English Language Arts - A Curriculum Guide for the Elementary Level (2002)

3. Integrate instruction of the cueing systems into daily reading activities.

As they read, students use the cueing systems of the English language. Cueing systems are sets of cues or clues built into the language and used by readers to access meaning from a print text. Strategic readers use combined knowledge of the pragmatic, textual, syntactical, semantic, and graphophonic cues to draw meaning from print. "These various sources of information interact in many complex ways during the process of reading" (Rumelhart, 1994, p. 864).

Research has shown that students who become proficient readers and writers use all of the cueing systems relatively simultaneously and are not overly reliant on one method. They use these systems to attain meaning and expect literacy events to be meaningful. All students can be taught strategies that integrate the use of all available text clues and students' background information in order to decode and comprehend texts. Teachers who consistently focus on the purpose of such strategies as being that of discovering and retaining meaning are likely to enhance the motivation and enthusiasm of their students in relation to literacy tasks. Teachers can help students attend to and learn strategies to use the cueing systems in their daily reading.

Pragmatic Cues

The pragmatic cueing system allows students to make predictions and understand text using what they know about the world. Through social interactions, students learn that language is used for particular purposes in particular situations. Students learn that a writer uses language to communicate a message using a particular style. Students develop the sense of authors using language for different intents with teacher guidance. Students need help constructing meaning by perceiving the intent, the point of view, the social context, the language community, and the style embedded in the author's message.

Strategies include:

helping students understand that the context influences how language is used and that their pragmatic expectations help them know what to expect in the text.
determining students' assumptions as they read. What will the student bring to the text? What will the teacher have to provide as background to help the students understand the text?
helping students read a variety of texts for a variety of purposes.
helping students understand the context in which the story was written and how the language of the story was affected by the situation.
reading dialogues in dialect to students.
using Wilkinson's Framework (Wilkinson, Stratta, & Dudley, 1974, p. 66). In this text, who communicates what to whom, how and why, and on what occasion?

Useful texts for grades 1 to 3 include:

Gentile, P. Big Trucks, Big Wheels
Collicutt, P. This Plan
Condon, P. Changes
Harris, R. H. Hi New Baby!
Munch, R. Mud Puddle
Ohi, R. The Bye Bye Pie
Saport, L. All the Pretty Little Horses: A Traditional Lullaby.

Useful texts for grades 4 and 5 include:

Bruchac, J. Between Earth and Sky: Legends of Native American Sacred Places
Coady, M. F. Lucy Maud and Me
Lelooska, C. Echoes of the Elders: The Stories and Paintings of Chief Lelooska
Salata, E. Mice in Centre Field.

Textual Cues

Students must develop a clear sense of how texts are structured. Stories, for example, have a predictable structure. They have certain types of beginnings and usually contain problems faced by the main characters and resolved through a series of episodes. Nonfiction or informational texts, on the other hand, are organized hierarchically and use graphic elements such as charts, graphs, and maps. Information texts use a variety of structures and as students construct meaning in print, they must sort, organize, and classify ideas used by the author. An awareness of the organizational patterns (e.g., time-order, cause-effect, comparison-contrast, listing, etc.) and textual features (e.g., titles, headings, italics, boldface, illustrations, diagrams, charts, references, bibliographies, indexes, glossaries, etc.) helps students comprehend the writer's message.

Strategies include:

exposing students to a range of texts including plays, poems, and prose. Discuss the textual cues that inform the students of the type of text (e.g., Once upon a time...).
using repeated readings to develop the concept of story.
helping students locate and discuss main idea sentences and paraphrase them.
helping students identify other features (e.g., headings, italicized words, diagrams and other graphics, chapter summaries, word or concept definitions in side margins) that help them read nonfiction.
developing organizational templates for the story grammar or maps with students. Examples of nonfiction organization include descriptive, chronological/sequential/episodic, compare and contrast, and cause and effect.

teaching story grammar and mapping. Examples of story grammar and pattern include repetitive, cumulative, or circular.

Example of A Story Map

Title:

Setting:
  Time (When?)
  Place (Where?)

Characters:
  Who are the characters? Who is the central character?
  What do the characters want to do?

Events or Action:
  First (Beginning)
  Next (Middle)
  Soon
  After that
  Finally (End)

Result or Conclusion:

Examples of story grammar questions include:

Where and when does the story take place?
Who are the main characters?

discussing and comparing stories and genres with students (e.g., picture books, fairy tales, myths, poems, plays, letters).

Useful texts for grades 1 to 3 include:

Opie, I. (ed.) Here Comes Mother Goose
Van Kampen, V. Bear Tales: Three Treasured Stories.

Useful texts for grades 4 and 5 include:

Schaefer, C. L. The Cooper Tin Cup
Spalding, A. Me and Mr. Mah.

Syntactic Cues

Students need to know that word order is important in English. Writers arrange words into sentence sequences that make sense and the meaning in these phrases and sentences is partly determined by their order and the rules that govern it. In order to comprehend statements, questions, exclamations, and the punctuation cues used by writers, and to anticipate what the words mean when used in phrases and sentences, students need to be aware of the language patterns. Reading a variety of texts written by different authors using different styles exposes students to the range of syntactic structures occurring in written language. Studying the sentence patterns used and paying attention to punctuation gives students an opportunity to understand the ways in which word order patterns contribute to meaning (Cook-Gumperz & Gumperz, 1981).

Metalinguistic awareness is one of the last and most difficult achievements of language development (Temple & Gillet, 1989). Over time, students become able to think about and talk about language. Their use of words to analyze and discuss language or metalinguistic awareness begins to emerge after five years of age. Students can begin to use and understand words like letter, sound, word, and sentence. The ability to state and understand other metalanguage such as noun, subject, and verb does not begin to emerge until middle or late childhood.

Strategies include:

Read aloud to students from a range of different types of books including books with repeated sentences in repetitive and cumulative plots (e.g., The Three Billy Goats Gruff) and in poems and rhymes (e.g., "The House That Jack Built").
Walk the sentences.
Highlight language experience sentences and use sentence frames with students.
Have students cut up a sentence written by the teacher or have older students cut up newspaper sentences.
Use a sentence maker or pocket chart.
Help students understand the flow, rhythm, and pauses in sentences.
Have students imitate, craft, and manipulate words and sentences - adding, deleting, combining, and varying the patterns.
Use the cloze technique to encourage students to hypothesize about appropriate words with respect to sentence structure.
Help students notice and discuss style (Leu & Kinzer, 1999, p. 389). Talk about the imagery, description, similes, metaphors, and turns of phrase in stories such as, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (e.g., "Now, my dears, ...").

Useful texts for grades 1 to 3 include:

Barclay, J. How Cold Was It?
David, S. The Rain Came Down
George, K. O. Little Dog Poems
Hutchins, P. Rosie’s Walk
Kellogg, S. Chicken Little.

Useful texts for grades 4 and 5 include:

Hutchins, P. Rosie’s Walk
Lawson, J. Bear on the Train
Merriam, E. It Doesn’t Always Have to Rhyme
Prelutsky, J. The Beauty of the Beast: Poems From the Animal Kingdom
Sendak, M. Chicken Soup With Rice
Trottier, M. One Is Canada
Viorst, J. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Grades 1 to 5 books that focus on individual words and how they work in phrases and sentences include:

Arnosky, J. A Keetle of Hawks and other Wildlife Groups
Barrett, J. A Snake Is Totally Tail
Gomi, T. Seeing, Saying, Doing, Playing: A Big Book of Action Words
Heller, R. Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book about Adjectives
Heller, R. Merry-Go-Round: A Book about Nouns
Heller, R. Up, Up and Away: A Book about Adverbs
Hoban, T. Dig, Drill, Dump, Fill
Hoban, T. Over, Under, and Through and Other Spatial Concepts
Janeczko, P. B. A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems
McMillan, B. Super, Super, Superwords
Terban, M. I Think I Thought and Other Tricky Verbs
Terban, M. Your Foot’s on My Feet! And Other Tricky Nouns.

Semantic Cues

Reading begins with elements of prior knowledge and expectations. Meaning exists both in the text and the reader. If students are to become successful, fluent readers, it is important to help them become sensitive to the meaning of ideas and experiences they read about, to build a schema for understanding events and things in print and in the world, and to help students understand and use the words that explain these ideas and experiences.

Language embodies meaning. As students mature in their language development, they are able to distinguish objects or activities from one another with greater accuracy and refine their "features" or layers of meaning. New concepts are learned and others are increasingly refined. Students begin, for example, to understand that words describing colour, size, and directionality can become more specific. Students grow in their understanding of semantic clues as they develop a greater store of words or names for all the things they perceive and all the activities they engage in or observe. Between the ages of nine and eleven, students establish most semantic distinctions (Flood & Salus, 1984).

In primary grades, teachers generally teach the words for already known concepts; in the intermediate grades, teachers generally teach both concepts and their word labels. Beck, McKeown, and Omanson (1987) note that a rich vocabulary program has the following features:

Students manipulate words in varied ways, including describing how they relate to other words and to students’ experiences.
Word study activities involve a great deal of discussion and students explain the associations and relationships they make.
Words are encountered many times.
Students are encouraged and supported in their efforts to use new vocabulary words outside of specific lessons.
Students make their thinking explicit and teachers model this process.

Strategies include:

Select key vocabulary words from one or more of these sources: (1) words used by students in their natural, oral language, (2) words that students will encounter in their reading materials, and (3) graded word lists (Leu & Kinzer, 1999, p. 337). Tap what students know about particular key words and build background to extend their understanding. Forge links between the written word and its concepts.
Use a vocabulary alert strategy. The teacher lists the words that students might have difficulty with on the chalkboard or overheard. Students rate the words with 1 (words that they have seen and used many times), 2 (words that they are somewhat acquainted with), or 3 (words that they have neither seen nor heard). The teacher discusses words that received the 2 and directly teaches the 3s.
Help students discover the multiple meanings for some words. Relate new meaning to old and build knowledge of new meanings.
Help students identify words that they are not certain of and hypothesize what they might mean.
Help students build word families and shades of meaning (e.g., for sensory words, emotions, etc.).
Use a modified cloze procedure where key words are omitted from print and students have to employ language cueing systems to reinsert them. Help students understand meaning through context and use of meaning-related information.
Teach key words and demonstrate their meaning.
Make a class thesaurus.
Help students attend to and understand how the morphemes (the smallest units of meaning in each language) affect meaning.
Use and develop concept webs with students (Johnson & Pearson, 1984; Cox, 1999). Variations of concept webs include: (1) Word or Semantic Maps - writing a word in a centre circle and putting important information about the word on rays from the centre (e.g., glitterings - shiny, sparkling, a mirror, a Christmas tree, a ring, snow); (2) Feature Analysis - classifying groups of related words (e.g., different kinds of reptiles or dinosaurs) according to their distinguishing characteristics; (3) Word Sorts - placing words from a theme or topic into two or more categories (e.g., plant and animal); and (4) Word Posters or Charts - drawing a picture to illustrate a word (usually accompanied by the word and a sentence to illustrate it).
Talk about and use several times effective words to remember (e.g., gargantuan).
Play with words (Geller, 1985): synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, onomatopoeia, palindromes (mom, Bob, dad), riddles, puns, conundrums, hink-pinks (What do you call a gargoyle? A pout spout?), sniglets (spork - plastic eating utensil), jokes, tongue twisters, board games, and others.
Help students learn how to use a dictionary and thesaurus.
Have students make their own dictionaries to define, explain, and illustrate the key words associated with a theme or topic.
Help students develop word analysis skills and strategies. Word analysis strategies are used to figure out words that are not recognized at sight. There are several strategies that can be used to identify unknown words, including:
1. Context analysis: using the meaning of the surrounding words and phrases as well as illustrations to identify unknown words.
2. Structural (morphemic) analysis: using word parts like affixes and base words to identify unknown words.
3. Sound (graphophonic) analysis: using the letter sounds within the words to get an approximate pronunciation to identify unknown words.
4. Dictionary: using the dictionary to identify unknown words.
Good readers use all four strategies depending upon the type of material to be read, the purpose, and their ability.

Useful texts for grades 1 to 3 include:

Bagert, B. The Gooch Machine: Poems for Children to Perform
Child, L. I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato
Gwynne, F. A Chocolate Moose for Dinner
Hoberman, M. A House Is a House For Me
Parrish, P. Teach Us, Amelia Bedelia
Stevenson, J. Don’t Make Me Laugh
Taback, S. Joseph Had a Little Overcoat.

Useful texts for grades 4 and 5 include:

Clement, G. The Great Poochini
Janeczko, P. B. A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems
Joslin, S. The Night They Stole the Alphabet
Longman, H. What’s Behind the Word?
Major, K. Eh? to Zed: A Canadian AbeCedarium.

Students need a variety of word identification skills to arrive at the meaning of what they read, including a basic sight vocabulary. Effective readers develop and continually expand a basic sight vocabulary that is made up of words that are recognized instantly and many words that are not spelled the way they sound (e.g., know, they, should). Teachers should remember that word identification is only one tool to help students get at the meaning of written language. Students need many opportunities to develop word attack strategies, including sight word recognition, phonological and structural analysis, and contextual analysis. Sample sight words useful in reading (and writing) are listed below.

By the end of grade 1, most students will recognize by sight the following words (Johnson & Pearson, 1984; Cox, 1999):

a, above, across, after, again, air, all, am, and, are, art, as, ask, at
back, be, been, by, before, behind, big, black, book, boy, but
came, can, car, children, come, could
day, days, did, didn’t, do, don’t, door, down
end, ever
feet, find, first, five, for, four, from
gave, get, girl, give, go, going, gone, good, got, great
had, hand, hard, has, have, he, help, her, here, high, him, home, house, how
I, if, I’m, in, into, is, it, its, it
just
keep, kind, know
let, letter, like, little, look, love
make, making, man, may, me, men, miss, Miss, money, more, most, mother, Mr., Mrs., Ms., must, my
name, never, new, night, no, not, now
of, often, off, old, on, only, one, open, or, other, our, out, over
part, past, play, point, put
really, red, right, room, run
said, saw, say, school, see, seen, shall, she, short, should, six, so, some, something, soon, still, such
table, take, than, that, the, them, then, there, their, these, they, think, this, those, though, three, time, to, today, too, took, top, two
under, up, upon, us
very
want, wanted, was, way, we, well, went, were, what, when, where, which, who, why, will, with, work, would
year, years, yet, you, yours

Note: Number and colour words could be added to this list. Other lists such as the Dolch Word List (1948) could also be used as a guide.

Grades 3 to 5 students can benefit from lessons on prefixes, root words, and suffixes (Tarasoff, 1990). Various researchers (White, Sowell, & Yanagihara, 1989; Hodges, 1981; Tarasoff, 1990) note that exposure to the most common affixes and root words assist students in their word attack and spelling. After being introduced to the concepts of prefix, root word, and suffix, students can use them to figure out most of the words they will encounter or need to spell at the Elementary Level.

Prefixes

un, dis (not)
in, im, ir, non (not)
re (again, back)

When students understand these, then the teacher can introduce alternative meanings for:

un (opposite)
dis (reversal)
in (into)

Then:

en, em (in, into, cover)
trans (over)
mis (wrongly)

Additional prefixes:

pro (in favour of)
pre (before)
ad (to, toward)
com, con, co (with, together)
e, ex (out of former)
sub (under, beneath)
ab (away from)
be (make, thoroughly, overly)
de (downward, undoing)
tri (three)
super (above, beyond)
anti (against)
auto (self)
post (after)

Root Words

aqua (water)
meter (measure)
tel(e) (far)
phon (sound)
scope (sight)
the(o) (god)
pend (hand)
port (carry, harbour, entrance)
sign (sign, mark)
cred (believe)
flor (flower)
bio (life)
dict (say)
mid, miss (send)
duc(t) (to lead)
scop(e) (view)
scrib, script (write)
graph, gram (write)
ply (fold)
flec, flex (bend)
chron(o) (time)
man (hand)
cent (hundred)
duc(t) (lead)
micro (small)

Suffixes

Common inflection endings:

s/es
ed
ing
ly (like)
er, est (comparison, one who)
possessives: 's, s'
ion, ation (state of)
able (can be done)
al (in manner of)
y (marked by)
ness (state of being)

Additional suffixes:

ture (result of)
ive (that which)
ment (state of)
ous (full of)
able (can be done)
less (without)
ic (dealing with)
ish (like)
age (state of)
ful (full of)
er, or, ar, ant, ent, ist, ian (one who)
ify (to make)
ism (belief in)
let (little)
ory, ery (where it is made)
ward (in direction of)
logy (study of)
en (made of)

As students expand their conceptual and experiential backgrounds, they expand and refine their knowledge of words and word parts. By grade 3, most students' structural analysis includes knowledge of common affixes and root words. The previous affixes cover approximately 75% of the prefixes and 85% of the suffixed words in school printed language for grades 3 to 9 and provide a focus for the deliberate or systematic instruction for "middle elementary students" (White, Sowell, & Yanagihana, 1989, p. 307; Tarasoff, 1990, p. 73). Lists such as these are not to be memorized by students but are to be used to help students develop a sense of how words are formed and how meaning is derived. "Learning the meanings of the affixes and root words must be integrated with word study in the context of other studies and should continue through the grades" (Tarasoff, 1990, p. 74).

Effective vocabulary instruction occurs when:

students are provided multiple exposure to words in a variety of contexts over time
words are taught in the context of a selection or unit
teachers help students activate prior knowledge when learning new words
relationships are drawn between new words and known words and concepts
students are taught to use context clues and reference resources such as dictionaries to enhance their word knowledge
students are encouraged to interact with the words so they are able to process them deeply (Watts, 1995, pp. 399-424).

Graphophonic Cues

All students need to learn a range of reading strategies including those associated with the graphophonic cueing system. Ongoing and systematic instruction and exploration of the sound-symbol relationships of language based on learner needs and development can help students become independent readers. Using effective strategies, teachers can plan meaningful instruction and experiences for the whole class, small groups, and individual students.

Effective instruction takes into consideration the following guidelines:

"To learn to read, students need to be attentive to the purposes of written language, the distinctive features of the alphabet, and the relationship of spoken to written language" (Hiebert, Pearson, Taylor, Richardson, & Paris, 1998).
Good readers use the graphophonic cueing system by "(1) visually recognizing known patterns of letters, (2) translating those patterns into the sounds they represent, and (3) blending the sounds together to see if they form a sensible, recognizable word" (May, 1994).
Graphophonics is an essential part of the reading process but it should never dominate reading instruction.
The purpose of graphophonic instruction is to help students learn to "recognize words, quickly and automatically, so that they can turn their attention to comprehension of the text" (Stahl, 1992).
Graphophonic knowledge is developmental (Dahl, Scharer, Lawson, & Grogan, 2001). A suggested instructional sequence for phonological and graphophonic awareness is found on pages 256-257.
Graphophonic knowledge is important not for itself but in its application (Dahl, Scharer, Lawson, & Grogan, 2001). Effective reading instruction helps students learn to use graphophonic knowledge along with their prior knowledge, and in context rather than in isolation.
Effective graphophonic instruction presents words in a whole, to part, to whole context (Flood & Lapp, 1994; Trachtenburg, 1990).
Students should be given some explicit instruction to help them develop their phonological and graphophonic knowledge, skills, and strategies, but this should be functional. Decoding knowledge is not important when a word's sound does not help a reader identify the word's meaning (Leu & Kinzer, 1999, p. 79). Rules and generalizations are not important when they are confusing or inconsistent. For example, "the e at the end of a word makes the vowel long" rule is frequently broken in words seen by beginning readers (come, done, some).
"Worksheets and rote drills are not the best means of developing phonics knowledge" (Cunningham, 1990). Students need plenty of experience with language in context and with manipulable materials to compare words, such as pocket charts for sorting picture cards by sound and word cards by spelling pattern (Juel & Minden-Cupp, 2000).
Students in the first grade with minimal reading skill can benefit from teacher-modeled word recognition strategies such as chunking of words into component units (word families), finding little words in big ones, sounding and blending individual phonemes, and considering known letter sounds and what makes contextual sense (Juel & Minden-Cupp, 2000).
Graphophonic instruction is based on assessment and teacher insight into the information and strategies students need within the context of their language arts program (Dahl, Scharer, Lawson, & Grogan, 2001).

Some Key Words and Phrases for Teachers

Phoneme: A sound, the smallest unit of speech that distinguishes one word from another.

Phonemic Awareness: The ability to hear specific sounds that make up spoken words.

Phonological Awareness: The ability not only to hear specific sounds that make up words but also the words within sentences, rhyming units within words, syllables within words, and features of individual phonemes (e.g., how the mouth, tongue, vocal chords, and teeth are used to produce the sound).

Phonics: The ability to recognize the sound-spelling relationships associated with print.

Students develop their graphophonic understanding and repertoire of strategies in the following stages:

Readers develop their phonemic/phonological awareness.
Readers develop their concepts of a "letter" and the alphabet.
Readers develop their concept of "word".
Readers develop a repertoire of sound-letter strategies.