A Comprehensive Guide to Literacy Teaching Methods

Posted on Aug 24, 2024 in Language

Traditional Methods

Synthetic Methods

Synthetic methods are focused on the process, not the outcome. They initially address simple linguistic structures (grapheme, phoneme, and syllable) and then merge them into larger and more complex structures (word and sentence). An educator who used these systems was Montessori.

The types of synthetic methods are:

  • Alphabetic or Graphemic: Teaching reading by the name of each individual letter and its phonetic value. These are then combined.
  • Phonetic: These are most commonly found in classrooms today. They involve teaching reading through each phoneme separately. This method implies that the child knows how to segment phonemes (phonological fragmentation).

There are several phonetic methods:

  • Onomatopoeic: This variety involves imitating sounds and noises.
  • Kinesthetic or Gesture: Using movement or gesture. This involves bodily movement.
  • Fonomimic: Sound through movement.
  • Multisensory: Mixing together the previous methods. This is the most commonly used. An example is working with clay.
  • Syllabic: Teaching isolated syllables in context. It leads to syllabification.

Formal Steps

  1. Analytical study of vowels and consonants, associating the graphical representation with a familiar object that begins with the letter taught. Discrimination and identification of words are important.
  2. Combination of letters together to form syllables.
  3. Identification of words formed by the joining of the syllables learned, emphasizing the significance of words.
  4. Oral reading of small sentences formed from the relationship and significance of the words themselves.

Advantages

  • Efficient learning process for mapping phoneme-grapheme (sound-letter).
  • An economical system in terms of time and energy, requiring learning a minimum number of signs which allow for multiple combinations.
  • Makes the child an autonomous reader, able to identify any word they encounter for the first time.
  • Allows for the merging of the perception of isolated phonemes, graphemes, or syllables into meaningful units such as words and phrases.
  • Allows the association of visual, auditory, motor, and tactile senses, being effective in children with sensory impairments and even psychic disabilities.

Disadvantages

  • Does not serve the child’s interests, only favors memory and a mechanical learning process. It is the reverse of child development: going from the simple to the complex from the adult point of view.
  • Requires unnecessary effort due to the abstraction of signs in the process of learning and prevents fluent reading speed.
  • Requires many eye movements and regressive eye movements to capture a reduced visual field.
  • Prevents the personal discovery of reading by presenting the key code. It sacrifices understanding of the text (intelligent reading) in favor of decoding (mechanical reading).

Analytical Methods

Analytical methods focus on the outcome. They respond to creative learning and discovery. They initially present extensive and meaningful linguistic structures (word, phrase, motivational picture, cartoon, or fairy tale). This unit can come in two forms:

  • Pure-Global (Decroly): The work unit is presented without adult intervention, expecting a sudden vision, the discovery of the student.
  • Global Mitigated: From the unit presented, the teacher intervenes to proceed with the analysis of it down to its smaller units.

Principles of the Method

  • Priority of visual function over auditory and motor. Decroly: “The intervention of the ear rather disrupts the acquisition of visual, motor, and kinesthetic associations.”
  • It is based on focus, on the vital needs of the child.
  • Significance prevails over the mechanics of reading, hence the value of silent reading and individualized teaching.
  • Globalization: The main basis of the method is structuring the teaching materials using a unifying and undifferentiated approach, according to the syncretic perception of reality for children.

Benefits

  • Answers the child’s perception and encourages broad eye movement units.
  • Significant motivation and creative attitude in increasing order, whatever the starting point (word, phrase, story, etc.), with greater appreciation when the unit is less complex (word).
  • Encourages intellectual work and personal research.
  • Takes into account the interests and needs of children.
  • Excellent therapeutic exercise for reading deficiencies.
  • Brings into play the total activity of the student: cognitive, affective, and motor.

Cons

  • The child’s perception at that age is detailed, as if separated from the whole set, especially with complex structures devoid of meaning. Overly broad units (sentences), because of their complexity, are likely to lead to failure.
  • Only favors students with strong visual-sensory skills, to the detriment of others. It encourages inaccuracy in reading and invention.
  • The learning process is slower because it involves knowledge of all words as different units. It is not possible to identify new words without knowledge of the writing code.

Mixed Methods

Mixed methods are based on the widespread idea that teaching reading and writing cannot be done unilaterally, but rather in a combined, multifaceted, eclectic, and mixed way.

It is appropriate for the child to understand written text globally, but also, simultaneously, to exercise a more logical process to discover the underlying combinatorial nature of this text: the relations of phoneme and grapheme. Similarly, in writing, it is advisable for the child to write texts intuitively, but simultaneously learn systematically the basic elements of the writing code for language skills.

Today, there is a common opinion about the need to orient the student in the way of “testing”, experimentation, initiative, personal search, and discovery (at the student’s pace) to achieve the goal with a higher probability of success and less risk of error/failure, in line with a constructivist approach.

Constructivism and Literacy

Departure:

  • Piaget: “The child does not store knowledge but constructs it through interaction with surrounding objects.”
  • Vygotsky: “Behind every learner is an individual who thinks.” To help the child, we must “get closer” to their “zone of proximal development”, based on what they know.
  • Ausubel: Learning must be functional (serve a purpose) and significant (be based on understanding).
  • There is no single method of literacy instruction, but rather a theory of knowledge arising from educational psychology research. Thanks to this, we know that:
  • Children learn in functional and meaningful contexts.
  • There are always stages of literacy development.
  • The emotional aspect is very important.
  • The use of functional and meaningful texts in daily activities is essential for literacy: lists, notes to take home, stories, songs, signing up for an activity, putting one’s name on work, and so on.
  • Teachers, peers, and any adult can be human mediators between written language and learning.

Stages of Reading (Frith)

  • Logographic (before age 5): Recognition of some written words whose meaning has been provided (own name, advertising logos, titles of animated stories, familiar stories, etc.). The child imitates and reproduces the act of reading and reciting from memory, or invents writing. They seek information from adults (What does this say?).
  • Alphabetic (5 years): Acquisition of phonological awareness, which allows for the decoding of written signs with adult autonomy (soup/toad).
  • Orthographic (Primary): Fundamental role of syntactic and semantic features of sentences, because what matters is the identity and order of the letters grouped into units of meaning.

One can imagine at what age these stages will occur, but they do not always appear in the same way, as each child will bring their own development.

Phases of Writing (Teberosky)

Concrete or Pre-Symbolic Phase (Several Levels)

  • Level 1: Differentiation of letters and numbers from other designs. Reproducing the features of capital letters, mimicking written or printed strokes. These spellings have no linearity, direction, or control of quantity. The function is to designate the name of the object. In some cases, the drawing is needed to signify the text.
  • Level 2: The child begins to organize the spellings one after the other (linear).
  • Level 3: The size of the words (number of letters) is proportional to the size of the object (ant/cow).

Symbolic Phase

  • Assumption of Quantity: There must be a minimum amount of characters, usually three, for writing to mean something.
  • Assumption of Variety: There must be a variation in the repertoire of characters; the spellings should be different from each other (internal variety) or have a different system (external variety). “The same letters are useless.”

These two assumptions appear early in spontaneous writing and last a long time. The repertoire used is usually that of the letters of the child’s name. There is more definition in features. Predominant interest in writing with uppercase printing.

Linguistic Phase

  • Syllabic Hypothesis:
    • Quantitative-Syllabic Hypothesis: Each syllable recognized orally corresponds to a graphical representation, even without conventional value (letters or pseudo-letters). Each spoken sound is ascribed a value. Ex: MAIR = Bicycle
    • Qualitative-Syllabic Hypothesis: In addition to the above hypothesis, the conventional value of the spelling is used, that is, for each syllable, a symbol is written that matches one of the letters representing one of the sounds that make up the syllable. Examples: PO AE LTNP = a ball, pa to ca fé = backpack
  • Syllabic-Alphabetic Assumptions: A period of transition in which the syllabic and alphabetic hypotheses of writing are handled together. Some letters have a symbolic sound value, while others do not. Both scenarios coexist in the same handwriting. Examples: IEO CAAELO A = I want a caramel, MOIA = backpack, PSKD = fish
  • Alphabetic Assumptions: Each letter corresponds to a sound value. Although progress has been made in building the system of writing, this hypothesis is not the end of the process, since then the child will encounter other difficulties (letters that represent more than one sound and vice versa, spelling, hyphenation, etc.). Example: We went to PARCE = We went to the park today