Module 5: Vocabulary Development

            Throughout the decodable readers each week, the students are taught to “tap out a word” if they come across a word that they have trouble reading. They sound out each letter in the word in order to pronounce the word. I found that one of my struggling readers has seemed to memorize the text by the end of the week. When he is introduced a new text the following week, he pulls names and words from the previous text. I have to remind him to slow down while reading and sound out each letter in the words that he is reading. It was very helpful to be reminded of the semantic, syntactic, and phonetic cues in order to ask students while they are reading. I also found it very informative to read about how necessary it is for students to balance their reading strategies. Throughout the school day, we are constantly singing songs in order for the students to learn a variety of subjects. They recently learned the “ck” ending of words by making sock puppets and singing a song to go along with it. They loved being able to do this and saw it as a fun and interactive activity.

            In the classroom where I completed my student teaching, we constantly had the students follow along reading a story with a tape. While this was effective for some students, I found that many of the students had a difficult time following along with the story or paying attention. Throughout the school week in my currently classroom, the students read their decodable reader about 5 or 6 times in the classroom throughout the week. By the end of the week, a majority of the students are able to read the text fluently.