rooted literacygrowing strong readers one at a time
Our Philosophy
Born out of a passion to advocate for struggling readers, Rooted Literacy strives to give its students not only a joy of learning and reading but also a deep confidence in who they were created to be. We believe that without strong reading skills, students will encounter more difficulty in school and subsequently, life. Research indicates that high quality early intervention can change a child's developmental trajectory for the better. Our hope and desire is that each student who encounters our plan will grow and mature developmentally in the area of reading cognition but also in social and emotional ways.
We believe that for students to grow into mature readers, they must grow in both Printed Word Recognition and Language Comprehension. Both sides of reading must grow simultaneously. This is why phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension are the foundation of our curriculum at Rooted Literacy. Each and every tutoring session includes all five components. Our approach to teaching phonics is in using the Orton-Gillingham methodology but we also follow a logical sequence based on the Wilson Reading System. We teach a rule, then read and write around that rule to practice the skill in context. We use dictation daily and also practice reading and writing sight words. The combination of all these practices has been proven to give students the strongest foundation in order to grow into “rooted” and blossoming readers.
Literacy Components
HOW WE GROW STRONG READERS
Listed below are the five components of literacy with a very basic definition. Please explore each one and read about a few tools we use to enhance growth in each area. We also incorporate 2 extra practices in every lesson that we believe are needed to secure readers as they grow: dictation and sight words.
Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is the foundation upon which other reading skills are built. At Rooted Literacy, we believe this is the very first "root" that must be nourished and watered in order for a student to become a secure and confident reader. Research indicates that a lack of phonological awareness causes struggling readers in higher grades to lack accuracy and fluency in decoding and spelling words. Generally speaking, if a student is having problems with comprehension, it is often the case that certain phonological awareness skills are lacking. This is why at Rooted Literacy, we spend time each session to be sure these skills are secure. With this being the very first "root" to grow, it must be very strong for the rest of the skills to grow and for a reader to be secure and confident.
Phonics
Despite there being just 26 letters in the English language there are approximately 44 unique sounds, also known as phonemes. The letter associated with each sound is called a grapheme. The ability to manipulate phonemes and graphemes to make words is a very basic definition of phonics.Phonics must be taught in a systematic fashion and each rule taught must be practiced in reading and writing for mastery to occur. Learning to "break the code" of phonics in the English language is what will empower students to read, write and spell well. This is why we spend a good portion of time on direct phonics instruction at each session. It is also important to note that while phonics is a very large piece to the foundation of literacy, it is only part of a solid reading literacy plan.
Vocabulary
Oral vocabulary refers to words that we use in speaking or understand in listening. Reading vocabulary refers to words we comprehend or use in print. In the two sided view of reading we hold at Rooted Literacy — word recognition and comprehension — vocabulary falls under language comprehension. Vocabulary must be taught directly(with instruction) and indirectly (in conversation). Vocabulary is essential to reading comprehension since readers cannot understand what they are reading without knowing what most of the words mean. Therefore, at Rooted Literacy, we will touch on speaking, listening, reading and writing vocabularies in a variety of ways in our sessions.
Fluency
Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression (also called prosody). Fluency is a key skill to becoming a strong reader because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. Fluent readers do not have to concentrate on decoding the words-they focus their attention on what the text means. They can make connections among the ideas in the text and their background knowledge. In other words, fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time. With this being one of our goals for our students, we use a variety of tools to give students practice: teacher modeling of fluent reading, timed repeated readings, echo reading, choral reading (teacher and student together), practicing "scooping" phrases and listening to audio recordings.
Comprehension
Comprehension is the reason for reading. If students can decode words accurately but do not understand what they’re reading, they are not really reading at all. At Rooted Literacy, we will focus on comprehension as we read decodable readers. We will look for main ideas, answer specific questions, make predictions, look for supporting details, make visual inferences, talk about similarities and differences and create categories. The main goal is to attach words and meaning to prior knowledge and experiences to broaden and deepen a student's working vocabulary. This growth gives students the ability to associate the text with words and experiences they know and understand, which is comprehension.
Dictation
Dictation is one of the oldest language teaching activities. It is the process of writing down what someone else has said. Dictation provides a chance for an adult to model many writing behaviors including handwriting, matching sounds-to-letters to spell words, and sentence formation. In reverse,when the teacher gives the student a sentence to write, there is no better way to see what a student has mastered. Since we believe that language + movement = memory, a student who has mastered certain skills (phoneme/grapheme attachment, encoding/deocding, sight words, sentence structure, punctuation) will be able to demonstrate these in dictation. There is no better way for a teacher to see what skills are strong and which skills need more instruction.
Sight Words
Sight words, also called high frequency words, are the most commonly used words found in print...newspapers, magazines, textbooks and novels. Students need to memorize these words by sight, so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode. Students need to be able to both read AND write a growing number of sight words. Knowing sight words has several benefits: 1)Knowing sight words promotes confidence: Because the first 100 sight words represent over 50% of English text, a child who has mastered the list of sight words can already recognize at least half of a sentence. If your child begins to read a book and can already recognize the words, chances are he won’t feel discouraged and put the book down. 2) Knowing sight words promotes reading comprehension: When your child opens a book for the first time, instead of trying to decipher what ALL of the words mean, students can shift their attention to focus on those words they are not familiar with and practice decoding skills. 3)Knowing sight words provides context clues: If your child is familiar with sight words, they may be able to decode the meaning of the paragraph or sentence by reading the sight words. For these reasons, we spend a part of each session reviewing sight words. We practice them as flashcards and practice writing them in a variety of ways.