By Tim Rasinski
The world is full of patterns. When we see a red octagonal sign while driving, we immediately think, “STOP!” Football fans can instantly recognize the shape of a goalpost and know what it’s used for. And when we hear the melody to a familiar song (think “Wheels on the Bus’ or “The Star-Spangled Banner”), we immediately recall the words. If you have a dog or cat at home, you are probably attuned to the pattern of the barks and mews. Indeed, look around the room in which you are in right now, and your are likely to see many patterns—from the way the ceiling tiles or lights are arranged to the way the classroom desks are arranged, or to the pattern of the quilt covering the couch.
Patterns can be defined as a regular and repeated arrangements of shapes, letters, lines, numbers, colors, and sounds that can serve as guides. As human beings, we are predisposed to detect patters in our environments. Our ability to see, hear, feel, and identify patterns makes our lives safer, easier to negotiate, and more productive.
Besides the types just mentioned, linguistic patterns can be used in teaching reading and writing. Of course, the letters of the alphabet and phonemes they represent are among the first patterns we teach children. Interestingly enough, we often teach the letters to young children with a song—The Alphabet Song—which itself is a patterned text.
However, there are many other patterns that can be used in teaching reading—patterns that can make learning more productive and more efficient for students. In this blog, I will share a few that I found to be very helpful in teaching children to read in the Kent State University reading clinic: Camp Read-A-Lot.
Help Students See Word Patterns: Phonemic Word Families/Phonograms/Rimes
One of the most widely used linguistic patterns taught in the primary grades are the phonemic word families—also known as phonograms or rimes. A phonemic word family is a part of the syllable that begins with the vowel (every syllable by definition needs to have a vowel or vowel combination) and all other letters that follow the vowel represent a regular or consistent set of phonemes or language sounds. For example, -each in ”teach”, and the –ent in the second syllable of “student” are word families. The significance of word families is that they are regularly occurring letter patterns that represent regularly occurring sound patterns. Not only does knowledge of –each help a developing reader decode the word “teach,” but it can also help students decode “beach, breach, peach, preach, reach” and even longer, more complex words: “preacher, teachable.” Indeed, in a seminal article, Dr. Edward Fry identified thirty-eight-word families, knowledge of which allows readers to decode over 650 single-syllable words. Moreover, the number of multisyllabic words that can be decoded from knowledge of these letter patterns is in the thousands. For example, the word family –am finds its way into ambulance, camera, family, hamster, and many more.
If we have this natural ability to see patterns, why not use them with students in our teaching of phonics and word decoding? Dr. Fry’s thirty-eight-word families could easily be taught once per week in first grade. Students would leave with the ability to analyze and decode a multitude of English words.
| Edward Fry’s Most Common Phonograms -ab -at -ink -ore -unk -ack -ay -ip -ot -y -ag -ell -ight -out -all -est -ill -ow (how, chow) -ain -ew -im -ow (bow, throw) -am -ed -in -op |
Enlarge Students’ Vocabulary With Morphemes – Word Roots
Phonograms or word families are not the only letter patterns worth teaching. Morphemes are word parts or patterns that not only represent a consistent or regular occurring sound, they also represent meaning and, as such, are well worth teaching if your goal is to expand students’ vocabularies or knowledge of word meanings. Another common name for morphemes is roots. Some of the most common morphemes in English derive from Latin and Greek. The logic behind the use of morphemes in reading instruction is the same as with teaching phonograms—knowledge of one morpheme can help students unlock the meaning to many words—in some cases over 100 English words.
The numerical prefix bi– can be found in English words such as bifocals, biplane, bicycle, biannual, bipartisan, and many more. Similarly, base word roots, morphemes that are the foundation of words, help form the meaning of many English words. Knowing that ject- means “to throw” can help students determine or affirm the meaning of words such as: eject, inject, object, object, reject, interject, conjecture, and many more. Indeed, it has been estimated that the word root trac/tract, meaning pull, draw, drag, is found in over 140 English words! Moreover, most of our multisyllabic words in English as well are academic words (think science, social studies, mathematics) are made of morphemic word roots.
Again, the logic then suggests that teaching a limited number of morphemes or word roots can give students patterns that will allow them to determine the meaning (and sound representation) to a near-limitless number of English words. Then, teaching morphemic word patterns should be seen as the natural follow-up to teaching phonemic word families or phonograms. (Find out more about teaching word roots in my blog article: “A Little Latin (and Greek), and a Whole Lot of English Building Vocabulary with Word Roots,” on the Robb Review – https://therobbreviewblog.com/uncategorized/a-little-latin-and-greakk/
Teach Reading With Poetry: Use Textual Language Patterns
Beyond individual word patterns, we also have language patterns that exist at the text level. Of course, when talking about teaching reading to children, I am referring to poetry for children. Poetry, and I’m including song lyrics as well, follow highly predictable patterns in terms of rhythm and rhyme. That is why poetry, especially poetry and rhymes for children, is so easy to learn. Nearly all children in primary grades can easily recite a plethora of nursery rhymes, poems, and song lyrics. How many of us, as adults, can easily recall song lyrics and poems that we last heard years ago? The textual patterns make them easy to remember.
When working with younger readers, we want them to meet success in learning to read. What better way to ensure success to learn to read poems or other patterned texts each day or two. Of course, such learning requires repetition, and repetition (repeated reading of actual texts is a hallmark of reading fluency development.
One more thing that’s worth noting about poetry for children: most poems rhyme. Returning to what I had previously mentioned, words belonging to particular word families (phonograms or rimes) generally rhyme. So, the use of poetry as a way to develop fluency and success in reading connected text can also be sued as a wonderful way to follow up word family phonics instruction. After learning the –eep word family and associated words, your students can read, reread, and eventually perform Little Bo Peep. Instruction with the –ick and –ock word families can be followed with Hickory Dickory Dock.
In Kent State’s Camp Read-A-Lot reading clinic, where young students make remarkable progress in reading in as little as five weeks of instruction, our goal is for students to learn to read something well each and every day of instruction. And that something is usually a poem or a song. Moreover, the poems and songs that students learn are usually tied to the phonemic word families they are also learning.
Sometimes our teachers/clinicians are unable to find a poem along with a word family under instruction. In such cases, the clinicians write their own poems. One added benefit of poetry is that the patterns in poetry can easily be parodied to write new poems that follow the patterns of already-known poems. For example, the nursery rhyme “Diddle Diddle Dumpling My Son Jon” was rewritten by a clinician to reinforce the –ag word family:
Diggle daggle dumpling, Aggie and Mag
Had a dog, and his name was Tag
Tag had a tail that would wiggle and wag
Diggle daggle dumpling, Agnes and Mag.
Imagine the sense of accomplishment Taylor felt as he stood in front of classmates and family members to perform his own poem. Teaching and learning doesn’t get any better than that!
Find out more about teaching and using poetry in my blog article: “Why Poetry, Let Me Count the Ways,” on the Robb Review: https://therobbreviewblog.com/?s=poetry
References and Resources
Fry, E. (1998). The most common phonograms. The Reading Teacher, 51, 620-622.
Harrison, D., Rasinski T.V., & Fresch, M. (2022). Partner Poems & Word Ladders for Building Foundational Literacy Skills: Grades K-2 and 1-3. New York: Scholastic.
Rasinski, T. V., Padak, N., Newton, R. & Newton, E. (2020). Building Vocabulary with Greek and Latin Roots: A Professional Guide to Word Knowledge and Vocabulary Development (2nd ed.). Huntington Beach, CA: Shell Educational Publishing. (Professional Development Book)
Rasinski, T. V., Padak, N., Newton, R., & Newton, E. (2019). Building Vocabulary from Word Roots. Huntington Beach, CA: Shell Educational Publishing. (Vocabulary Instruction Kit for Grades K to 11).
