Mastering Short Vowels and Reading Whole Words with Calista, First Grader

Summary

In this insightful session, reading expert Linda Farrell works with Calista, a first-grader from Windy Hill Elementary School, to enhance her early reading skills. Calista, who accurately sounds out letters, learns the significance of reading whole words rather than sound by sound. Linda introduces engaging exercises such as vowel sounds and sound chaining to guide Calista in blending and manipulating sounds effectively. Through dynamic teaching methods, Calista develops her phonological awareness, essential for fluent reading. By the end, she gains confidence and makes notable progress toward becoming a proficient reader, ready to tackle reading fluency with enthusiasm.

Highlights

• Calista learns to embrace phonics through motions, like using 'octopus' for short 'o'! 🐙
• Linda Farrell uses sound chaining to transition readers from letter sounds to whole words! 🔗
• Colored tiles without letters help Calista focus on sounds, boosting phonological skills! 🎶
• Calista's journey from sounding out to fluent reading is both educational and heartwarming! 💖
• Visualizing whole words instead of alphabet sounds facilitates faster reading! 📚

Key Takeaways

• Calista masters short vowels using fun exercises like holding an 'apple' for the short 'a' sound! 🍎
• Sound chaining helps transform slow readers into fast readers by changing phonological representations! 🚀
• Manipulating sounds with colored tiles encourages focusing on sounds rather than letters! 🎨
• Reading whole words is a crucial step for developing a visual imprint of words! 🧠
• Practice makes perfect - silent pondering improves reading fluency! 🤫

Overview

Join young Calista as she navigates the path to mastering short vowels with Linda Farrell, a dedicated reading expert at Windy Hill Elementary. With vibrant exercises and creative motions, like mimicking holding an apple for the short 'a' sound, Linda empowers Calista to confidently identify vowel sounds. This innovative approach lays the groundwork for Calista’s burgeoning reading skills! 🍏

The session takes an exciting turn as Linda introduces sound chaining, a powerful tool transforming struggling readers into fast, fluent ones! With sound chaining and the use of colorful tiles, Calista learns to focus on phonological awareness by recognizing and manipulating sounds within words. This method proves to be both enlightening and engaging, capturing Calista’s enthusiasm and dedication! 🎨🗣

As Calista progresses, she transitions from sounding out words letter by letter to embracing whole word recognition - a critical step in reading fluency. Guided gently by Linda Farrell, Calista's confidence blossoms, resulting in improved reading speeds and comprehension. Witness the joy of learning as Calista overcomes challenges, paving her path to becoming a proficient reader, eager to explore the world of books! 📖✨

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction of Short Vowel Sounds In this chapter titled 'Introduction of Short Vowel Sounds,' Linda Farrell, an educator, guides a first-grade student named Calista at Windy Hill Elementary School in Maryland. The focus is on teaching short vowel sounds, particularly the short 'o'. Calista, who is in the early stages of reading, demonstrates her ability to accurately sound out letters and blend them together to form words. The session highlights Calista's skill in reading simple words as she pronounces '/D/, /i/, /d/' to form the word 'did'.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Teaching Techniques for Short Vowel Sounds In 'Teaching Techniques for Short Vowel Sounds', the focus is on enhancing reading fluency by transitioning from sounding out each sound to reading words as a whole. Reading expert Linda Farrell works with a student, Calista, to improve her proficiency in recognizing short vowel sounds, as well as blending and manipulating these sounds. The session aims to build a strong foundation in reading fluency, with exercises tailored to improve Calista's ability to read whole words more efficiently.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Sound Chaining and Phonetic Exercises The chapter focuses on phonetic exercises, specifically sound chaining with short vowel sounds. Linda Farrell guides a student, Calista, through pronouncing the short 'a' sound using the word 'apple' as a reference. The exercise involves associating the sound /aaa/ with a physical motion, aiming to reinforce the correct pronunciation of the short 'a' sound.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Advancing from Phonics to Whole Word Reading The chapter titled 'Advancing from Phonics to Whole Word Reading' focuses on helping students transition from phonetic reading to recognizing and reading whole words. It begins with a focus on ensuring proficiency in short vowel sounds. An example is given with the vowel 'e,' where the instructor demonstrates the sound to reinforce the student's understanding. The approach underscores the importance of solidifying foundational vowel knowledge as a stepping stone to more advanced reading skills.
• 09:00 - 11:00: Fluency Practice In this chapter, the focus is on fluency practice through the use of scaffolding techniques to help learners remember vowel sounds. The teacher highlights the importance of not just providing answers to students, but giving them tools to independently recall information. An example is shared where a student, Calista, is taught motions associated with vowel sounds to aid her memory, such as the short 'o' sound represented by the motion for 'octopus'. Through such techniques, students can become more autonomous in their learning process.
• 11:00 - 14:00: Conclusion and Acknowledgements In the 'Conclusion and Acknowledgements' chapter, Linda Farrell and Calista engage in a phonics exercise focusing on vowel sounds. They practice the short 'o' sound by breaking down the word 'octopus,' simplifying it to its 'aah' sound component. The exercise transitions into contrasting this sound with short 'a' and eventually short 'u' sounds, incorporating kinesthetic motions to reinforce learning. This highlights an instructional strategy to enhance phonemic awareness.

Mastering Short Vowels and Reading Whole Words with Calista, First Grader Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] Linda Farrell: What do we call that vowel sound? You say ... Calista: Short 'o' Linda Farrell: You got it! Calista is in first grade at Windy Hill Elementary School in Calvert County, Maryland. She's an early stage reader who sounds out letters accurately. And she can blend those letters together to form words. Linda Farrell: Calista, could you please read this column. Calista: /D/, /i/, /d/, "did."
• 00:30 - 01:00 /A/, /d/, "add." /P/, /al/, pal. /G/, /um/, "gum." Reading expert Linda Farrell is helping Calista take the next step toward fluent reading -- reading each word as a whole rather than one sound at a time. Their time together will include work on short vowel sounds, blending and manipulating sounds, reading whole words, and fluency. Ms. Farrell starts by making sure Calista has a strong foundation in her short vowel
• 01:00 - 01:30 sounds. Linda Farrell: We're gonna learn some motions. Can you hold an apple in your hand? And when I ask you the short 'a' sound, you're gonna say, /aaa/. Say it. Calista: /a/ Linda Farrell: Now watch me. /Aaaaaa-pul/. You do it. Calista: /Aaaaaa-pul/ Linda Farrell: Okay. That is going to remind you of the short 'a' sound. That's our motion, so say, /aaa/. Calista: /a/ Linda Farrell: And when I ask you what the short /a/ sound is, you're gonna go /aaaa/. Do it.
• 01:30 - 02:00 Calista: /aaa/ Linda Farrell: Okay. For short 'e,' go like this. Watch me. Go /eeeeeh-j/. Calista: /eeeeh-j/ Linda Farrell: So we want to start out by making sure she's solid with her short vowel sounds. So that's the first thing we did. And she did know her -- when I said, "What's short 'a'?", she knew it. She had to think a little bit. So what we did is we want her to -- when she can't remember the vowel sound real easily,
• 02:00 - 02:30 we want to not have to give it to her. We want her to have a scaffold to learn it. So we taught Calista the motions that go with the vowel sound, so that if she can't remember a vowel sound -- what is the short 'o' sound? -- then all she has to do ... I can go like this and remind her, or she can go, oh, it's /ah/, it's octopus. Linda Farrell: I tell you what we're gonna do.
• 02:30 - 03:00 We are gonna go to short 'o.' Are you ready? Okay. Here we go. /Aaaaahc-tuh-pus/. Calista: /aaaaahc-tuh-pus/ Linda Farrell: Now we're not gonna say the /k-tuh-pus/ part. We're just gonna /aaah/. Calista: /aaah/ Linda Farrell: What's the short 'o' sound? Calista: /aaah/ Linda Farrell: And make the motion. Calista: /aaah/ Linda Farrell: What's the short 'a' sound? Calista: /aaa/ Linda Farrell: Short 'o'? Calista: /aaah/ Linda Farrell: Okay. Now we're gonna learn short 'u.' You ready for short 'u'?
• 03:00 - 03:30 /Uuu-p/. Do it. Calista: /uuu-p/ Linda Farrell: And the first sound in up is /uuu/. Calista: /uuu/ Linda Farrell: What's the short 'u' sound? Calista: /uuu/ Linda Farrell: Short 'a'? Calista: /aaa/ Linda Farrell: Short 'o'? Calista: /aaah/ Linda Farrell: Short 'u'? Calista: /uuu/ Linda Farrell: The vowel motions that we teach are purposefully motions. They aren't static, because if I say /a/, /eh/, /i/, /ah/, /u/, you can hardly hear the difference between
• 03:30 - 04:00 those sounds. /A/, /eh/, /i/, /ah/, /u/. And children who have phonological awareness difficulties, which is the biggest one of the -- it is the biggest problem in reading issues -- they don't hear the vowel sounds easily. Listen to this: /aaaa/, /eeeeh/, /iiiii/, /aaah/, /uuuu/. They sound different. So we want to encourage the children not to say /a/.
• 04:00 - 04:30 We want them to say /aaaa/; therefore, the motion that we use -- which is holding an apple and then move it across the front of your body, left to right, motion of reading, /aaa/, and then /pul/ is what the rest of the word is, but we only say the first sound -- everything encourages them to draw out that sound. Linda Farrell: Now we're gonna learn short 'i.' Are you ready for short 'i'? Calista: Mm-hmm. Linda Farrell: Okay. Watch this.
• 04:30 - 05:00 I went stomping -- I went hiking, and I stomped and tromped in some poison ivy, and, boy, do I /iiiiiii-ch/. Do it. Do this. Calista: /iiiii-ch/ Linda Farrell: /Iiiiiii-ch/. Do it. Calista: /iiiii-ch/ Linda Farrell: Now, you have to smile real big when you say itch. Go /iiiiiiiii-ch/. Calista: /iiiiiiii-ch/ Linda Farrell: Do it again. Short 'i' sound. Calista: /iiiiiiii-ch/ Linda Farrell: Okay. And "itch" is the guide word. I made a mistake. I should have told you that /i/ is just like this: /iii/.
• 05:00 - 05:30 We don't even say the /ch/ part, just do this: /iii/. Calista: /iii/ Linda Farrell: What's the short 'i' sound? Calista: /i/. /iii/. Linda Farrell: Make it go /iiiiii/. Calista: /iii/ Linda Farrell: What's the short 'a' sound? Calista: /aaa/ Linda Farrell: Short 'i'? Calista: /iii/ Linda Farrell: Short 'i'? Calista: /iii/ Linda Farrell: Short 'a'? Calista: /aaa/ Linda Farrell: Short 'o'? Calista: /aaah/ Linda Farrell: Short 'u'? Calista: /uuu/ Linda Farrell: You know your short vowel sounds!
• 05:30 - 06:00 Linda Farrell: Calista was very confident with her vowel sounds. She knew them. I would still have worked on them a little bit more, but she was confident enough for me to move on to the next step. So the next step with a kid who's reading sound by sound isn't really intuitive. It's often a phonological problem. It isn't a problem with the letters. The kid knows the letters.
• 06:00 - 06:30 I know the letter sounds. I can blend the letter sounds into a real word. What they aren't doing is thinking the sounds in their mind. They're turning that word -- if it's "hug," they look at it and they go /h/, /u/, /g/. And they are never getting the full visual picture of that word. To them it's always an 'h-u-g,' a /h/, /u/, /g/. Not "hug."
• 06:30 - 07:00 So they haven't moved to where they can read the whole word without breaking it into phonics. And that's a step that we're going to have to teach her to do, which is one of my favorite things to do, because it's just, they just go from being really slow readers to just being normal readers once they can get this phonological representation. Linda Farrell: We're going to do something that we call sound chaining. Okay? I'm going to show you how it works. So I say, "Miss Linda, show me the sounds in 'lip,'" so I go /l/, /i/, /p/, "lip."
• 07:00 - 07:30 You touch and say. Calista: /l/, /i/, /p/, "lip" Linda Farrell: Okay. What's the first sound in "lip"? Calista: 'l' Linda Farrell: 'L' is the name of the letter. What's the sound? Calista: /l/ Linda Farrell: What's the next sound in "lip"? Calista: 'i' Linda Farrell: 'I' is the name of the letter. What's the sound? Calista: /i/ Linda Farrell: Okay. And when I ask you, you point to it, okay? So what's the first sound in "lip"? Calista: /l/ Linda Farrell: What's the next sound in "lip"?
• 07:30 - 08:00 Calista: /i/ Linda Farrell: And the last sound in "lip"? Calista: /p/ Linda Farrell: And what's the ... Calista: "lip" Linda Farrell: Okay. So that's "lip." If I want to change "lip" to "sip," I take out the /l/, and I put in a /s/. Touch and say "sip." Calista: /s/, /i/, /p/, "sip" Linda Farrell: What if I wanna change "sip" to "tip"? Calista: You take away this one and add this one. Linda Farrell: Okay. So what did I take out?
• 08:00 - 08:30 "Sip" to "tip." Say "sip" to "tip." Calista: "Sip" to "tip" Linda Farrell: Which one did I take out? If this is "sip," take out ... Calista: The /s/ and add the /t/. Linda Farrell: Okay. Now I wanna change "tip" to "Tim." Calista: Hmm. Linda Farrell: So let's touch and say "tip." Calista: /t/, /i/, /p/, "tip" Linda Farrell: Now touch and say "Tim." Calista: /t/, /i/, /m/, "Tim"
• 08:30 - 09:00 Linda Farrell: Which one's different? Calista: The last one. Linda Farrell: So what do I take out of "tip" to change "tip" to "Tim"? Calista: The last one. Linda Farrell: And what sound do I take out? Calista: 'p' Linda Farrell: 'P' is the name of the letter. What's the sound? Calista: /p/ Linda Farrell: Okay. Take it out. And what do I put in to make it "Tim"? Calista: 'm' Linda Farrell: 'M' is the name of the letter. What's the sound? Calista: /m/ Linda Farrell: Okay. So now I've got "Tim." Touch and say "Tim." Calista: /t/, /i/, /m/, "Tim"
• 09:00 - 09:30 Linda Farrell: I wanna change "Tim" to "Tom." Linda Farrell: When we work with sound-by-sound children, we make sure that they know the difference between letters and sounds and that they can manipulate sounds. Once they can blend and segment sounds confidently, we move to manipulating. How do we do that? We work with colored tiles. They don't have letters on them, because we want the child to have no distraction with
• 09:30 - 10:00 letters. What we want is the child to be thinking about sounds. Linda Farrell: Touch and say "tap." Calista: /t/, /a/, p/, "tap" Linda Farrell: Can you change "tap" to "tape"? Ms. Farrell gives Calista plenty of quiet time to think about which sounds are changing. Linda Farrell: Let's check that because -- one thing you did right is there's always only one tile that changes. Let's touch and say "tap."
• 10:00 - 10:30 Calista: /t/, /a/, /p/, "tap" Linda Farrell: Touch and say "tape." Calista: /t/, /ay/, /p/, "tape" Linda Farrell: Which one's different? Calista: Hmm. Middle. Linda Farrell: Yeah. What sound do you take out of "tap"? Calista: 'a' Linda Farrell: 'A' is the name of the letter. What sound do you take out of "tap"? Calista: /a/ Linda Farrell: Okay. Take it out. And what sound do you put in to make "tape"? Calista: /ee/ Linda Farrell: Say "tape." Calista: /t - ayp/
• 10:30 - 11:00 Linda Farrell: Touch and say. Calista: /t/, /ay/, p/, "tape" Linda Farrell: What sound was that? Calista: /ay/ Linda Farrell: It was /ay/. Okay. So you put in the sound /ay/. If I want to change "tape" -- sorry, yes -- "tape" to "take," which one do I change? Calista: This one. Linda Farrell: Yes. What sound do I take out of "tape"? Calista: 'p' Linda Farrell: What sound?
• 11:00 - 11:30 Calista: /p/ Linda Farrell: Yeah. Okay. And what sound to I put in to make it "take"? Calista: /k, k/ Linda Farrell: Now this time, when I ask you to make a change, keep your mouth closed and think about it. Okay? Okay. So don't open your mouth. You can think the sounds in your head. So we've got "take" to "make." Okay. Look down. You can look down.
• 11:30 - 12:00 "Take" to "make." Can you say "take" to "make"? Calista: "Take" to "make." Linda Farrell: Okay. Which one changes? Keep your mouth closed. Don't -- you have to think the sounds, okay? Calista: /t/ Linda Farrell: Okay. So take out /t/. And what are you going to put in for "make"? What sound? Calista: /m/ Linda Farrell: /M/. Okay. Can you change -- now, again, mouth closed. Okay.
• 12:00 - 12:30 But I'm gonna ask you to say "make" to "mate." Say that. "Make" to "mate." Calista: "Make" to "mate." Linda Farrell: Okay. Close your mouth, and think about which one. When you know, touch it. Linda Farrell: Okay. What sound comes out of "make"? Calista: /k/
• 12:30 - 13:00 Linda Farrell: Yep. What sound goes in for "mate"? Calista: /t/ Linda Farrell: Okay ... Linda Farrell: One of the things Calista does is I say, "What's the first sound?" and she gives me the name of the letter. And we've got to get sound-by-sound children to think in terms of -- there are letter sounds, and there are letter names, because the name of the letter, the first letter in "phone" is 'p,' but the first sound in "phone" is /f/.
• 13:00 - 13:30 And if she doesn't get the difference automatically and quickly, she'll always be struggling with reading. It's easy to teach. It's no big deal. And I think that you see Calista make great strides in her reading. Now we're at the point where Ms. Farrell will push Calista to a higher level of reading -- from reading words sound by sound to reading whole words. Linda Farrell: Could you please read this column? Calista: /D/, /i/, /d/, "did."
• 13:30 - 14:00 /A/, /d/, "add." /P/, /al/, "pal." /G/, /um/, "gum." /K/, /it/, "kit." Linda Farrell: Students who read sound by sound see a letter, make it a sound, see a letter, make it a sound, see a letter, make it a sound. So this is what's happening. What that keeps her from being able to do is develop a visual imprint of words and word patterns on her brain. And you never look at the word as a whole.
• 14:00 - 14:30 We're trying to get Calista to look at the word as a whole, as opposed to looking at it letter, by letter, by letter. Linda Farrell: Now what I'd like you to do is I want you to go back, and this time keep your mouth closed before and think the sounds and don't open your mouth until you know what the word is and can read it. Okay? Calista: Did. Linda Farrell: Keep going. Calista: Add.
• 14:30 - 15:00 Pal. And. Mud. Linda Farrell: Okay. Phew. You got pretty good there, didn't ya, closing your mouth. You can sense the wheels turning in Calista's mind as she works silently to sound out the letters and put the sounds together into a word. Next comes work on fluency. Linda Farrell: Let's start right here. Calista: Can. The.
• 15:00 - 15:30 Lad. Linda Farrell: Okay. Now go back and read it. Again. Calista: Can. The. Lad. Linda Farrell: Now can you go back and read it, "Can the lad?" Okay. Read it. Calista: Can the lad. Linda Farrell: Okay. Calista: Be. In. The. Mud. Linda Farrell: Okay. Read it like you'd say it. Calista: Be in the mud.
• 15:30 - 16:00 Linda Farrell: Okay. Now read the whole sentence. Calista: Can the lad be in the mud. Linda Farrell: Okay. Can you read that one? Calista: Kim was hot. And got a fan. Kim was hot and got a fan.
• 16:00 - 16:30 Linda Farrell: Okay. We're gonna go and read a couple of sentences now. Those were phrases, and they turned into sentences. Could you please read this sentence? Calista: Gus. Got. Mud. On. The. Rug. Linda Farrell: Okay. And now we're gonna go read a passage. Okay. What's the title? Calista: Don and Pip.
• 16:30 - 17:00 Linda Farrell: Okay? Calista: Don was a lad. Pip was a pup. Don and Pip had a run. The sun was hot. Linda Farrell: She was getting faster as she closed her mouth. She made more mistakes than she would make if she read sound by sound. She didn't make that many mistakes, but she did make more mistakes.
• 17:00 - 17:30 But that's okay, because that's what happens when you start changing a habit, is you go backwards a little bit. She'll eventually, and I think fairly quickly, be a much faster reader and a much more proficient reader. Linda Farrell: Do you ever read a book that you like? Calista: Mm-hmm. Linda Farrell: Calista made a lot of progress in this lesson, and she is on her way to being a top-notch reader. Music We'd like to thank the wonderful students and families at Windy Hill Elementary School
• 17:30 - 18:00 in Calvert County, Maryland. We hope that sharing these experiences will help other children who are learning to read. Special thanks also to Kelly Cleland, Julie Donovan, Joanne Harbaugh, and their outstanding colleagues at Windy Hill Elementary ... and to Leanne Meisinger at Calvert County Public Schools. We are deeply grateful to Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, and Nicole Lubar of Readsters for their invaluable contributions to this project.
• 18:00 - 18:30 Produced by Noel Gunther Edited by Christian Lindstrom Graphic Design Tina Chovanec Camera Richard Chisolm Audio Dwayne Dell For more information about teaching reading, please visit www.ReadingRockets.org Reading Rockets is a service of WETA, Washington, D.C. Copyright 2019, WETA, Washington, D.C.