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Raynor 01

a.)Whole word instruction is where a teacher flashes a child a card and says the name and the child repeats it. The set starts out small then increases.

b.)Phonics instruction starts with a few letters and sounds then more are added and then digraphs are added. Sight words are developed as the words are presented over and over. It teaches alphabetic principles and phoneme – letter correspondences.

c.) Meaning-emphasis instruction is where the child dictates a story and is taught to read their own story.  It focuses on the child’s previous experiences.

d.)Prescriptive instruction teaches specific skills through a scope and sequence. This instruction varies from whole group to small group and with assessments. Responsive instruction is based on the needs of the children through scaffolding during the reading of real books.

e.)A little of everything will hit all areas. Different methods a focus on instructional levels will  help all students.

f.) Our school uses prescriptive instruction. We have a pacing guide that plans our year with our basal series. I follow that plan and incorporate guided reading groups using instructional levels using reading, writing and word study.

Morris and Gaffney

Luke was the eighth grade boy who was being tutored for the school year. He struggled with fluency and speed in reading. He has a seizure disorder and ADD.  He was about four years behind in his reading.  His word recognition and comprehension were pretty good, but struggled with fluency and speed.  When I was teaching third grade, I had a few students with his similar strengths and that one area of weakness.

The lesson included Luke listening to part of the book at home that was recorded for him. He was to read aloud that section the next day as a “homework check.” The guided reading portion consisted reading aloud on instructional text alternating between Luke and the tutor,  repeated readings, and tutor read aloud. I do the same with my small guided reading groups, except I don’t keep track of their rate.

Reading in phrases helped Luke improve his fluency and improved his word recognition.  He was able to use the tape recordings as a model of fluent reading. When using the tapes, he was able to use all his semantic and syntactic clues to read.

Kintsch and Vipond (1979)

Texts need to be coherent in order for it to be comprehended well. When reading a text, coherence is established when the propositions are related.  A text base has to have meaning that separates it from unrelated propositions. Several propositions that are connected by the same argument and then begins the process of comprehension. Working memory plays a role in coherent texts because you are able to remember the meaning better when there is coherence between the sentences. When a new concept is introduced you have to connect it to previous sentences making inferences and using your working memory.

Baddeley’s Model

His model of working memory has a central component and three subsystems. The main component called the central executive is in control of the processes, actions and pays attention to relevant information and gets rid of irrelevant information and actions. It is also in charge of  the integration of information and coordinates multiple processes along with the subsystems of working memory. The phonological loop allows you to remember short lists of words or numbers only when repeating aloud. The  visuo-spatial sketch pad allows you to remember mental maps and images. This consists of two subsystems that allow visual and spacial organization.  The episodic buffer temporarily allows phonological, visual and spacial organization in a unitary episodic representation.

The Construction Integration Model explains comprehension as a bottom up process because this theory constructs not only the meaning of the sentence but several others that will be applied later in a different context. This happens later because of the constraint satisfaction process that suppresses the constructions that don’t make sense in the text but makes more obvious the ones that do, integrating it into meaning into the correct sentence. While reading two totally different sentences with the same word, activation will focus on the networks that fit together and deactivate the outliers during the activation stage. When reading two sentences with the same word, an initial construction of the meanings of the word will happen, then the correct proposition will be used due to the use of prior knowledge.


1.Propositions are the words in sentences that give certain words their meaning allowing the reader to understand the sentence as a whole. Propositions are idea units, combining more than one word in a schematic form (Kintsch 2004).  An example: The chameleon changed colors to hide from the predator.

2.The surface-level memory does not hold information long unless in a text where the words are easily remembered as in a poem.  Here the reader forms a mental representation of the text read. Propositional level memory is where semantic meaning is constructed from the text. A reader is able to understand what the words mean. Atomic proposition is where you take the most important words from the sentence to construct meaning and not take all the words. Complex proposition is where many atomic propositions are linked together because there is a relationship among the words in the text. Here this is used to count the ideas in a text, not to understand it.


a.) The Dual Route Model of reading is where we are able to read words and nonwords and pronounce irregular words using what we know about language. When reading irregular words we take a route to reading them and look for their meaning. When reading nonwords we use our phonological knowledge to help us sound out the word, like beginning readers do when first learning how to read.

b.)When looking at nonwords, Kay and Marcel (1981) state that it depends on the other words on the list as to how a nonword is read. If other words on the list are pronounced and a nonword appears, that nonword with the same spelling pattern will be pronounced in that same similar manner.  It takes more than the knowlege of graphemes to phonemes to read nonwords.  It does not fit the Dual Route Model of reading.

c.)This model shows two direct routes taken when reading. Here this model is basically saying you need the phonological and orthographic processor  which then takes you right to the meaning processor to read the word.  The other route taken is the direct route straight to the meaning to read the word. Adams Model uses all processors but also shows good readers use the same processess.

Fleisher et al (1979)

a.) When a reader has good word recognition in a text they don’t spend a lot of time decoding words. But a good reader also has to understand the text. Using prior knowledge about a topic is what helps a reader understand a text. Usually poor readers don’t have that prior knowledge because they don’t have the exposure to text like students with good knowledge do.

b.)It makes sense to see poor readers able to recognize words faster in context after being trained to read them individually. It also makes sense that just because they can read them at a faster rate, doesn’t mean they actually understand them in the context they are reading. That is why it is important to teach words in context and to read and reread and discuss stories to provide that exposure to topics of all sorts exposing students to words that pertain to that topic.

Ehri (1998)

a.) She says that readers learn specific graphemes that are seen in words and use that grapheme knowledge when reading words that just don’t have single phonemic sounds. Readers learn those pronunciations and use their phonemic knowledge in order to remember what those sounds are when recognized in words. This combination of grapheme and phoneme knowledge is remembered and stored when reading and when spelling words.

b.) Graphophonemic awareness is understanding that more than one letter makes up a sound or part of a word. Words are not all single phonemic sounds. This is where learning spelling patterns comes into play. Learning just individual phonemes does not allow a beginning reader to read all words because not all of them are made up of single phonemes.

The Context processor determines the meaning of the word in the context provided. When reading, this processor takes the text as the bigger picture, as the whole, and determines the meaning of the words. It can also lend meaning to incorrect words until the reader recognizes that is doesn’t make sense, then reread for correction.  Readers are able to understand what is read by recognizing the letters and the correct sounds which leads them to the word where the Meaning  Processor is able to determine its meaning within the text.  Skilled readers are able to read with ease until they come to an unfamiliar word where the context processor and meaning processor will be triggered each time you come across that word in that context to construct meaning until it becomes familiar.


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