Feature Guide

Feature Guide

What is it?

Feature guides are essentially "grading" rubrics for spelling inventories that focus on the aspects of words, such as beginning sounds, vowel sounds, suffixes, etc. Many can be found in the Words Their Way book.

(https://www.secondstorywindow.net/a-teachers-guide-to-words-their-way/)

Why is it important?

Feature guides are a well oiled machine that break down what a student excelled and struggled at within their spelling inventories. Through the categorization of different word aspects in the form of columns, a teacher can directly see and determine what developmental spelling stages their students are at and what they as a teacher need to focus more on teaching in the classroom in terms of phonics instruction.

Kinetic Reversal

Kinetic Reversal

What is it?

Kinetic reversals occur when a child is forming the pencil strokes on paper, showing a tendency to confuse words that are mirror images of each other such as saw and was; ton and not. This is a movement issue with the hand motions of the child.

(https://ilslearningcorner.com/2016-07-reversals-why-my-child-cant-grasp-letter-and-number-reversals-b-d-6-9-not-always-dyslexia/)

Why is it important?

Kinetic reversals are likely not a sign that a child is not understanding the relations between letters and sounds. Rather, this is a habit that needs to be broken so that the child can further be successful in writing. A constant use of kinetic reversals could indicate a visual discrimination problem such as dyslexia, however, which is important because if that is the case of the student, then they need the proper accommodations so that their opportunity of learning how to read and write is as fair as their peers'.

Static Reversal

Static Reversal

What is it?

Static reversals happen when the child is confused on the proper orientation of the letter or the order of letters in a word (directionality). 

(https://ilslearningcorner.com/2016-07-reversals-why-my-child-cant-grasp-letter-and-number-reversals-b-d-6-9-not-always-dyslexia/)

Why is it important?

Static reversals do not always mean that a student is having trouble with their understanding of letter to sound relations. Static reversals could indicate that the student simply does not find the orientation of a letter to be as important as the other factors of spelling. Static reversal is important to recognize because it is a habit that needs to be broken. Constant static reversal souls also be a possible sign of dyslexia, which is very important to catch so that a child can get the accommodations they need to learn to read and write as effectively as their peers.

Spelling Inventory

Spelling Inventory

What is it?

Lists of words that were chosen to represent a variety of spelling features at increasing levels of difficulty.

(https://mypearsontraining.com/assets/files/documents/TG_WTW_Assessment.pdf)

Why is it important?

Spelling inventories are great tools for teachers to determine what developmental writing stages their students are at, what students are and are not struggling on spelling-wise, and what they as teachers can do and focus more intently on in order to enhance their students' writing abilities. Spelling inventories are not graded assignments, therefore making it a calmer, less stressful experience for students. 

Analytic phonics

Analytic Phonics

What is it?

 A method of teaching phonics that has children ‘analyzing a word’, taking clues from recognition of the whole word, the initial sound and the context.

(http://www.getreadingright.com.au/analytic-phonics-vs-synthetic-phonics/)

Why is it important?

Analytic phonics shows us as instructors what to stray away from while teaching our students how to read and write. Analytic phonics tends to encourage guessing and put too much focus and attention on the first phoneme. Rather than study how important each letter's position in the word is, analytic phonics draws attention to one specific sound, onset, or rhyme in order to figure out what the word could be. It spends more time teaching students what sound each letter in the alphabet makes rather than how these sounds interact with one another to form new sounds. This is going to make reading fairly tricky and spelling very frustrating for the student.

Synthetic Phonics

Synthetic Phonics

What is it?

Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching where words are broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes). Children learn to make connections between the letters of written texts (graphemes, or letter symbols) and the sounds of spoken language.

(https://readingeggs.com/articles/2012/06/22/synthetic-phonics/)

Why is it important?

Synthetic phonics is a clear and direct way of teaching students how to read and write. By focusing on the building blocks of words (phonemes), students are learning the very essence of letters and how letters can join their sounds together to make the words we speak and read. This method of teaching phonics is simply rolling out the foundation of words without getting too complicated and confusing. Through the use of synthetic phonics, students ca develop a basic understanding of word construction allowing them to possibly be able to read and write unknown words independently. 

Phonemes

Phonemes

What is it?

Any of the abstract units of the phonetic system of a language that correspond to a set of similar speech sounds (such as the velar \k\ of cool and the palatal \k\ of keel) which are perceived to be a single distinctive sound in the language.

(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phoneme)

Why is it important?

Phonemes are the building blocks of words; it's basically impossible to be capable of reading and writing without knowing what phonemes are. An understanding of phonemes is a great (and necessary) skill for a child to have because they recognize that letters have their own sounds and that these sounds can change depending on where the letters are at in the word. By having this skill, children can approach unknown words with prior knowledge that can aid them in sounding the word out and discovering what it is. This same idea can go for writing as well; phonemes make learning how to read and write much easier and can gauge where a student is at developmentally (in terms of phonics). 

Morphemes

Morphemes

What is it?

 A distinctive collocation of phonemes (such as the free form pin or the bound form -s of pins) having no smaller meaningful parts.

(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morpheme)

Why is it important?

Morphemes are essentially the smallest units of language and help to structure words by taking on the form of prefixes, suffixes, and base words. Morphemes can be used and swapped among words while still maintaining the same meaning (therefore making some morphemes universal). By helping a child to become aware and educated on morphemes, they are developing a better understanding of  of what an unknown word could mean and how to spell a word they have never attempted before. An understanding of morphemes could be a great tool set for students as they continue enhancing their literary skills.