A daily academic task required of students in first grade is decoding words. A student with low working memory might be challenged due to the fact that the student needs to keep each individual phoneme in his/her working memory as he/she works to blend them.
For example, in decoding the word "cat", the student would have to decode and keep the three phonemes of /c/ /a/ /t/ in his/her working memory and then blend them.
The task might be changed by repeatedly instructing students to blend words in the following way:
1. say /k/
2. point to "a" and say /a/.
3. go back to the beginning of the word and say /ka/ as you slide under the "ca"
4.point to the "t" and say /t/
5. then say /ka/ /t/
6. then /kat/
7. finally read cat
4 comments:
Amiee,
Very good point, I will remember to do this when I am working with children in my literacy centers. As students begin to move on to larger words having them sound out word family chunks would also help.
Kelli
Amiee, Really good point!!
I think this even applies to the struggling readers in the upper grades as we see them struggle to sound out unknown words, sometimes using the chucking skills they've learned. The next (working memory difficult) step once they pronounce the word would be to put meaning to it/find meanng for it and then add that meaning to the context of the other words in the sentence, and then of course remember all of what they have read in order to recall info or answer a comprehension or inference question!
I like how you have the students build up to the whole word. It must increase the confidence of the students talking it one letter sound at a time and building it up to a word. I like how you have them pull it all together and read the word twice. I think it will help them especially when they get to larger words.
I really like the idea of repeatedly blending the sounds together as you add each new phoneme. Not only does it help with working memory, but it helps to give the students more practice on how to blend phonemes using the repetition. Great idea!
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