What is code based instruction?? This is when students are taught phonics skills in an explicit and specific sequence. Research tells us, code based instruction is the most effective way to teach students to read and spell. If a student is taught using this approach they will have the skills needed to apply learned patterns when spelling or encountering the unknown word in text. According to international literacy expert and co-author of LETRS, Dr. Carol Tolman, orthographic learning should continue beyond phonics concepts into morphology and etymology.
Morphology is the study of morphemes. Morphemes are units of meaning in language (i.e. prefixes, suffixes and root words). Etymology is study of the historical development of words (i.e. identifying if the morpheme is of Greek, Latin or Anglo Saxon origin). Typically instruction on morphemes and etymology would happen at the end of third grade progressing into middle school and beyond, although younger students can easily learn basic morphemes. Dr. Tolman uses the hourglass figure below to clearly illustrate the multiple layers of direct instruction teachers should provide, progressing from phonological skills all the way into etymology. The video is about 20 minutes in length, but well worth the watch if you want to learn more about all of the layers.
There is a sort of natural progression of instruction with morphemes. You will notice the progression goes from easier to understand to more difficult concepts that require background knowledge.
- One might first start with Anglo Saxon and Latin compounds which are free morphemes. A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand alone and have meaning (i.e. dog and house alone mean one thing, but combined make doghouse, which means something else). Compounds are a great introduction to illustrate word chunks are meaningful.
- Next, one might progress to inflectional morphemes. Inflectional morphemes change what a word does, but doesn't change its meaning (i.e. ing, ed, etc.).
- Then, one might progress to irregular past tense plurals (i.e. catches, catch and caught).
- After that, one might teach common prefixes (un, re, pre, etc.) and then move to less common prefixes (macro, mono, fore, etc.)
- Next, one might instruct on derivational suffixes, which are suffixes that make a word change a grammar class. For example this means a word can go from being a noun (ex: pore) to being an adjective (ex: porous) by adding a derivational suffix (in this cause -ous).
- Finally one might teach Greek and Latin roots. Greek roots are not as common as Latin roots and are more scientific and technical.
After a prefix, suffix or root word is explicitly taught there needs to be multiple exposures and chances to engage with the learned morpheme. Some great ways to further explore taught morphemes are by creating word webs, thinking of a visual or action that represents the morpheme, word hunts, graphic organizers, cloze activities or playing games.
Bottom line--the more students understand about the structure of words, the better they will be at reading them independently, understanding their meaning and how to correctly spell.
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