Word Study for Learners in the Emergent Stage

Word Study for Learners in the Emergent Stage

-emergent stage: young children imitate and experiment with the forms and functions of print. (sometimes called preliterate stage)

From Speech to Print: Matching Units of Speech to Print
-learning to read and spell is a process of matching oral and written language structures at three different levels: a. the global level, at which the text is organized into phrases and sentences, b. the level of words within phrases, and c. the level of sounds and letters within syllables.
· The Phrase and Sound Level – prosodic-the “musical” level of language, consisting of phrases
· Words in Phrases - words-clearly set off with spaces between a string of letters
· Sounds in Syllables – students must segment the sounds or phonemes within syllables
Characteristics of the Emergent Stage of Reading and Spelling
· Emergent Reading – pretend reading or reading from memory. Children gradually acquire directionality (move from left to right, top to bottom), concept of word –ability to fingerpoint accurately while reading from memory.
· Emergent Writing – first: child needs to discover that scribbling can represent something and then to differentiate drawing from writing. Human do not actually talk in words, and there is no such thing as an isolated phoneme.

The Emergent Stage: From Scribbles to Invented Spelling
-early emergent writing is largely pretend/scribbles
-middle emergent stage children begin to approximate the most global contours of the writing system: top-to-bottom and linear arrangement
-by the end of the emergent stage, children are beginning to use letters to represent speech sounds in a systematic way. 1 to invent a spelling, children must know some letters. 2. Children must know how to form or write some of the letters they know. Third, children must know that letters represent sounds. 4. Children must attend to the sounds within syllables and match those sound segments to letters.
-the ability to divide syllables into the smallest units of sound is called
phonemic awareness
-late emergent spellers pay attention to those tangible points of utterance where one part of the mouth touches another, or to the most forcefully articulated sounds that make the most vibration or receive the most stress.
-The goal of phonemic awareness instruction for emergent readers is to help them classify the sounds they know into categories that coincide with printed word boundaries – beginnings and ends. Teaching students the names of the alphabetic letters and the sounds they represent is absolutely essential during the emergent stage, but children do not have to get them all straight before they begin to read and write.