Post #3: Homophones

Have you ever received an email asking how "you're" weekend was?
Has a friend ever sent you a text message complaining that he or she has "to much work"?
"Let's go their for dinner tonight!"
"I don't no what to wear."
"Do you want to meet hear?"

If any of these "fatal flaws" make you cringe like they make me cringe, keep reading.

While examining Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell's continuum of learning for phonics, spelling, and word study from their book, The Continuum of Literacy Learning, I could not help but feel confused, annoyed, and baffled by the discrepancy that exists between reality and the instructional goals listed on pages 211-237.

Defined as "behaviors and understandings to notice, teach, and support," the goals and guidelines aligned with phonics, spelling, and word study emphasize the instruction of important word meaning concepts, such as homophones, as early as 1st grade:

"Recognize and use simple homophones (sound the same, different spelling and meaning: to/too/two, here/hear, blue/blew, there/their/they're)" (222).

This description appears consistently within the word meaning goals for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades, but for the 5th grade guidelines, homophones are no longer listed within the word meaning goals.

How do we make sense of this information? Homophone instruction is suggested to begin in 1st grade, and end in 4th grade, perhaps due to the assumption that after 4 years of "their/there/they're" worksheets and things of the like, students no longer need specific instruction to help them spell and use these words correctly.

Why then, do college professors, high school students, doctors, parents, and businessmen fail to recognize the difference between "your" and "you're," and use "know" and "no" interchangeably? Adults that I otherwise look up to, and children that I otherwise see potential in, continue to struggle with homophones. Perhaps to avoid further confusion, Fountas and Pinnell even felt the need to provide a brief definition for "homophone" in the grade level goals in their book - which is mainly directed toward teachers! Giving teachers of all people a reminder that homophones are words that "sound the same" but may have "different spelling and meaning" both illustrates and perpetuates this problematic issue. The cherry on top of my frustration, however, is the green sign in the photograph below, which was featured on Stoddert Elementary's Facebook page:

The green sign reads, "...Come meet our New Principle..."

In addition to the completely unnecessary capitalization of the letters N and P in "New Principle," I truly cannot wrap my head around this horrific poster. I can't help but wonder, who made this sign? How could someone who works in a school make an error like this? Why wasn't the sign proofread? Isn't the new principal embarrassed? I would be.

The ultimate question I continue to come back to though, is why are mistakes (like the one above) made so often by people in all walks of life?

It could be laziness. It could be downright ignorance. It could be a lack of attention to detail. It could be the iPhone's autocorrect feature, or Microsoft Word's spell checker, both of which assume the responsibility of proofreading, taking the pressure, and even the need to do so, off of the individual.

Whatever the reason is for our society's somewhat pathetic misuse of homophones, I feel that instruction of this concept should be carefully considered, not only because of its obvious academic implications, but also because of its permeation into real-world survival skills.

In my 4th grade practicum classroom, I have observed homophone instruction in an indirect and isolated manner. Each week, students are given a list of approximately 15 words to use in the exercises found in their "weekly word packets" for morning work. A few weeks ago, the list contained only homophones, and the teacher announced that the class would be beginning a new homophone unit. On Monday, the students copied the list of words into their packets, writing each word three times in cursive. On Tuesday, they alphabetized the list of words, wrote each word using alternating upper/lowercase letters, and then wrote each word using a different colored marker for each letter. On Wednesday, they created sentences that featured each word, and on Thursday, they took a spelling pre-test. On Friday, the students were given a spelling test, and on the following Monday, the students received a new list of words, and homophones were mentioned no more.

To be honest, I was quite repulsed by the teacher's interpretation of a "homophone unit." As stated in my previous post about vocabulary instruction, there are so many different ways to encourage students to interact with words to provide a rich and meaningful learning experience. A few weeks ago on Wednesday, my 4th grade students spent half of the morning work period with their hands raised asking for clarification of "where" and "wear," how to use "your" in a sentence, and if it makes sense to use "their" instead of "there" in sentence #3. While I of course don't mind taking advantage of these teachable moments and giving each student a "mini lesson" in response to their questions, it frustrated me to see so much non-learning happening in the classroom, especially when "teaching" such an important skill.

According to Fountas and Pinnell, explicit instruction of homophones is no longer necessary, or no longer needs direct focus, after 4th grade. The aforementioned "lessons" on homophones that my 4th graders received could very well be their last exposure to this important word meaning concept. Of course, these students may grow to sharpen their awareness of homophones through future reading and writing assignments, but their foundational understanding of the various homophones will always be lacking in a certain way.

I agree with Fountas and Pinnell that explicit instruction of homophones should not be necessary by 5th grade, as there are more complex concepts that must be taught. Therefore, the easy answer to this problem is that quality of instruction in the area of homophones needs to increase. This implies student engagement with words that goes beyond the rote exercises outlined in my 4th graders' "weekly word packets." Something as simple as role playing, or even just a class discussion on homophone word comparisons, may increase student knowledge and awareness of these seemingly similar words. However, in many classrooms, other areas of instruction take precedence, and teachers feel that they may not have enough time to directly teach something like homophones, so they resort to "teaching" through "busy work." This is a habit that teachers must be urged to break!

It is clear that poor use, and even worse, poor instruction, of homophones frustrates me greatly. I plan to one day make a real difference in the area of homophone instruction through interactive and thought-provoking classroom exercises, in the hopes of putting these "fatal flaws" to rest.

Post #2: Vocabulary

As a future classroom teacher, vocabulary is an area of instruction that I value. Vocabulary is a discipline that transcends the classroom and permeates into real-life situations through college admissions tests, professional emails, formal letters, interviews, everyday conversations, you name it! Varying word choice and using an impressive vocabulary in both writing and speaking demonstrates professionalism, maturity, and intellect. Understanding what one reads or hears in its entirety, including the "big words," is an irreplaceable life skill.

Why then, I often wonder, is vocabulary taught in such a rote manner? While reading McKeown and Beck's article, "Direct and Rich Vocabulary Instruction," I found myself reflecting upon the vocabulary instruction I received throughout my years of schooling. I did not find it to be direct or rich. Throughout middle school and high school, my classmates and I copied definitions, filled-in-the-blanks, wrote sentences, and anything else our hollow and repetitive "vocab books" told us to do.

In elementary school, vocabulary instruction was intertwined with reading and spelling, and was not yet given the "vocabulary" label as it was in middle school and beyond. However, from what I do remember during K-4th grade, we learned new vocabulary words using a simplified version of the same rote practices - define, fill-in, write a sentence.

The only "direct instruction" I experienced when it came to vocabulary was our teachers reading the answers to the homework aloud. Vocabulary work was seen as a time-filler, a homework assignment, or something to do when we had a sub. By junior year of high school, our workbooks were replaced with an online vocabulary program that guided us through the same activities, only with sound effects. Then, vocabulary became more about the SATs, and less about if we actually gained full understanding of the long lists of words and roots we were assigned to learn (memorize) each week. I remember feeling frustrated with the large amounts of "busy work" related to vocabulary, and wondered if I would even remember the countless words and definitions thrown at me by my senior year of college.

In case you're wondering, I would say that about 40% of the vocabulary words I learned throughout middle and high school stuck with me. That's because 40% of the vocabulary words I learned throughout middle and high school proved meaningful to me. They were meaningful because I made them meaningful. They were the words that I encountered in reading, words that I used in conversation, words that I peppered into papers and projects. The words that stuck with me were the words that were useful to me because of what I, as the student, chose to do with them.

"Because comprehension is a complex process, a reader may well need knowledge of a different character than mere accuracy of definitions of words in the text to facilitate the process" (17).

While reading McKeown and Beck's article, I found myself nodding my head in agreement with their concepts of focusing direct instruction on Tier 2 words, as well as the questionable reliability of learning new words through context alone. What struck me most in their article, however, were the suggested instructional strategies for teaching vocabulary words in an active and engaging way. Making connections to personal experiences, such as asking students to think about a time they consoled someone, as well as posing questions that enable students to compare/contrast word meanings, such as "Could a miser be a tyrant?" are two methods of direct instruction that simply take the unattractive practices of copying definitions and writing sentences to the next level, where students are actually prompted to think about the word's meaning as a concept, and use knowledge of that word's meaning to draw an authentic conclusion. Interactive methods also help establish student ownership of learning, which acts as a natural motivator in the classroom. Use of word lines and example/non-example prompts are two additional strategies that allow students to enter into an internal dialogue with these words as they decipher their true and comprehensive meanings. These strategies seem fairly easy to implement as a teacher, and I can't help but feel a little betrayed by my ELA teachers of the past for failing to create a meaningful vocabulary learning experience in the classroom.