Class Notes

TLTED 5469, Language and Word Study for All Learners. 3 credit hours 

Instructor: Maria Borkowski

Editors note: Class Notes takes readers inside the classroom to see what students are learning in Education and Human Ecology.

Human beings are not born knowing how to read, and our brains have not evolved to learn the skill on their own, the way babies learn to walk.  

That might be because we haven’t been doing it for long. If you equate the time Homo Sapiens have lived with a 24-hour day, we’ve only been reading for the last 45 minutes. And yet, literacy marks a dividing line of opportunity in modern society. Having people know how to teach this critical skill is more important than ever. 

Language and Word Study for All Learners, a 3-credit-hour teaching and learning course, is a deep-dive into how spoken and written language works and how using science-based knowledge can help learners build the skills to read. 

The class, TLTED 5469, is taught to a range of undergraduate students, current teachers and master’s students. A major thrust of the course is phonics instruction. 

During a summer class, instructor Marie Borkowski demonstrated assessments for pre- and beginning readers using her school-aged children as subjects. 

“I'm going to give you a word,” she says to her five-year-old in a video she plays for teacher-students, “and I want you to give me a word that rhymes with it. He. Any word that rhymes with he.” 

The girl says, “Me.” 

“What’s a word that rhymes with can?” Borkowski asks. 

“Man,” the girl replies. 

“Mug,” Borkowski offers.  

“Fug,” she replies. 

The class follows the child’s responses intently. Fug, of course, is not a word. That doesn’t matter, Borkowski explains, because the girl demonstrated the assessment goal — she can rhyme. Then Borkowski evaluates how the girl segments words into individual sounds, or phonemes.  

“I'm going to give you a word and you're going to break it apart,” Borkowski says in the video. “The first word is dog. 

“D-o-g,” the girl replies, breaking apart the sounds. 

“Keep,” Borkowski says. 

“K-ee-p.” 

“Lay.” 

“L-ai-yeh.” She can’t see the words, but the girl clearly enunciates the “y.” 

The class considers why. “It looks like the child is maybe picturing how the word is spelled and then going ... from there,” one student says.  

Correct, says Borkowski. “She definitely knows how some of these words are spelled …  There's over-reliance on letter knowledge. She feels like each (letter) has to have a sound.”  

Each TLTED 5469 student will conduct a case study on another learner, using assessments learned in class. Some will study emerging readers; others, older students or students learning to speak English. Today’s class assignment considers how language variations affect reading. To the delight of fellow students, one does a rap: 

“Now consider syntax, the placement of adjective and noun. English is brown car; Spanish is car brown…” Learners bring their individuality to the classroom, which impacts how they read. 

The class explores the complexities of recognizing sounds, equating them with letters, blending them to make words, spelling them, understanding their meaning.  

“What are they able to distinguish?” Borkowski asks. “Can they identify onsets (initial consonant or consonant blend) and rimes (the vowel and any consonants that follow in a syllable)? Can they segment, blend, delete, substitute phonemes? And then, if they can't, where do you think your instruction should go with them next?” 

Ever grounded in science, the class considers challenges like learning difficulties and dyslexia. “It looks so different in each child,” Borkowski says. Children with dyslexia, for example, “are typically higher intelligence, higher ability level in everything but word reading.” 

The left hemisphere of the brain generally processes language and reading. Dyslexia, the class learns, is caused by a phonological processing problem where people rely more on the right hemisphere and frontal lobe. A video by the Dyslexia Training Institute explains. “When they read a word, it takes a longer trip through their brain and can get delayed in the frontal lobe because of this neurobiological glitch.”  

“If you heard the word ‘cat’ and … you remove the ‘c’, what word would you have left? At. This can be difficult for those with dyslexia.” 

That assessment is among those the class just reviewed.  

A 5469 student recalls a dyslexic learner who progressed after receiving structured phonics instruction — learning to break words down into syllables. But she only taught the girl one year. 

“How does training that brain look long term? Can they actually begin reading fluently?” she asks. 

Happily, Borkowski says, the answer is yes. “Students who have this intensive, structured literacy approach can make great strides.”