Thursday, June 5, 2008
Group 2- Tara Bauman- Phonemic Awareness
For my first practicum I am working with some lower level students who are having problems recognizing their sounds. Every day we meet in groups either reading or writng with the same 5 or 6 students. Every student speaks English but maybe speaks a different language at home. Some students have speech problems and some have low self- confidence. We will start with writing a sentence, which has to inlcude a spelling word for the week. When we start sounding out letters some of these students do not even know the letter sounds and start guessing b when I make a g sound. They have been working one on one with a teacher all year, but still have issues matching the sounds to letters. What are some ways that you guys are practicing sounds of letters in your classrooms, how are you praticing writing the words out? We do centers every day that give these students about 30 minutes every day to practice writing.
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4 comments:
Hi Tara,
That's a great question, I teach Kindergarten and here are some ideas I use to reinforce letter sounds and phonemic awareness. I hope this is helpful.
Letter of the day, mystery box- I place items in the box from home (can be pictures too) that begin with that letter.I pull them out one at a time and emphasize the beginning sound. For example, if Bb is the letter of the day, I pull out a picture of a bat, and have students repeat, b-b-b-at. We do this several times, and I always throw in some mistakes like a picture of a monkey and say, "Is this a B-b-b onkey? No, It's a m-m-m-onkey, what's this doing in here?!"
Another idea is to have students sort pictures by sounds that you have already learned- For example, to review Ss and Bb, have several picture cards in a jumble and tell students you need help sorting them by their beginning sound. You can pass out a card to each student and have them place it in either the Ss or Bb column, according to beginning sound.
You could also do a daily alphabet drill, which is having a set of alphabet cards, and going through each letter (in order, until they are ready for out of order). For example, "A says /A/ and /a/, B say /b/, C says /c/....etc.
Finally, You know that song "Who Let the Dogs Out?" You could have felt letters, and give one to each student and sing, "Who let the Bb out?" then students say, "b,b,b,b." Students with the letter you called out place it on feltboard while singing.
Joan
I am in a first grade classroom right now, and there are some lower level readers in there as well. What my teacher does for those students is play a game with them called "Conductor" during small reading group. She has the students sitting in the circle. Then she has one student stand behind one of the others. This student is the conductor. She holds up a flash card to the two students (the one sitting with the one behind him). There are usually high-frequency sight-words on the cards, but you could probably use letters to enforce the sounds. The student who reads the card first moves on to the next student in the circle. The students really enjoy this game and usually they all get a chance to be the conductor at some point. It seems to work by enforcing the words that they are studying at the time.
I actually just reviewed letter sounds today in my lit 2 class with my tutee. I have a kindergartener and I made flash cards that contained the capital and lowercase letters on each card: Aa, Bb, Cc.... I first had her tell me what each letter was just to get her in the zone. I then mixed up all of the cards and had her tell me just the sound of the letter. After that, I randomly pulled out cards and told her to tell me a word that start with that letter.
You could also try finding pictures that the students can cut out and identify. After identifing each picture, they could sort the pictures by beginning letter sounds.
These activities seemed to work with my tutee. I was able to isolate the letters that she was struggling with and focus on correcting those letters. For example, she was confusing her b's and d's and I was able to really concentrate on specific areas instead of focusing on every letter.
Athena :)
Hi tara,
Im in a first grade class as you know that is mixed with all different writing and reading levels. From what I observed so far in class the students have some form of phonemic awareness everday. We work on using the rubberband effect in their vocabulary words, as well as high frequency words.The students are to say each word and make the sound of the first letter they hear in each word.
In a few lessons I taught I've noticed that a few students understand quicker than others, sometimes trying more than one method could work. Here are a few things we do in class : I will say a word and I want you to repeat the first letter sound you hear bear, the students reply b( making the b sound). If they dont understand it I will give them the correct answer and comeback to it later on. Repetition usually helps, another way would be by saying 3 words make sure one starts with another letter. Let them choose the word that does not start with the same letter. Games are always fun , the students become really engaged if learning is encorporated into a game. And like joan said songs really help,some students reatin the song information better which could help them understand the letter sounds.
I asked my co-op teacher for advise, she said "lots of patience and finding different ways that accomodate that students learning styles and needs". She also said, "that each student is different for some it will take 2 months for others half of the school year. It really just comes to them naturally".
~Jennifer C.
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