Curious Gertie: My journey as an elementary school teacher
Showing posts with label Week 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Week 2. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Practical Application
This week's readings from Word Identification Strategies were helpful to me in a practical sense. The knowledge that I gained will be useful in the kindergarten class we are visiting during class time, the ELL students in my main placement who are struggling with reading, and with my own daughter, who is in kindergarten this year.
As I was reading these chapters, I was also helping my kindergartener with her homework and a song she was trying to write on paper. She just learned the song "Five Little Pumpkins" today. On the top of the paper she wrote her name, which is the first word she learned to spell. Underneath was a drawing of five different pumpkins which were labeled with their number. Following that was a line of oooooooooo. When I asked her what this represented, she said it was the sound of the wind in the song saying "ooh ooh." Finally was her drawing of a hand to signify that they clap when they sing "out goes the light."
After reading these chapters, I have a better appreciation of her as a writer and reader. From what I read thus far, I would say that she is prealphabetic with some traits of partial alphabetic.
For the most part when she writes she either uses scribbles to simulate cursive or she randomly strings letters together, which is part of the prealphabetic stage. She does show a few dimensions of the partial alphabetic stage such as finding letters in words and using one consonant to represent a word.
I also read a story with her called When Tiny Was Tiny, and I explained to her that the way I knew what to read was that the words tell me what to say. She was able to read some small words with two phoenemes, such as /is/ and /he/. We also stretched out words together so she could read them. Currently we play a lot of games with letter sounds and letter recognition, and I'm excited to use the examples from chapter two in the future.
In activity 2.4 it has rhyming and beginning sound sorts. On the last week I was in my main placement (3rd grade), we did word work aka, spelling. The beginner group is made up mainly of ELL students, and they were using this activity to sort their spelling words. I found that it was essential to do step 3, which is "have children name each picture." Each child can interpret a picture differently, and if they don't know what the picture is supposed to represent, they are unable to sort the word correctly.
Finally, I just want to say that how we learn to read is amazing to me! The English language is a hard one to be proficient in, especially when many words don't follow the rules for how each phoneme should sound. This book has illustrated for me how to teach kindergarteners and 1st graders step by step to help them build a reading foundation, where in the past it seemed daunting and overwhelming.
As I was reading these chapters, I was also helping my kindergartener with her homework and a song she was trying to write on paper. She just learned the song "Five Little Pumpkins" today. On the top of the paper she wrote her name, which is the first word she learned to spell. Underneath was a drawing of five different pumpkins which were labeled with their number. Following that was a line of oooooooooo. When I asked her what this represented, she said it was the sound of the wind in the song saying "ooh ooh." Finally was her drawing of a hand to signify that they clap when they sing "out goes the light."
After reading these chapters, I have a better appreciation of her as a writer and reader. From what I read thus far, I would say that she is prealphabetic with some traits of partial alphabetic.
For the most part when she writes she either uses scribbles to simulate cursive or she randomly strings letters together, which is part of the prealphabetic stage. She does show a few dimensions of the partial alphabetic stage such as finding letters in words and using one consonant to represent a word.
I also read a story with her called When Tiny Was Tiny, and I explained to her that the way I knew what to read was that the words tell me what to say. She was able to read some small words with two phoenemes, such as /is/ and /he/. We also stretched out words together so she could read them. Currently we play a lot of games with letter sounds and letter recognition, and I'm excited to use the examples from chapter two in the future.
In activity 2.4 it has rhyming and beginning sound sorts. On the last week I was in my main placement (3rd grade), we did word work aka, spelling. The beginner group is made up mainly of ELL students, and they were using this activity to sort their spelling words. I found that it was essential to do step 3, which is "have children name each picture." Each child can interpret a picture differently, and if they don't know what the picture is supposed to represent, they are unable to sort the word correctly.
Finally, I just want to say that how we learn to read is amazing to me! The English language is a hard one to be proficient in, especially when many words don't follow the rules for how each phoneme should sound. This book has illustrated for me how to teach kindergarteners and 1st graders step by step to help them build a reading foundation, where in the past it seemed daunting and overwhelming.
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