2. TEACHING READING TO
LEVEL 1 PUPILS
REFLECT…
How do you teach reading to Level 1 pupils?
What is your favourite
approach/technique/strategy for teaching
reading?
What activities do you normally conduct in
your reading classes?
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3. TWO MAIN METHODS OF
TEACHING READING
Phonics: Children learn reading by associating the
sounds of English and the letters or combination of
letters that produce them.
Whole-Language (Look and Say): Children learn
reading by memorizing words as whole unit.
KBSR: Whole-language
KSSR: Phonics
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4. PHONICS
…is the main approach advocated by MoE for
the teaching of reading in KSSR.
What do you know about Phonics?
Activity 1: Jot down everything that you know or any
ideas that you have about Phonics on a piece of paper.
Activity 2: In your group, match the terminologies to
the correct definitions/explanations.
Tasksheet -CCJ-
6. TERMINOLOGIES
Phonics – Correlation between sounds and letters.
Phonetics – Classification of speech sound, especially
with regard to the physical aspects of their
productions.
Phoneme – Basic sound unit of speech.
Alliteration – Repetition of the first letter sound in a
phrase.
Grapheme – A letter or group of letters representing
one sound. E.g. s, p, n, sh, ch
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7. TERMINOLOGIES
Diphthongs – Two adjacent vowel sounds
occurring within the same syllable. E.g. oa,
oi, ea.
Digraphs – A pair of letters representing a
single speech sound. E.g. ph as in pheasant.
Blending – Drawing individual sounds
together to pronounce a word.
Segmenting – To split up a word in its
individual phonemes in order to spell it.
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8. TERMINOLOGIES
Grapheme-phoneme correspondence – Converting
grapheme to phoneme when reading aloud (decoding
written words).
Phoneme-grapheme correspondence – Converting
phoneme to grapheme when spelling words (encoding
words for writing).
Decodable words – Words that can be decoded using
the phonics principles.
Non-decodable words – Words that do not follow the
phonics rules in the way they are spelled (also known
as tricky words).
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10. TEACHING READING USING
THE PHONICS METHOD
Now that we already know what
Phonics is, how would we use it to
teach reading in our classroom?
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11. What does it involve?
Teaching letters (graphemes)
Teaching sounds (phonemes)
Teaching letter-sound
(grapheme-phoneme) and sound-
letter (phoneme-grapheme)
correspondence
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12. Children are taught how to read
by teaching them how to…
…blend component sounds all
through a word.
…segment words into their
component sounds.
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14. Activities for Blending
Adults Modeling Oral Blending
“This is a story b-oo-k.”
“Please s-i-t.”
The caterpillar likes f-oo-d.”
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15. Activities for Blending
Toy Talk
Introduce to the children a soft toy that can
only speak in „sound-talk‟.
Teacher: “What would Charlie wants for
breakfast today?”
Charlie: “Ch-ee-se.”
Teacher demonstrates how to blend the
sound to form the word „cheese‟.
Other variation: Robot Talk. Introduce a
robot doing sound-talk in robot voice.
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16. Activities for Blending
Which One?
Lay out a selection of pictures. E.g. moon,
leaf, cake, pie (words from „The Very Hungry
Caterpillar‟).
Sound-talking toy says the names of the
objects in the pictures in sound-talk.
With teacher‟s guidance, children put the
sound together and say the word.
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17. Activities for Blending
I Spy
Lay out a selection of objects or pictures of
objects.
“I spy with my little eye a l-ea-f.”
Children say the name of the object and hold
it up.
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21. Activities for Segmenting
Toy Talk
Invite a group of pupils to talk to the toy in
sound-talk.
Teacher: “Let‟s tell Charlie what this is.”
(Pointing to a book).
Children: “B-oo-k”.
Leave the sound-talk toy freely available to
the children to practise and experiment with
sound-talk.
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22. Activities for Segmenting
Say the Sounds
Choose some objects with three-phoneme
names that you are sure the children know
and hide them in a box or bag.
Allow one child to see an object then say the
separate sounds in the name of the object
(e.g. p-e-n).
The other children blend the sound together
to make the word.
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23. Activities for Segmenting
Count the Phonemes
When children are used to oral blending,
introduce the idea of counting how many
phonemes they can hear.
E.g. “m-oo-n, moon. How many phonemes can
we hear? Let‟s use our fingers to help us: m-
oo-n; one, two, three phonemes.”
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24. More Blending and Segmenting
Activities
Activities from Scholastic Red
Phoneme Segmentation
Strategies for Tricky Words
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25. Points to Consider…
Children who can hear phonemes in words
and sound them out accurately are
generally well placed to make a good start
in reading and writing.
Children need to hear the sounds in the
word spoken in sound-talk immediately
followed by the whole word. The purpose is
to model oral blending and immediately give
the whole word.
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26. Points to Consider…
Segment and blend only the last word in a
sentence or phrase. Over time and with lots
of repetition, children will get to know the
routine and provide the blended word.
Toy is preferable to a puppet because
children can watch the teacher‟s face and
mouth to see the sounds being articulated.
Enunciate phonemes very clearly, avoid „uh‟
e.g. „sss‟ and not „suh‟; „mmm‟ and not „muh‟.
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27. Points to Consider…
Avoid words with adjacent consonant, e.g.
„sp‟ as in „spoon‟ as these will probably be
too difficult for children at early stages of
practising blending and segmenting.
Once children have been introduced to
blending and segmenting, they should be
practised hand in hand as they are
reversible processes.
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30. Group Task
Select three words from the story „The
Very Hungry Caterpillar‟ by Eric Carle that
you would like to teach to your pupils during
your reading class.
Plan blending and segmenting activities to
teach the words to your pupils.
Conduct a demo mini lesson on blending and
segmenting.
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