My initial reaction to Chapter 5 was a surprise to how
extensive it was. At first it was
difficult to process all of the information, but as I continued to read I began
to organize my thoughts into an outline for the chapter. For me, the chapter was organized in three
parts with a focus on word study at the end.
For the purpose of length I decided to focus on the first three
sections. In each section, the author
offers strategies that we as teachers could use in the classroom. Throughout the post I will ask you what
strategies you feel would work well in your classroom someday. As pre-service teachers, we need to start
planning for the strategies we will use and not simply just mention how great
they are in passing.
The first section dealt with a child’s curiosity towards
identifying whole words in a story and in their lives. A child becomes interested in the function of
a word first. Instead of knowing that
“snowman” is made up of a combination of letters, children understand and can
picture what a snowman is. This section
particularly focused on reading-readiness and a few different strategies that we
as teachers could use to help foster our students’ curiosity when it comes to
identifying the function of whole words.
A large section of text was devoted towards creating environmental print
in the classroom, developing sight vocabulary, and using context/picture clues
to help decode a story. One strategy I
found interesting was to make errors at times in the morning message for my
students to discover and correct. This
strategy just reminds me of being a critical thinker and to not just merely
accept everything an authority figure says or writes down. As teachers, we should encourage and support
critical thinking and questioning.
Another strategy that I found useful was to create an experience
chart. During a unit for fall, I would
ask my students what they enjoyed the most from the season and to use
adjectives to describe the object or activity.
I would take their responses and write them on a chart and put there descriptions
below. This way I am able to create a
sight-word chart that is relevant to my students’ lives. What strategies did you find useful? Were word walls or pocket charts some of
yours? Why?
A child’s curiosity moves from the function of whole words
to a curiosity of the sounds and letters that make up the words in the second
section of the chapter. This section
dealt with phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. This section focuses on the oral sounds that
words make. A strategy that I found
quite useful was to have my students create their own rhymes. This allows my students to manipulate words
of their interest and find other words that rhyme. What strategy would you use to focus on the
different sounds words make? Would you
sing songs that rhymed or read books that rhymed?
After both functions and sounds of words are identified
children become curious about the individual letters that combine together to
make up words. The third section deals
with teaching the alphabet and phonics.
A strategy I found extremely beneficial was to do the letter of the
day. For example if the letter was ‘d’
then I would exhibit words that start with ‘d’ for that day. Instead of doing a letter a week, I am able to
revisit difficult letters more often and provide my students multiple
experiences with the letter. After the
initial 26 days I would introduce phonics to the students. I would follow the book’s recommendation to
group letters together and to start with the most commonly used consonants. I would also include a vowel with one group
of consonants much like Reading Horizons recommends teachers do. This way I am able to revisit the individual
letters and to instruct my students on the different sounds they make. Shortly after, I would give my students the
chance to practice with the letters and the sounds they make by providing
meaningful and engaging activities.
According to the book, this is referred to as the Analytical-Synthetic
approach to phonics. Do you disagree
with my approach to teaching the alphabet and phonics? Would you initially teach a letter and the
sound it makes at the same time? What
strategies from the book would you use?
Wow, great post! I definitely plan on using the idea of making grammar/spelling mistakes in the morning message and having the children correct those, this gets the students engaged and thinking on a much deeper level then normal. But another one of my favorite strategies is the idea of a word wall. I love this concept because it serves several different purposes! One example is that word walls can serve as a reference list for children to refer back to while writing. If they get stuck on the spelling of a word or coming up with a word to use, they can simply look up at their word wall to get ideas. As far as the phonological awareness and phonemic awareness, I personally like the idea of reading books that rhyme. Not only do these books often engage the students and keep their interest, but afterward you can have the children take a portion of that book, and as you said, come up with their own rhyme. And lastly, I agree with your approach to teaching the alphabet. I like the idea of teaching one letter a day and by incorporating that letter into every subject area you would be able to emphasize it that much more. I also like your idea of teaching the alphabet first and then coming back to introduce phonics. I think that trying to do both at the same time may be too much for the children to handle.
ReplyDeleteJacob, your post was very thought provoking. I like how you broke the chapter into sections. Breaking it down helped understand this lengthy chapter. In the first section, you mentioned that the morning message strategy helps with critical thinking and not necessarily accepting everything authority figures do. I have learned and used morning message in previous lessons, but I had never thought of it this way. I enjoyed learning strategies about teaching sight words and letters recognitions because in the future I want to teach kindergarten. This chapter gave me fresh ideas that I could add to my teacher binder about teaching such concepts. One of my favorite strategies was labeling the classroom. At the beginning of the year, you want to only label a few things and as the year goes on, label more and more. This could be intertwined with learning letters and labeling things around the room with the letter of the week. Most teachers have the room already completely put together and labeled before the school year starts, but maybe it is better to wait.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with doing a letter a day. Some children need more than one day to master one letter. If you focus on a letter a week, if gives children more time to learn the letter. Introducing letters too fast can create confusion for kindergartners, especially to those students who have never been exposed to letters before coming to school. All in all, teaching comes down to the levels of your students and what their background is. Creating meaningful and engaging lessons are key! I am glad you mentioned that.
Jacob your post helped me understand this chapter so much better because of the way you broke it up into sections in your post. Your post also caused me to think of the strategies that I would use in my own classroom someday. I remember being in elementary school and fixing my teachers mistakes in the morning message. It never occurred to me that making errors in the morning message can also be used to help the students become critical thinkers or to teach the students to not just merely accept everything an authority figure says or writes down. I think in my own classroom I would write a morning message and leave errors in it but I would not tell the student that it contains any errors. I would then see if my students could find them, if they do not point them out I would ask the class if my morning message is written correctly. I would use open-ended questions to make sure that I was not leading them to the correct answer before allowing them to think. One of my favorite strategies is having a word wall. I would start the year by placing the students names on the word wall and any sight words we are working on. I thin think this strategy not only helps the students remember words that they have or are learning it also can help with spelling and visual clues. Words walls can be used for some many different ways and can benefit everyone in a classroom. Sounds can be very tricky to teach to a class because when a student thinks they have mastered the different sounds a word can make the rules change and a word that looks exactly the same sounds completely different. I think I would sing songs the rhymed and read books the rhymed because this allows me to differentiate my lesson to meet the needs of all learners in my classroom. I like your idea of teaching a letter a day but it seems incredibly fast for kindergarteners. While I do not think that teaching the students one letter a day is a extremely beneficial method I also do not agree with teaching one letter a week. I truly think the strategies that a teacher picks to use needs to be based on their students needs. Some students may came to kindergarten already knowing every single letter and teaching only one letter a week would be very boring for these students. But some students may come to kindergarten not knowing a single letter. But for the most case a student will come to kindergarten with a few letters already known. I think that teachers should teach 2 to 3 letters a week. This would allow some of the students time to learn the letter but it would also move out a faster rate for the students that may already have mastered the letter. If I found that a majority of students in my class were struggling on a letter I would choose to focus on that letter a little longer.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Jacob! I thought that you did a nice job breaking up an extremely lengthy and challenging chapter and simplifying it. Grouping them into sections helped me to visualize the information that they presented a lot better. I liked how you brought up the idea of making purposeful mistakes in the morning message. As we are still learning how to teach many professors drill us with the idea of modeling. I often forget that we can model and show them how to be critical thinkers as well. This will help to prepare them for later grades and their lives after school. I was glad that you brought up word walls. I think that they are vital to a classroom. They help students to learn words as well as practice independence with their learning to use their resources instead of relying on the teacher. To make it easier for my students to distinguish the words it is my goal to cut around the letters to emphasize different letter shapes (for those beginning readers) and use multiple different colors to help them distinguish between similar words.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was first starting to read, I remember reading a lot of books with repetition. Some of my favorite books were Dr. Seuss books and the kind of books that made you use your senses. I never remember doing much rhyming, but I am sure that I did. I also believe that songs with motion is a great way to tap into helping our future students learn to read and remember what they are learning.
As for the strategy I would prefer to use, I would have to pick the meaning- based strategy. While the others would work as well, I liked this one because it really connected the use of phonics to literature and theme based topics. Young children are still learning to connect information to their lives. This in my opinion would help foster the idea of metacognition and expanding their prior schema and teach them how to accomodate the new information, by expanding their knowledge on letter understanding.
I really liked what you said you would do with your unit about Fall. I though that it would be useful to use the basic word wall and very own words method. Like i said in another post for word walls, It's the same concept as labeling objects in the room for ELL students. Even though a word wall is not labeling objects it is a great way for students to pick up on words. Simply seeing the words every day allows students to recognize the words and become familiar with them. Then there is the very own word method that is very beneficial considering students choose words they find interesting.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your ideas about teaching oral sounds that words make. You asked the question of, would i sing songs that rhymed or read books that rhymed? My answer is that i think that both would be very beneficial but if i only had to pick one i would choose reading rhyming books. I say this because i absolutely love rhyming books and i feel like students can pick up on these stories quicker and can predict what is going to happen. These are great books that show students similar sounds. I also chose a book that rhymes over the sing alongs because if a student wants to read through the story by themselves they are able to.
I liked your approach to teaching letter and sounds but i would do it slightly different. I would not spend an entire week on one letter but i would spend more then one day on a letter for sure. Learning is very difficult for students so i don't want to rush and fluster or discourage them of their ability if it is difficult for them. I would spend about two or three days on each letter and i would defiantly teach the sound of the letter at the same time. I think that i would go about my process of teaching letters similar to how reading horizons went about it. I would start by teaching vowels then move on to the most common letters, that way we can start forming small words as soon as possible.