m, v, and r represent distinctive sounds of their own.

4.       B, h, k, l, p- Two like consonants appearing together in a word generally represent one phoneme.

5.       D, f, j, n, z- In general, suffix –ed forms a separate syllable, the d represents the sound associated with the key symbol d.

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September 7, 2011:

Phonics Response: Part I, General Knowledge and Terminology

Something to remember from each section:

1.      Events That Shaped English Spelling

·         Many religions did help shape the English language. (That is so awesome!)

·         English spelling still changes as other languages merge their words into the English language.

2.      What Does the Research Say about Teaching Phonics?

·         Phonics- “is the relationship among the letters of the alphabetic writing system and the sounds in spoken words, as well as an approach for teaching these relationships,” (Fox).

·         “Beginning readers know many spoken words but relatively few written words,” (Fox).

3.      Basic Elements of Phonics

·         “A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another,” (Fox).

4.      Graphophonic, Syntactic, and Semantic Cues

·         “For the purpose of learning phonics, graphophonic cues consist of the 26 letters and combinations of these letters (graphemes), the 44 sounds (phonemes), and the system of relationships among the letters and the sounds (phonics),” (Fox).

            In response to the first part of Ms. Fox’s textbook, I was given a crash course through the basic and general knowledge information on phonics. In the bullet points above, I mentioned several key points that I do want to remember and what I just learned from Ms. Fox’s text. While reading the text, I did know that children do know many words before the child start reading, but I did not know the terminology. I also learned about the history of the English language from Ms. Fox’s textbook “all this changed at the end of the sixth century when monks made their way into Great Britain, bringing with them the Christian religion, the Roman alphabet, and literacy,” (Burnley; Fox). After the first part, I took the review assessment. I am glad that I did well and there were a few things I could not quite recall immediately (I will start an outline of my thoughts and important highlights as I read in the future). Overall, I learned some very valuable information about phonics, phonics terminology, and the history of the English language. That is neat because I happen to believe in God!

Works Cited:

Fox, Barbara J. Phonics and Structural Analysis for the Teacher of Reading. 10thth ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 9-25. Print.

Burnley, D. The History of the English Language: A Source Book. 2^nd ed. Edinburg Gate, England: Pearson. 2000. Print from Fox, Barbara J. citation in the above source.

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August 31, 2011:
Phonics Pretest Response

In response to the phonics pretest, I was tested on my prior knowledge of phonics before I begin reading the textbook for this semester. The pretest did help me learn where I am currently at an academic level when it comes to phonic skills. This assignment did take me a while because I needed to make sure I understood the questions and to sound out all words when it comes to actual phonic skill questions. Out of the total of seventy five questions, I answered fifty eight correctly. Such score gave me a grade of seventy seven percent, which figures a “C” on the pretest.

A “C” on the pretest obviously tell me that I do have some room for improvement to strengthen my phonic skills. First, the questions I did well on were questions on the usage of compounds, vowels, consonants, syllables, etc. The questions I missed were comparable to question number eight of the pretest “The sound of the schwa is represented by:  a. ‘the a in baited’, b. ‘the e in early’, c. ‘the e in happen’, d. ‘the w in show’, or e. ‘all of these’,” (Fox). My answer to the question was “d”, but the correct answer was “c”, (Fox). Questions like number eight were always hard for me when I was younger. Being hearing impaired made such questions and skills a challenge because I could not hear the sounds. Not hearing the sounds correctly obviously made pronouncing the sounds a challenge.

The pretest reminded me of my past experiences with phonics. I recall going to speech therapy in elementary and middle school to work on my speech and phonic skills. While studying Ms. Fox's textbook, I will use my personal experiences to help me understand the concepts I need to learn. I look forward to improving my knowledge in phonics so I may be able to take my learning experiences and apply it to my teaching.

Works Cited:

Fox, B. J. (2009). Phonics and structural analysis for the teacher of reading (10th ed., pp. 1-8; 227). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.