How many syllables in the word sailed?
20% said 2
7% said 3
73% said 1
It’s surprising how many adults still have trouble with syllables. The most helpful key is that a syllable always contains a sounded vowel. Digraphs and diphthongs are counted as one vowel sound. The word sailed is made up from these sounds: /s//a//l//d/. There is one sounded vowel – and one syllable!
Answer the question for a chance to win Caesar Pleaser, a game for practicing Latin affixes and roots!
Gina Cooke, trainer and director of Valley of Peoria Learning Center and presenter at IDA, says that the spelling of schwa, as elusive as it seems, can be taught. Schwa, often represented by the upside down letter e, and pronounced with a diminished form of whatever vowel represents it, is much more difficult to spell than to read. The reason for this is that virtually any vowel can make the schwa sound in an unaccented syllable (about, mitten, pencil, season, unless). Cooke says that teaching phonology, including stress (accent), is important, but incomplete. Teaching morphemes helps kids understand that spellings are often retained when the word form changes, even when there is a change in the accent (mason – masonic; television – telepathy). Teaching etymology is important, too, says Cooke. The schwa occurs in multisyllabic words, which are often of Greek or Latin origin. Cooke advises against over-enunciation or “falsification” of the vowel sound when teaching. Instead, use multisensory strategies to incorporate all three components of our “morphophonemic” language (phonology, etymology, and morphology) when teaching this diminutive but common letter sound.
According to G. Emerson Dickman, JD, former National IDA President and presenter at the 2010 IDA conference, a learning disability is determined not so much by the disability itself but its social consequences.
A working definition by Dickman and researcher Louisa Moats, Ph.D. (2008), is a “profile of strengths and relative weaknesses, of presumed neurobiological origin, that is intrinsic to the individual. Such relative weaknesses predict development of learning and adaptive functions that have academic, vocational, and/or social and emotional consequences in the culture in which the individual is expected to perform (emphasis added).”
Dawn Flanagan, Ph.D., professor at St. John’s College, spoke at IDA in October on the patterns of strengths and weaknesses of students who do not respond well to intervention in the model commonly known as Response to Intervention, or RTI. Dr. Flanagan believes in a model for identification for special services that looks at strengths and weakness in the profile of a child’s cognitive abilities in addition to achievement. Some supporters of RTI believe that the model itself, students’ non-response to three levels of increasingly intensive instruction, is enough to serve as criteria for eligibility for special education services. RTI is an insightful model for classroom instruction and remediation. However, cognitive testing gives us the additional information needed to make accurate decisions about placement for students who fail to respond. Additionally, cognitive testing can tell educators which underlying processes (working memory, processing speed, auditory processing etc.) underlie a student’s difficulties in a given area.
In the wake of the recent documentary, Waiting for Superman, Diana Ravitch, Ph.D., lays straight commonly held perceptions about teachers and the teaching profession at Rice University, Houston. Value added measures for evaluating teachers are full of flaws, one of which is the margin of error in calculating it. Many charter schools fare no better than their public counterparts, yet they were held up in the movie as an answer to the need for school reform. Many people think following a business model would improve our public schools, yet one of the primary markers for business success is how workers are treated and the value they perceive they serve for the company – a far cry from the working conditions of the vast majority of teachers. Shocking scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress referred to in the movie were misrepresented, according to Ravitch. See her full address sponsored by the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program (REEP), Kipp Academy, and Teach for America, Reflections on What I Have Learned About School Reform.
This forum is for you. The purpose is to share activities that target an area of need for many students, a need that causes a gap that is difficult for teachers to bridge: weakness in oral language. What have you found to be effective in your classrooms, therapy sessions, or with your children at home that boost vocabulary and increase knowledge in the content areas? Join us for discussion at www.readingteachersnetwork.org
New teacher contracts which rewarded teachers for their performance in exchange for tenure was one of the major changes proposed by Michelle Rhee, schools chancellor of the Washington D. C. schools since 2007. Read more about efforts made by Rhee and Mayor Adrian Fenty to overhaul the public schools before they both left their offices beginning this month.
Louisa Moats, Ph. D., author of the book, Speech to Print, spoke at IDA about the complicated matter of analyzing students’ spelling errors, and then deciding what to teach. First, consider whether the child has represented the phoneme with any symbol at all. Is it represented in a reasonable way? For example, the word, truck, spelled chruck would be entirely reasonable considering a child’s understanding of the pronunciation of the blend tr- at the beginning of a syllable. Are there phonemes in the word that share features with other phonemes? An example might be /m/, /n/, and /ng/, all of which are nasal sounds and easily confused. Is the child having trouble with deletion of letters in blends? How about “liquid” sounds like /l/ and /r/. “Liquids, glides, and nasal sounds are all more difficult than [consonant sounds that are] stops,” says Moats .
The key to preventing reading failure is informed and effective instruction. The International Dyslexia Association has developed a statement called Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading which specifies what all teachers of reading must know and be able to do, as well as more detailed information outlining necessary standards for teachers of students with dyslexia and related reading disorders. This statement can be accessed through the above link, or through the IDA website at www.interdys.org. Among the authors of the document is Suzanne Carreker, vice president of research and programs, Neuhaus Education Center.