Literacy+for+Low-level+Students

Kia ora koutou,

Great to meet you all today. I have attached some resources below and have also remembered a couple more ideas. If anything, I would like you to:
 * draw struggling readers' attention to letter combinations within words and the sounds they create. These students need it. Don't think it is too primary school...they will appreciate it! Trust me!
 * encourage these students to 'chunk' words using onset/rime, prefixes and suffixes, phonemes (sounds), syllables and use analogy
 * do this in an explicit and systematic way (Homework focus. One letter combination a week. Friday lesson)

A fun activity to enhance vocabulary is to get students to have an item (boys may like a piece of machinery) or a picture (I have a lot of Pacifica boys who draw fantastic designs) and they have to describe it to a partner (and get them to draw it) without the partner seeing it. This forces them to find the exact word.

Another point of discussion to help discuss language is to compare it to your students' native language. When I introduced adjectives I asked where adjectives came in Tongan language (after the noun), Maori (I can speak Maori so that helps!) and Samoan.

An example of a Word Wall:

"Some of us struggle with the /sch/ sound. Today we are going to explore how we might spell this. In groups write down all the words you can think of that start with the /sch/ sound"

School Skate Scavenger Scarf Scholarship Schedule Scheme

"OK so when we are spelling something or decoding something we can try out the 'sch', 'sk' and 'sc' letter combinations." From here it would be appropriate to teach about Greek, Latin and Anglo-saxon spellings.

One book I would highly reccomend for this type of lesson is The Phonics Handbook by Tom Nicholson. It guides you through all these types of letter combinations and the rules that come with them (y makes a /y/ (yellow) /e/ (chimney) and /ie/ (why) sound but only makes a /y/ sound at the beginning of words).



Here is an example of a Tic Tac Toe activity. Keep in mind this was used with a top year 9 class! Our low level guys would need something simpler..perhaps language based.



Here is the powerpoint from today. There are a lot of ideas on here so any queries just post on this wiki or email me at b.mcleod@gc.ac.nz.



Here are the handouts from today.



Here is an idea for ensuring language focus is explicit and systematic. Once you know what exactly your students need you can plan your attack!!



Here is an example of using continuums.

One quote from a reading I did thet gave me hope was, 'when given systematic, intentional instruction, the skill of decoding multisyllabic words is attainable by most struggling secondary readers. A number of studies have demonstrated that it is not too late for struggling secondary readers to learn to read mulltisyllabic words and to improve their overall reading ability' (Archer, Gleason & Vachon, 2003).

I forgot to say: These students **are** hard work and they will have bad days. Sometimes it will feel as if you are bashing your head on a brick wall! So many teachers write these guys off, but we need to realise where they are at and work with them at their level. So they are not ready for Level One literacy yet...they could be next year after a year of focused, skills based, lessons by an optimistic teacher who believes in them! That's you!

Thanks team. Enjoy!

Bridget