Language and Reading Instruction Case...

Case StudiesIn the following cases, concepts presented in the previous chapters can beapplied to analyzing students’ writing samples and determining basicinstructional needs.

JeremyA spontaneous journal entry (see Figure 8.2) was written during the firstweek of November by Jeremy, a first-grade student who had just experi-enced an introductory lesson on the [c] phoneme and its spelling with ch. Hisspelling shows good knowledge of basic sound–symbol correspondencesand orthographic patterns. He is beginning to spell morphemically, keepingthe parts of coming intact (come + ing) and spelling learned as lurn + ed.Jeremy is ready to study the spelling of words with inflections and should beencouraged to write personal narratives, descriptions, and paragraphs thatexplain observations about the real world.

Language and Reading Instruction 215

Figure 8.2. Jeremy’s journal entry.

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Excerpted from Speech to PrintLanguage Essentials for Teachers, Second Edition

By Louisa Cook Moats, Ed.D.

Brookes Publishing | www.brookespublishing.com | 1-800-638-3775© 2010 | All rights reserved

RobbieRobbie is in the same first-grade class as Jeremy, and his journal entry wasproduced on the same day (see Figure 8.3). After the lesson on spelling /c/with ch, Robbie writes Chuck likes to eat some chili and some chocolate. Hedemonstrates confusion of the voiced and voiceless consonant pair /j/ and/c/ when he uses the letter j as the initial letter of the words chili and choco-late. He does not spell morphemically: He spells the speech sounds in likeswith a sound-by-sound approach. He inserts a nasal after a vowel where itdoes not belong in eat. These may be the initial signs of a problem withphoneme identity that merit focused practice with minimal pairs of wordsthat contrast the target sounds. Robbie may have a mild problem withphoneme awareness that needs additional screening and assessment.

BruceBruce, a first-grade student in a class taught with a reading program thatincluded systematic phoneme awareness and phonics instruction, wrote ajournal entry after 2 months in the first grade (see Figure 8.4). Bruce’s teacherhas written correct spellings underneath the misspelled words. Note the

216 Speech to Print

Figure 8.3. Robbie’s journal entry.

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omission of the nasals /n/ and /m/ in the child’s spelling of haunted andgramp, respectively. The omission of nasals occurs only when the nasal con-sonant comes between a vowel and a following consonant within a syllable.Bruce has learned the words went and and as wholes by this time, along withother sight words such as my and the. The unknown vowel /ɔ/ in haunted isspelled with the vowel that is closest in articulation: /ɑ/ (“short o”). Syllabic[r] in birthday is spelled logically with one letter, as there is no separate vowelsegment in that syllable. Sentence structure is developing well for Bruce. Heis ready to learn words with nasal blends at the end (mp, nd, nt) and thespellings for some r-controlled vowels.


Figure 8.4. Bruce’s journal entry.





JanetJanet is a second-grade student who has fallen behind in reading and hasscored below grade level in spelling accuracy. She is a very slow reader,reading at less than 40 correct words per minute in spite of solid averageintellectual ability. Janet’s spelling, however, is phonetically accurate (seeFigure 8.5). The speech sounds are represented faithfully, although Janet’sknowledge of the actual symbols used in conventional spelling is limited.The spellings are generated with letter names and sequential spelling strate-gies typical of later phonetic spelling. The spellings are typical of a childabout a year behind second-grade level.

Note the use of the letter name h to spell [c] in reach, the representationof affrication of the initial [d] in dress (spelled with a j), the choice of the midlow vowel /ɑ/ for /ɑj/ in light, and the use of the letter name y to spell /w/in will. The syllabic spellings of enter, the doubling of the /n/ in and in placeof the final /d/, and the doubling of /o/ in go all are typical for phoneticspellers. Janet seems to assume that all words have three letters. Herphoneme awareness is quite well developed; instruction must emphasizeremembering the graphemes used to represent phonemes, being aware ofspelling patterns, and obtaining fluency in word recognition. Writing regularwords to dictation, practicing sight words through multisensory tracing tech-niques, learning graphemes for phonemes, and sorting words by spelling pat-tern would be appropriate for her. These exercises should be supplementedwith brief, 1-minute timed drills on recognizing high-frequency words, read-ing in phrases, and repeating readings of texts at her instructional level.

HarryHarry, a second-grade student, wrote sentences on the Test of Achievementin the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Test Battery–Revised (see Fig-ure 8.6).19 The spelling is typical of late phonetic and early orthographic

218 Speech to Print

gooannyelhmecoclotjrsrehntr

go

and

will

him

cook

light

dress

reach

enter

Figure 8.5. Spellings given by Janet, a secondgrader (actual spellings on right).





stages (see Chapters 1 and 8, respectively, for descriptions of these stages).Note that the words egg (Item 8) and leg (Item 15) are spelled as they sound,with the [ε] raised up to an [e] when the tongue anticipates rising in the backof the throat to make the velar consonant [g]. Note the confusion of the nasalconsonants in animal (Item 9). In girl (Item 10), the inseparable combination[εr] is spelled with the logical letter choice, r, and the i is inserted as an after-thought because it is unnecessary for portraying the sounds in the word. Inthrowing (Item 13) and light (Item 14), the long vowels are spelled with sin-gle letters that contain the vowel sounds in their names. Orthographicawareness is evident when the child spells the diphthong [ɔj] in boy (Item 15)with a vowel–letter combination ou. Harry seems to understand that thevowel is a diphthong but is unsure of the correct spelling. Harry would ben-efit from the instructional activities and goals described in Table 8.3.

CynthiaCynthia is a 9-year-old third-grade student with an above-average verbal IQscore. Figure 8.7 presents her written expression subtest of the WechslerIndividual Achievement Test,20 on which she was asked to describe her idealplace to live. She has rather prominent difficulties identifying and transcrib-ing the speech sounds in words in spite of her high verbal reasoning ability.She did poorly on diagnostic tests of phonological awareness.

Cynthia’s spelling of the word items contains an alveolar nasal [n] inplace of a stop consonant [t]. Her spellings of the words bay and bathroomsbegin with a reversed b (d) that is clearly an orthographic substitution. Inaddition to orthographic errors, however, Cynthia’s writing contains phono-logically based errors. Her spelling of the word garage ends with a voiceless


Figure 8.6. Harry’s sentences from the Test of Achievement in theWoodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Test Battery–Revised.





sound [c] in place of the voiced [z] or [j]. She seems to use the letter a as adefault vowel in words such as with, slide, real, and dining. Her spelling of theword kitchen includes a nasal after the vowel that does not belong there, andher spellings of the words point, basement, and front in the last three lines allare missing a nasal after a vowel and before a consonant. Diffuse problemswith placement of /r/ and /l/ within a syllable are evident in apple, tree, andgarage. Substituting /w/ for /r/ in real is common in children with lingeringphonological production problems. The p at the beginning of basement is evi-dence of a voicing confusion. The many phonological confusions suggestthat Cynthia’s fundamental problem with phoneme awareness must beaddressed directly if she is to improve. Instruction for her should emphasizephoneme identification, phoneme contrasts, and phoneme sequencing dur-ing the decoding and spelling components of lessons.

Cynthia uses a listing strategy for her ideas, and there are no capital let-ters. Her vocabulary and descriptive detail are good for her age, but she can-not simultaneously generate complete sentences and transcribe herthoughts. Her verbal ability as measured by IQ tests appears to be consider-ably higher than the level of her written language output. She needs a struc-tured approach to sentence expansion and sentence construction as well asemphasis on planning her writing before she makes a draft.

220 Speech to Print

Figure 8.7. Cynthia’s written expression subtest of the Wechsler Individual Achieve-ment Test.





BrittBritt, a third-grade student, has fallen behind grade level in reading. She hasscored about one standard deviation below her expected level on a test ofword recognition and relies heavily on context to decode new words. Sheattempts to spell phonetically, although she uses a letter-name strategy typ-ical of much younger children: spelling long vowels with one letter as inwords such as slide, alpine, and near. She omits the liquid /r/ in warm butspells the middle syllable of Saturday with a syllabic /r/. She substitutesvoiceless for voiced consonants in over (/f/ for /v/) and lunch (/j/ for /c/).She omits the nasal consonant after the vowel and before the final consonantin plans. On another spelling test given at the same time, she made severalother voicing substitutions, including UNGL for uncle, HOSPIDAL for hospi-tal, and EFRY for every. She also has little mastery over sentence structure, asthe composition contains one long, run-on sentence (see Figure 8.8): DearEmily, Want to go to the Alpine Slide with me on Sunday? If you can come, call meon Saturday near lunch time and then we can make the plans over the telephone andit will be a sleepover, so bring your sleeping bag and warm clothes because we aregoing to camp out. From B.

Britt’s inability to keep up with her classmates in reading and spellingappears to have its origin in a phonological processing weakness, evident inpersistent confusions of consonant phonemes that share some features but


Figure 8.8. Britt’s composition.





not others. Her reading and spelling lessons should begin with phonemeawareness exercises designed to contrast the speech sounds she confuses. Aspart of a comprehensive language arts program, Britt’s writing instructionshould build sentence-level writing skills, including sentence combining,sentence expansion, and transformations from one type of sentence toanother.

Summary: The Power of InstructionWord recognition, reading fluency, knowledge of word meanings, and famil-iarity with complex syntax enhance reading comprehension; likewise, expo-sure to text enhances familiarity with words and linguistic structures.Achieving balance in reading instruction does not mean dabbling superfi-cially in a variety of skill domains but means teaching each component thor-oughly, systematically, and well. Maintaining a balance also means coveringa range of components daily and weekly, along with a steady supply of greatliterature and purposeful writing projects. Considerable expertise isrequired to teach everyone to read, but well-informed classroom teachersusing valid instructional programs are up to the job. There is no more impor-tant task for educators to undertake.

Endnotes1. Mehta et al., 2005.2. Blachman, Tangel, Ball, Black, & McGraw, 1999; Brady, 1997; Foorman et al.,

1998; Torgesen, 2004.3. Roberts, 2009.4. Dickinson, McCabe, & Clark-Chiarelli, 2004; Hart & Risley, 1995.5. Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998; Blachman et al., 1999; Gillon, 2004.6. Ehri, 2004.7. Ehri & Snowling, 2004.8. An example of this strategy is the “duet” reading embedded in the instructional

program ReadWell (Sprick, Dunn, Jones, & Gunn, 2003).9. McGuinness, 1997.

10. Hanna et al., 1966.11. Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2000.12. Share & Stanovich, 1995.13. Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999.14. Lindamood & Lindamood, 1998.15. Henry, 2003.16. The pronunciation of the past-tense ending in English is governed by the speech

sound that precedes it. If the preceding sound is a voiced consonant or vowel,then the past-tense ending is pronounced /d/. If the preceding sound is a voice-less consonant, then the past-tense ending is pronounced /t/. If the word endsin a /d/ or a /t/, then the full syllable /əd/ is used.

17. Gillingham & Stillman, 1997.18. Paulsen, 1988.19. Woodcock & Johnson, 1989. 20. Wechsler, 1992.

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