Suggestions for Instruction for Profile 6 Learners

Reading components work together. Increasing skill on any component increases skill on the others.

Word Recognition:

• Phonological Awareness:
  
  To know just which letter combinations and syllable forms that a learner has not mastered, you can administer a simple word attack assessment. It will save instructional time in that you will be able to zero in on just those unmastered phonic elements that are holding up a learner's progress.

Spelling:

• Have your learners mastered these prerequisite skills to accurate spelling?
  
  
  1. Do they know the names and sounds of the consonants with automaticity?
  2. Do they know the names and the long and short sounds of the vowels with automaticity?
  3. Do they know the principles of open and closed syllables?
  4. Do they understand segmentation/chunking practices?
  
  
  
  If you know they have not mastered the above skills to the point of being able to apply them when they begin to spell a word, teach through the sequence, even beginning with sounds of the consonants.

• Like Profile 4 and 5 readers, those in Profile 6 are able to spell as well as they can decode. Even though the average score on the DAR spelling subtest is lower than that on the DAR word recognition subtest, the observed difference is not significant. This means that these readers are able to encode (spell) most of the letter combinations that they can decode (read). What does this possibly say about their phonological awareness abilities?
  
  
  1. Averages for both native speakers of English (NSE) and non-native speakers of English (NNSE) on word attack (as measured by the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test, WRMT) range from "moderately low" to "high average."
     
     
  2. They do as well as Profile 4 learners, the best readers in the GE 6-8 groups, on the phoneme deletion assessment, Test of Auditory Awareness (TAAS). A third of the group is able to delete a consonant that is part of a blend, e.g., responding with lay when asked to, "Say play. Now say it again but don't say /p/." These deletions are the most difficult assessed. (A letter within bars, /m/, denotes the sound of the letter "mmm," not the name "em.") Fourteen percent are successful with all of the 13 consonant deletion tasks.

  All of this adds up to their ability to benefit from instruction in the sound to symbol conventions of the English language - or more simply - in phonics. They will benefit from systematic instruction in phonics to bring their decoding and encoding abilities to a higher level of mastery.

• Visual Memory:
  
  
  • We did not assess visual memory, and it may very well be that these readers are very good at remembering sequences of letters and syllables. You can assess visual memory by giving the class a trial lesson in recognizing and spelling an irregular word, e.g., laugh, language, half. Teach them at the beginning of a class and see if they are able to read or spell them at the close of class. Are they able to remember them at the next class session? It's of value to know about the learners' visual memory aptitude because we have to use visual memory to read and spell irregular word families.
    
    On the other hand, dependence on memory to read and spell phonetically regular words leads to a limited reading vocabulary since there is a limit to how fast and how many words can be retained in memory.
  
  

Word Meaning (Vocabulary):

• Even as they become able to read text at a higher level, we cannot trust most of their vocabulary learning to figuring out word meanings from context. Only 10% score in the "average" range on the WAIS-III information subtest. They have limited information of the kind that is taught in middle school and high school. Teaching new concepts and information will automatically involve teaching unfamiliar words. When appropriate, use these vocabulary words for spelling and word recognition instruction. There will be a reciprocal reinforcement of all three components of silent reading comprehension (word meaning, word recognition, and spelling).

For additional information, please read the sections in the Mini-Course on Word Recognition and Word Meaning.