Short notes again. I love making them as it helps me to understand a text. This time is an article from Cunningham & Cunningham (2002) and it is about phonics instruction.
It is very interesting to use with our learners because of its interactive nature. Interaction with teacher and interaction with small manipulative.
Let's read!
If you are like me, can't understand enough from the short notes, click on this video to watch it in action.
I hope to try this one out, maybe I will start with my kids!
Alhamdulillah.
Our bunch has graduated from the Specialist Course of
Literacy Development with flying colours (our lecturer told us so and yes we
believed it!).
The course required us to attend 10 days of instruction,
tabled a forum, and completed 2 online assignments and reporting on our Action
Plan. The course was demanding and I was
forced to learn and that was good. There were many things which I took for
granted and from now on I will try my best to have the best ‘cognitive clarity’
on those matters.
From the course I understand that literacy is everything.
Literacy is nothing but all the four skills. The skills are interdependence and
one simply cannot point out which skill precedes after another. Nonetheless, we
must try our best in accommodating the needs of the learners.
In determining the best way to approach our learners, we must
have ideas on how they learn by:
- · Focusing on how the community learn. We can do this by observing how the community works and what they do for a living.
- · Constant assessment on the interaction of the learners and the surrounding. You will be surprised after spending time with your learners outside of the classroom. Their perception on the world is different and we can see on how they relate it to their lives.
Our learners come into the classroom with a bag of
knowledge. No one starts at zero even on the first day of school. They brought
in their experiences on literacy, the kind they were introduced by their
parents, families and people around them. Taking these into consideration, put
it together with our prior observation, we can foresee the success in our
teaching.
The success lies on how we use the information to determine
the level of the learners thus devising appropriate intervention. The
interventions can be seen in our version of the balanced literacy model.
My group members and I interpreted the balanced literacy
model to incorporate the four skills of the language.
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| Our Version! |
In each skill, we can
scaffold our learners by modelling/sharing/ interacting/guiding them in order
to achieve independence. These skills
required ongoing word study and further assess to monitor effectiveness of
teaching.
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| I lost the source! Pardon me! |
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| How do you study? |
Since I have multiple range of audience, the activities selected are for easy and intermediate level. The participation was superb! The attention? I can't ask for more. Congratulations to the teachers and pupils of SK Kg. Salang for the hard work you have poured in to create a welcoming environment in the school.
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| No photos of me doing the activities! *Regrets* |
The talk was about How to Study English? Ya, I know, countless articles written about it, talks given, tips shared and hey the sources are endless! Nevertheless, children learn best by doing and that's what I was trying to do. There are 7 ways to study English suitable for primary school children and I let the children explore the activities with my guidance.
There were weaknesses on my part that I wish to make amends to in the future. I hope to do small groups activities, like a workshop and prepare materials according to abilities. I would also include more songs as attention getters (although claps and cheers work fine but variations would be interesting!) familiar songs such as nursery rhymes to retain their attention during activities.
Will there be a next time? I pray so.
Cheers!!
Will there be a next time? I pray so.
Cheers!!
There are a lot of ways to do blending. Ask around or simply Google, you will get a long list. Arm span, down the slide, alphabetical dice, mini flip card, toy car...to name a few.
It is evidence in the children which I grouped together for an action research. They are remedial pupils, grouped together based on their performance in the literacy screening. These children can connect alphabet and its sound, but they can't do blending.
I tried phonetic flip chart with my middle child and it helps his reading a lot, He managed to sound out the words brilliantly. Although the combination of the sound will sometimes be nonsense, but I think to a young second language learners, all English words are nonsense.
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| My son's phonetic flip chart on the top left, together with the CVC picture puzzles |
It is evidence in the children which I grouped together for an action research. They are remedial pupils, grouped together based on their performance in the literacy screening. These children can connect alphabet and its sound, but they can't do blending.
Initially I thought they have some concept on blending, because their scores indicate they have some ideas on it unfortunately things got a little haywire.
I find that they have difficulties in understanding the concept of blending. They didn't understand that blending is to integrate the sounds and to understand which comes first and which one later. My lesson plans didn't prepare me for this.
The lesson plans I prepared have 3 core elements to be done
- Letter name, sound and gestures
- Sounding onset/rimes
- Blending
In the next 3 coming lessons with the children, I propose to add the following:
In understanding the concept of blending
- Introduce the CVC picture puzzle. This is to let them understand that letters must be integrated to make meaning (hopefully they don't ask about I and a!). I took the pictures from the internet and made simple puzzles. They don't have the dotted lines for cutting but I cut it out freely in between the letters.
These pictures is for the set induction to understanding the concept of blending. In pair they will assemble the puzzle to make a picture.
- Let the children clap to the onset and rimes. Understanding how many sounds involved will make the children alert on how many sounds to produce. An alternative to this activity is to give the children some blocks or small manipulative, they will listen to the onset and rimes and show how many sounds they hear by placing the blocks accordingly (an obvious one ya, but hey bear in mind that they are second language learners, so they need this practice).
To reinforce learning
- Supplementary activities such as chanting to the words, singing songs would be part of the lesson. I believe they need to hear the words repeatedly in order to understand blending.
There is not much I can do in 30 minutes but I want to try to make an impact. At least I know how to do it and have stories to proof and share it with my teachers. Just can't wait for next week!
