Assignment: Building Words

You might also want to read this web article by Timothy Rasinski entitled, Making and Writing Words. http://www.timrasinski.com/presentations/article_making_and_writing_words.pdf

In this discussion posting:

Explain how the "Making Words" program described in Chapter 10, or how Word Banks or Word Sorts as described in Chapter 11 utilize the principles of constructivism which is briefly defined on page 155.

• Follow this link to learn more about the attributes of constructivism. http://www.calpro-online.org/eric/docs/brown/brown01_02.pdf

Describe at least two other ways you will use constructivism in your classroom to teach reading. Lastly, explain why it is important to employ constructivist principles when teaching reading, especially beginning reading.

Rasinski, T. & Padak, N.D. (2013). From phonics to fluency: Effective teaching of decoding and reading fluency in the elementary school. NJ: Pearson.

The article provided in our reading above on making words is a bit old, so I am placing a link below that has a very short update of this method with an example of how to do it. This should explain the concept a bit better than the article we provided above.

http://www.teachhub.com/all-about-making-words-strategy

Example of the work you look at too get ideas

Constructivism allows students to learn through hands on experience. Rasinski & Padak(2013) describe this hands-on experience to be anything where students are engaged in a learning process outside just simple readings and writing tasks such as a science experiment or an interactive "making words" lesson(Rasinski & Padak,2013). Furthermore, constructivism holds many real-world implications for students by allowing them to physically experience what they are learning as its being applied to worldly examples. With reading, this is essential for students to physically see and under

According to the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project, constructivism is facilitated "through the design of classroom activities that guide students to work collaboratively with others, set their own sequences and pace of work, and actively engage in problem solving, critical thinking, and negotiation" (California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project, n.d.). As such, a great way to apply this level of engagement to students who are learning about phonics, is to practice making words and find creative ways for students to learn about spelling and other patterns associated with grammar, word codes, strategies for spelling. Furthermore, "making words" lessons according to the Teach-Hub, is a great way to help struggling readers as well as create inventive ways for students to construct words using a "tangible modality" ( Teach-Hub,2017).

Finally, activities such as puzzles helps students physically arrange letters by adding, removing, changing, and/or making new words out of the given letter. These activities are ideal learning activities which help embody the foundation of constructivism in the classroom. Another perfect example of making words lessons is having each student hold a letter card with vowels and consonants written on it and then having the class participate to create words based on the instruction of the teacher. Rasinski & Padak describe a lesson similar to this in which the teacher shows students how the words slid and slide can be made from the id and ide patterns and then has students writes words on cards and has students practice them with a partner by forming word families, by beginning sound, or by presence or absence of a consonant blend or digraph (Rasinski &Padak, 2013).

In short, applying constructivism in your classrooms is an essential component to any reading and vocabulary lesson but in particular to beginning readers. Beginning readers need a structure to allow them to place letters, sounds, and words into a senescence and in order to read. setting a physical setting for this to occure makes the lessons more easily memorable and in turn, students remember more!

References

California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project. (n.d.). What is constructivism? Retrieved from http://www.calpro-online.org/eric/docs/brown/brown01_02.pdf

Rasinski, T. & Padak, N.D. (2013). From phonics to fluency: Effective teaching of decoding and reading fluency in the elementary school. NJ: Pearson.