Module 3: Activity 2

I watched three different videos in which G. Reid Lyon spoke of reading.  He seems so knowledgeable about the process and how reading is critical for every child to succeed.  While every child shows differences in reading skills, what Lyon found is that parents are often great teachers in the home environment.  The most valuable idea he presented is that reading is not a naturally acquired skill, that it must be taught.  Therefore, teachers should be and are held accountable for creating and assessing content appropriately. 

            The type of content that Lyon refers to includes phonemic awareness, phonics (which he states are often confused with one another), fluency, and vocabulary.  All of these skills could and should lead to comprehension and meaning, but sometimes even proficiency in all of those areas does not guarantee comprehension due to a struggling reader’s labor of reading the actual text. 

            I really enjoyed the Watch and Learn: Helping Struggling Readers video.  The teacher who was working with the student demonstrated her content knowledge through the selected word tile activity as well as a caring attitude toward her student.  The student, who had been labeled with a reading disability, was showing dramatic improvement with the one-on-one instruction in decoding letters.  The video described the process of decoding as recognizing letters, putting them into a choppy string of sounds, and then transitioning into making the sounds into a smooth sounding word.  When the nonsense word activity was shown, the student seemed to work well with the concept because of his developing knowledge of sounds and letters. 

            I completely disagree with Houk-Cerna’s (2004) statements.  She questions the activity of nonsense words, which I am sure many teachers do.  Based on the short passage in Module 3, and given that this is my first exposure to Houk-Cerna’s work, I am curious if her passage is more sarcastic than anything else.  Of course five-year olds are going to look puzzled when hearing or seeing words that don’t make sense to them.  Most kindergarten students have some (even if it might be limited) exposure to the English language, either verbal or written, and could distinguish a nonsense word just by hearing it (as discussed in the video).  The student in the passage clearly understands word formation and words that do make sense since he or she sees the possibility of another word just by rearranging the letters. 

            Either way, “cracking the code” activities have a lot of research behind them in demonstrating their effectiveness.  I also believe that one-on-one instruction or reading with students to engage with a text is the best strategy, especially if the adult or teacher possesses a caring attitude combined with helpful skills and strategies.