How to Promote Orthographic Mapping
Word study activities I want to incorporate
This summer I have been reading David Kilpatrick’s‘s Equipped for Reading Success: A Comprehensive Step-by-Step Program for Developing Phonemic Awareness and Fluent Word Recognition (2016). What an incredible resource it is for furthering my understanding of the Science of Reading. I summarized Chapter Four about orthographic mapping and in this post will list and explain the word-study activities from Chapter Six that I plan to incorporate into my kindergarten classroom to better promote mapping.
The techniques described in this chapter should be used routinely for beginning reading instruction, but can also be used for remedial efforts (in case you follow this blog but teach something other than kindergarten). I will not include all 24 activities from this chapter; rather, my intent is to list the primary ones that I hope to incorporate into my instructional routines this coming school year.
Teach Students the Vocabulary of Mapping
Kilpatrick recommends that we use the correct labels for the concepts we are teaching and that doing so enhances communication between us and our students. I agree with this wholeheartedly, however I will not introduce terms such as consonant digraph, onset, schwa, and automaticity at the same time as introducing the concept itself. For example, when I introduce the word the and talk about the “bad boys” (th) early in the school year, I will not call it a consonant digraph since we do not talk about vowels and consonants until January. Nor will I mention schwa when we first encounter them in student names. I will label the sound much later in the school year.
Phoneme-to-Grapheme Mapping Technique
Obvious—and yet we probably don’t think about it enough—decoding goes letter-to-sound but in order to get good at mapping words, students must master the reverse process of going sound-to-grapheme. I want to add in Kilpatrick’s idea for practicing this early in the school year. He suggests giving students a card with three letters that have been taught, such as m, t, o. The teacher will ask, “Which letter says /t/?” Or, as some prefer to word it, “Which letter spells /t/?” The question is repeated for each sound and a trick question like “Which ones says /s/?” (when there is no s on the card) can also be asked. As the students get more skilled, you can put up to five letters on the card and then move into consonant digraphs, diphthongs, vowel digraphs, rimes, and endings. He recommends not using more than five letters at once as the task then becomes more about visual tracking.
Teach Students to Map Rime Units
Science shows that readers map rime units in addition to entire words. Therefore, it is important to do work with groups of words that we typically say are in the same “word family.”
Introduce Words Orally First
When introducing a new word—whether in a story, a word list, or as a vocabulary word—introduce it orally before showing it in print. Have students focus on the oral properties of the word, for example the phonemes that can be heard and in which order they occur. When they see the printed form of the word, they will then be in a much better position to map the phonemes onto the written letters. I have used this technique also when students get stuck on a word while reading. I cover the word and ask them questions about a word that I say orally (which just so happens to be the word that they are stuck on). When the word is uncovered, they then have a much easier time reading the word.
Use Look-Alike Words
Having students read a series of words that closely resemble each other forces them to attend to every letter. Start with a list like pot, pit, pat, pet but be sure to move on to lists with different beginning and ending sounds—rack, back, brick, rot, pack, pick, pot—so they don’t start to think they can ignore certain letter positions. Multiple studies show that this activity reinforces mapping.
Help Students Map Irregular Words
Before learning more about the science of reading, many of us teachers had students “just learn” irregular words such as said, of, and you by some sort of visual memorization. We now know how important it is to point out the phonemes that are making the correct sounds and then study the ones that are not. Based on the learning I have done, I have established a slide show and routine for practicing irregular words (heart words) with kindergartners.
Direct Mapping/Glass Analysis
Glass Analysis is a technique that teaches children how to map words. The teacher shows a word and asks what sounds the individual letters in that word make. For the word him, you ask, “What makes the /i/ sound?” “What letter spells /m/?” “What is making the /h/ sound?” “What letters spell /-im/?” it is important to ask the sounds out of order. The idea is not to help students map every single word—there are way too many words—but to train students how to approach words so they naturally start mapping on their own.
Invented Spelling
Kilpatrick says, “In kindergarten and early first grade, invented spelling is a great tool for both phoneme awareness and letter sound skills.” To employ it properly, students should get regular feedback from the teacher about the relationship between the sounds and letters they are using. I have been doing this for years during writing time and will continue, but I was very relieved to hear that Kilpatrick recommends it as it does seem to be quite an effective way to practice these skills.
Read Nonsense Words
It’s important to have kindergartners read nonsense words so they are focusing on the sounds rather than striving to make meaning. First, students must learn to say all the sounds in the word. A second skill is blending the sounds together. The final skill is to be able to look at a series of sounds and instantly say the word. We are, of course, talking about CVC words. Some kindergartners may not get to that final skill but that is the ultimate goal.
Spell Nonsense Words
To spell nonsense words, students must listen for the sounds and then use the correct letters to represent those sounds. What I like about this technique is that the teacher can give words that contain graphemes that the student needs to practice. If a student is weak on short e, a series of words with that sound can be given. If you want students to practice vowel digraphs, a set of words containing those can be used (foam, soap, boat).
Spell Irregular Words
In addition to learning to read irregular words, it is essential that students practice spelling them. This will help turn irregular words into familiar strings of letters. Of course, students need to be far along in their phoneme awareness and phonics skills to practice irregular words.
Those are my eleven favorite activities from this chapter in terms of what I can and should be doing with kindergarten students. As I wrote this, I was thinking about how they all makes sense and how I already do so many of them. However, the point is to heighten my awareness and to be more intentional with how and when I can incorporate these activities into my instruction. I will start by keeping this list and a short description of each activity handy at all times until these become a more natural and automatic part of my instructional repertoire.
If you have David Kilpatrick’s Equipped book, know that all 24 activities are on a one-pager in Appendix D (page 246).
Fantastic review! I found this incredibly helpful. Thank you!