Word Study

There was a ton of informative and helpful information in the readings this week.  All of the readings were based around students getting stuck on individual words in their readings, and how to help and coach them to read the word correctly.  Many different tips were explained in the articles.  "Chunking" was mentioned multiple times - this is when students put letters together to make familiar chunks in words they cannot figure out.  The book emphasizes that when children are first learning to read and write, we have to remember that their brains responses to the words are not going to be automatic like ours are.  We literally have to teach them how to read and comprehend each individual chunk and sound in the word.


I really enjoyed reading about the activities in Yopp's article.  I like the fact that they reached out to auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners.  I got a lot out of Clark's article "What can I say besides 'sound it out'?  The title alone grabbed my attention, because in my own experience with working with students on reading, "sound it out" is a phrase I find myself saying a lot.  I get frustrated because that was the only way I was familiar with in trying to help the student hear the sounds the word makes.  This article taught me that for young students, reading is so much more than sounding individual letters out.  And we, as educators have to be able to "analyze a word and generate appropriate clues" (Clark 445).  Clues such as asking them to identify chunks, covering an ending to a word, or covering the word so that they only see half at a time are all useful in coaching students.