Ready4Reading Evidence Portfolio
10
• Morphological Awareness. Morphological awareness is the ability to think about and manipulate morphemes, which are the smallest unit of language with meaning (Goodwin & Ahn, 2013). Research demonstrates that awareness of both free morphemes (independent root words) and bound morphemes (word elements that cannot stand alone, such as prefixes, suffixes, and endings that indicate possessives, plurals, and verb tenses) predicts decoding, word reading, and comprehension skills (Apel, 2014; Apel et al., 2021; Castle et al., 2018; Duncan, 2018; Goodwin et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2022; Levesque et al., 2020). This is because knowledge of morphemes enables individuals to more efficiently decode larger chunks of orthographic elements and better understand the meaning of words (Apel, 2014; Apel et al., 2021; Goodwin & Ahn, 2013; Levesque et al., 2020). • Orthographic mapping. Orthographic mapping is the process of connecting a word’s orthographic information (spelling) to its pronunciation (phonology) and semantic information (meaning). Research shows that mastery of these skills helps students read more fluently by better storing words in memory (Ehri, 2005; 2014, 2020; Kilpatrick, 2015). When readers encounter an unfamiliar word, they decode it by converting graphemes (letters or groups of letters) and then blending them to form pronunciations of words. After doing this a few times, the spelling is retained in memory, connected to its pronunciation and meaning. The next time they see the word, they recognize it immediately, as seeing the spelling activates a lexical match in memory. This process is essential for students as they free up their working memory to focus on the meaning and comprehension of what they are reading rather than working hard to decode each word they encounter. It enables readers to read words by sight (Ehri, 2014; Ehri, 2020). • High-Frequency Words. The What Works Clearinghouse recommends teaching high- frequency words with regular and irregular sound spellings “so that students can recognize them efficiently” (Foorman et al., 2016, p. 28). Word recognition occurs in developmental stages, based on knowledge of the alphabetic principle, sound-symbol correspondences, and the size of the child’s sight -word vocabulary (Combs, 2012). • Reading Practice . Research suggests that children need to apply knowledge of taught grapheme – phoneme correspondences and orthographic patterns to decode, spell, and read effectively (Mesmer, 2005; Savage et al., 2018; Weiser & Mathes, 2011). Controlled or decodable texts allow beginning readers to rely more on decoding (Adams, 1994; Juel & Roper-Schneider, 1985), apply phonics skills, and improve their alphabetic knowledge, word identification, phonemic awareness, spelling proficiency, comprehension, and reading fluency (Beverly et al., 2009; Buckingham, 2020; Cheatham & Allor, 2012; Hiebert & Fisher, 2007; Mesmer, 2008; Mesmer et al., 2012; Stahl, 2011). Once students become automatic in recognizing the majority of words in a text, however, research suggests they should move on to progressively more challenging texts that provide new vocabulary and address more complex ideas (Adams, 2009; Harmon & Wood, 2018). Texts on the same topic are likely to share vocabulary, and the familiarity with terms that students have acquired from more straightforward texts will enable them to read increasingly challenging texts (Allor et al., 2022; Conradi Smith et al., 2022). Much research points to the variety of learning benefits that can result from such instructional programming, particularly that which organizes readings around
© Johns Hopkins University, 2023
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs