Let the Games Begin: Enrichment Activities and Instructional Methods
to Help Develop Reading in your Adult Learners

Presented by Dr. Dominique T. Chlup
dchlup@tamu.edu

January 27, 2005

TEXAS ASSOCIATION for LITERACY and ADULT EDUCATION (TALAE)
2005 Conference

One must be an inventor to read well…Then there is creative reading as well as creative writing.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reading and writing are important because we read and write our world as well as our texts and are read and written by them in turn.
--Robert Scholes

Agenda

Introductions: Building a Web
The 5 components of Reading
Word Analysis (Phonics)
Word Recognition
Oral Reading
Vocabulary
Comprehension
Writing

Building a Web Exercise
Instructional Methods and Practices Based on the 5 Components of Reading

I. Word Analysis (Phonics)

1.) What’s so crazy about vowel sounds? While there are only 7 vowel letters, there are 15 vowel sounds, and then there are also vowels with “r”.

Vowels: ee, i, e, ae, a, u, o, au/aw, oe, oo (pool), oo (look), ie, ue, oi/oy, ou/ow, er/ir/ur, ar, or

--The name game--teaching what vowels do
--a creative way for students to remember the 7 vowels

2.) A day at sea: A way to help your students remember the phonics rule when 2 vowels go walking the first one does the talking. ai (sail), oa (boat), ea (sea).

Expectancies

(modified from Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes)

*Note that these are presented as “expectancies” not rules. They are not 100% dependable but give the student a definite advantage in predicting how a word is read or spelled.

Basic Principles:

Expect c to ‘borrow’ the k-sound unless followed by an e, i, or y, then the c borrows the s-sound. (lace, cite, cyst)
Expect g to be a hard g-sound unless followed by an e, i, y, then it might be a j-sound. (get/gem, give/gin, gym/foggy)

Additional Expectancies

The rest of the borrowers:

A. Borrower X.

x=ks at the end of words (tax)
x=ks or gz in the middle of words (exercise, executive)
x=z at the beginning of words (Xerox)

B. Borrower qu=kw (queen)

C. Borrower Y.

Y borrows from the letter i and e.
y=ie at the end of 1 syllable words (dry)
y=ee at the end of multisyllable words (happy)
y= i in the middle of a syllable (gym)

Spelling expectancies

A. Spelling the final /j/ sound—won’t be spelled with the letter j; use –ge

Examples: rage, plunge, stage

B. Spelling final –dge vs. –ge: add the d to keep the
vowel short.

Ex. budge, hedge, lodge vs. page, barge, huge
badge, bridge
“d” is needed “d” not needed

C. Spelling final –tch vs. –ch: predict the t when there’s a short vowel right before the ch-sound.

Ex. hatch, pitch, clutch, fetch vs. teach, poach, speech

D. Spelling final –ck vs. –k: predict –ck when there is a short vowel right before the k-sound.

Ex. back, neck, lick, lock, vs. leak, leek, hawk, luck milk, look, croak

II. Word Recognition

The tortoises, hares, and cheetahs: A creative way to teach instant words (sight words), the most common words in English ranked in frequency order. The first 300 instant words make up about 65 percent of all written material. Examples of instant words include: the, water, first, because, sometimes. A complete list can be found in The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists by Edward Bernard Fry, Jacqueline E. Kress, and Dona Lee Fountoukidis. In addition to replacing the nouns, make Word Finds containing the sight words to help students over familiarize themselves with the words.

The First Hundred are included in your packet.
Homonym Harmony Exercise (Exercise in your packet).

Example: Rabbit fur hare hair

A piece of wood with nothing to do
An unemployed hero
A no-frills aircraft
A superior gambler
An unattractive storekeeper
A braver rock
A popular little hotel
A naked grizzly
A nasty fowl
An underage underground worker
Develop your own pair of harmonious homonyms

III. Oral Reading

Teach oral reading for accuracy and fluency. When reading for accuracy students should be stretching their reading ability, so they should be working with reading material one grade level above their actual reading level. For fluency, students should be trying to increase their reading rate so the reading material should be at their grade level. To discern grade level of passages use Fry’s Readability Graph (see packet).
Give timed readings where students re-read the same passage trying to increase their reading rate. The average reading rate for a fluent reader is 350 words a minute. The same passage can be used to teach phonics rules and to get vocabulary and spelling words from. This will give the student multiple exposures to the passage and help them to over learn the material.
Cut-ups: Making everyone into a poet and fluent reader using a newspaper article.
A river runs through it: Using the white spaces to develop creative reading.

IV. Vocabulary

Avoid giving students vocabulary lists and asking them then use the dictionary to find meanings. First, we take it for granted that people know how to use dictionaries properly. Many people don’t; it often needs to be taught. Secondly, vocabulary words should be taught within the context of something the student is either reading or discussing, so the student can make an immediate connection to the word.
How then can we get students interested in learning vocabulary in the first place? Do the opposite. Instead of having students make a connection to the word use preposterous, outlandish words to draw them into the world of unique and fascinating words. Get them to begin to discover the wacky world of words. For example, the strange sentences exercise.

Strange Sentences

Members of avian species of identical plumage congregate.
Scintillate, scintillate, asteroid minifies.
Surveillance should precede salientation.
It is fruitless to become lachrymose over precipitately departed lacteal fluid.
The stylus is more potent than the claymore.
The temperature of the aqueous content of an unremittingly ogled sauce pot does not reach 212 degrees.
Where there are visible vapors in ignited carbonous materials, there is conflagaration.
Neophytes’ serendipity.
Exclusive dedication to necessitous chores without interludes of hedonistic diversions renders Jack a hebetudinous fellow.
A revolving lithe conglomerate accumulates no congeries of a small green bryophyte.

V. Comprehension

Comprehending/Understanding what we read is the main reason we read. Therefore, it is important to make sure that the student is truly understanding what she or he is reading. One way to do this is to have the teacher ask a question then have the student read aloud just the part of the text that answers the question rather than just asking the student to provide the answer.
Have students read material silently and then ask them to paraphrase what they have been reading. This will give you an idea of whether they are getting the main idea and what details they are attending to while reading.

VI. Writing

The filmmaker’s corner: Have your students watch a film without the sound and then have them work in groups to write the subtitles.
What’s that you say?: Using statements submitted to the Police Department to demonstrate the importance of writing clearly.

What’s that? A Writing and Comprehending Exercise

The following statements were submitted to the Police department on accident report forms. The drivers had been instructed to give a brief statement on the particulars of the accident. Please write a description of what the author wrote and then describe what you think the author really meant to say.

The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran over him.
I had been driving my car for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had the accident.
The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.
Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.
I was on my way to the doctor with rear-end trouble when my universal joint gave way, causing me to have an accident.
The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.

To get the story started…

When she reached for the light switch, Christie thought she heard someone say, “Stop right where you are, or I’ll eat all your potatoes!”
“Get this thing away from me!” the queen shrieked.
Have you ever noticed that some days seem to last longer than others?
Alice gritted her teeth and began to climb to the top of…
It was so dark that Vicky couldn’t tell the difference when she closed her eyes. “How did I ever get in a mess like this?” she thought.
I never thought it would be possible, but there I was…
As she held the leaking pipe in place, Monica thought, “What is keeping Selene?”
Mandy hated Mondays. But she hated …even more.
My life changed the day I discovered.
I remember it all started in the middle of the week—Wednesday. That morning I didn’t feel quite well enough to go to school.

* Adapted from Fry, Edward Bernard, Jacqueline E. Kress & Dona Lee Fountoukidis. The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists. NewYork: The Center for Applied Research in Education, 1993.

An Exercise to End On…
Problem-Solving Exercise:
A Current Description of Yourself

1.) Write DROP OUT.
2.) Put ST in the middle of the first word and at the beginning of the second.
3.) Change all the O’s to E’s.
4.) Replace all the consonants that follow an E with the letter R.
5.) Counting from left to right, reverse the 9th and 10th letters, then move the first letter between them
6.) Replace the next to the last R with an M.
7.) Put an N after the last pair of letters that are in exact alphabetical order.
8.) If there are no A’s, put one before the first pair of letters that are in exact alphabetical order.

Sourcebooks to Consult

Ellis, Dave. Becoming a Master Student. 8th ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Fry, Edward Bernard, Jacqueline E. Kress & Dona Lee Fountoukidis. The Reading Teacher’s Book of
Lists. New York: The Center for Applied Research in Education, 1993.

Heifetz, Joseph. The Word Lover’s Dictionary: Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words. New York: Citadel Press, 1995.

Miller, Wilma. Complete Reading Disabilities Handbook: Ready-to-Use Techniques for Teaching Reading Disabled Students. New York: The Center for Applied Research in Education, 1993.

Moats, Louisa Cook. Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing, 2000.

Padgett, Ron. Creative Reading: What It is, How to Do It, and Why. Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997.

Shanker, James & Eldon Ekwkall. Locating and Correcting Reading Difficulties. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998.

*I am indebted to all of these sourcebooks for their creative and inspiring ideas. Several of which I shared with you today.

Outside of a dog, reading is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog it’s too dark to read.
--Groucho Marx