Literacy
Literacy at Cornerstone Prep has a significant focus on
phonics. Phonics involves a student’s ability to know the connection between
the spoken sound (phoneme) and the written letters (graphemes).
Teachers
provide instruction on sight words and the use of onsets and rimes to decipher
unfamiliar words. Building students’ phonics skills increases their ability to
immediately recognize words and focus on their meanings.
Teachers instruct
students on using a number of different methods in decoding words such as
chunking or using graphophonic cues. Teachers do not over-emphasize phonics
development as hyper-focusing on phonics can work against creating successful
readers. However, instruction is explicit and direct.
Reading involves several
complex cognitive and intellectual functions that require skill and practice.
During daily instruction, teachers focus on the five parts of reading: phonemic
awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Phonemic awareness is a pre-literate skill and is defined as a
child’s ability to isolate and identify individual sounds or phonemes[1].
Teachers focus on connecting phonemes with graphemes to complete the phonemic
awareness pattern. Phonemic awareness skills improve along with learning to
read and write.
Fluency is also addressed during the Cornerstone Prep literacy
lessons. Fluency involves the readers’ ability to read text accurately and quickly[2].
Fluent readers read easily, “…smoothly, and with expression when reading
aloud.”[3]
Most fluent readers also read with greater comprehension. Vocabulary building
is the fourth aspect of reading.
Vocabulary refers to the words students must know to
communicate effectively. According to Shapley, this includes “listening,
speaking, reading, and writing.”[4]
Cornerstone Prep teachers utilize a number of different methods to teach
vocabulary building including extensive reading, explicit instruction, word
study, word games, and connections with known words.
Comprehension is the fifth facet of reading. Comprehension is
the process of understanding what has been read. In order for true
understanding to occur, reading has to be active and purposeful. As noted by
the National Reading Panel, “children must know what they are reading and have
strategies for understanding as they move through the text.” [5]
Metacognition is also involved in comprehension.
Metacognition is an awareness
and understanding of one’s cognitive processes, also known as “thinking about
one’s thinking”. Cornerstone Prep teachers assist students in perfecting these
skills.
[1] International Reading Association. (2009). Phoneme Isolation: Building Phonemic Awareness. Retrieved on October 19, 2009
from http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=120.
[2]Shapley, B.
(2007). Reading First: NIE! A Newspaper In Education teaching supplement for
Reading First No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Retrieved on October 19, 2009
from http://www.bostonheraldineducation.com/documents/reading_first.pdf.
[3] Routman, R.
(2000). Conversations: Strategies for
teaching, learning, and evaluating. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
[4] Op.cit.
[5] Op.cit.