Chapter 4 focused on phonemic awareness and gave many suggestions of specific things to teach to help students in this area. One idea is making sure the students can hear the syllables in each word. Having students clap out syllables helps them hear them. Other important things to emphasize are alliteration, rime, and rhyme. It suggested using nursery rhymes and poems, as well as jump rope jingles to help teach students about rhyming words. Other suggestions were to use Mother Goose and songs to help students see how words rhyme. The book also said tongue twisters are good sentences to use to teach students about the beginning letter sounds of words. Onomatopoeia is another good source of words to have students read, and these are found often in poems or in rhyming books.
As I read through all the suggestions given in this chapter, I was excited to put them into practice. There were many good ideas, some of which I had never before considered. So I didn’t really have any questions about the chapter, but wrote down numerous ideas to try in our tutoring sessions, and to keep in mind for my future classroom. The text listed a number of books that would be appropriate to use in classrooms to teach some of these specific topics, so I hope to find some of those books and use them. Poetry can be a great tool to use, but I do think it’s important to pick poetry that the kids will enjoy and understand. Using poetry that is “out there” will not register with the students, and I think they would quickly lose interest.
One of the things that interested me the most was using jump rope jingles, poetry, songs, or even rhyming books and then have students come up with a verse of their own. Reading all of these things can be good teaching tools for students to see rhymes, but having them write something of their own in that same style would teach them to apply the idea. I hadn’t considered this before, so I want to use this idea when we begin tutoring sessions. Writing poetry is good but sometimes challenging, so if I can use an already existing verse and have students make a few changes here and there, it will be less frustrating for the students, yet still teach them about rhyming words.
It sounds like you are just as excited as I am about the ideas in the chapter. I spend time looking on the internet for activities but sometimes I don't find quite what I'm looking for and with this book it's already full of ideas, most of which have been tried and proven I'm sure. It's also easy for me to see how some of the activities can be adapted to fit certain needs but the suggestions provided allow for a good basis for establishing concrete activities for the students to be involved with while having fun and learning at the same time!!! How perfect is that. I'm just so excited to do this tutoring!!!
I really like your idea of using the poetry and jump rope jingles and then having the students come up with their own verses so they can learn to apply their ideas. Some of the ideas that this chapter talked about would be could ones to use during tutoring or at least try them. I agree poetry can be tricky because you have to find some that students will enjoy.
You have great ideas. Involving jingles really help students remember things. Songs that I have learned in school has helped me to this day remember certain things. I love the jump rope jingles and even the hand claps. I recently just remembered some due to pinterest :) It brought back great memories. Great reflection
I liked the use of jump rope jingles too! I think rhyming books are great for students to understand phonemes. Dr. Seuss books are great for this practice it also engages the student's imagination and aid the student in creating their own rhyming pages or stories.
Phonemic Awareness differs from phonics in that it is the ability to recognize that speech is made of spoken words and sounds. Phonics is knowing that letters are represented by specific sounds. Phonemic is aural and oral while phonics involves the written letters with aural process. There are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness: ability to hear syllables in a word, hear initial letter sounds, distinguish rime and rhyme, distinguish oddity, blend sounds to make a word, segment words orally, and manipulate sounds to create new words. I had NO IDEA there was that much involved in it. I guess we just take it for granted that we learn by example but then I think about how my brother struggled to say words correctly. He had suffered terrible ear infections as a child, which we later found out created scaring that affected how he heard sounds, which in turn affected how he repeated the words he was hearing. I think back to the vowel code rap we learned in RLA and how the letter “a” can make three different sounds. That would be a hard concept to teach to an ELL since there are so many English phonemes that are not found in Spanish. The chart on page 81 shows just how many English sounds are not part of several other languages, especially Chinese. Most states require schools to document phonemic awareness growth. I want CRAZY seeing all the activities we could do to promote phonemic awareness: songs, nursery rhymes, poems, tongue twisters and jingles. The strategies and activities section in the test lists activities by levels such as K-3 or K-2. I will use some of these activities in my lesson plans for the tutoring sessions. If you haven’t looked at the “pop-off-the-bead” activity you should. This will help with individual sounds for letters in a word and how eliminating one will change the word. This also helps with fine motor skills and could be adapted by using something other than pop off beads that is easier to work with. There are so many good ideas in this section I just want to do them all with my tutoring group to see which ones work the best.
Amy Your example with your brother and his scaring from ear infections affecting his learning is a great example of what we need to be on the lookout for as teachers. Each student is a unique person for us to figure out why they may not be able to learn a certain concept within our classroom. There are so many possibilities that could be interfering with each child’s learning that we need to try and investigate further than what we may see on the surface. I also liked the “pop off the bead” activity. I liked how the activity would give the students a kinesthetic experience of removing the bead which may help students that learn in different ways rather than just erasing a letter to change a word which I have seen used a lot.
Chapter 4 explained the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness. Phonics is the understanding that letters represent certain sounds, and phonemic awareness is speech composed of syllables, sounds, and words. One of the items I found interesting was the chart on page 80. Figure 4.2 shows the sounds not found in Spanish, and figure 4.3 shows what is found in both Spanish and English. I understand now why students have looked at me funny when I ask a question of them and they say, there is no word in Spanish to answer the question with. Asian speakers find the English language difficult as well because the do not produce sounds with their tongue and lips. When I read that, I had to stop and say the letters sounds to see how much the lips and tongue are really used. It is funny how much we do not even think about that stuff because we are all so used to it. I love all the poems and jingles that have a rhythm to them, it makes them fun to say and easy for kids to remember. Phonemic awareness is important for producing good readers, they must know that words are made up of distinct sounds and what those sounds are in order to sound out or break up a difficult word.
Yes, it was very interesting to read why ELL learners sometimes have a hard time saying English words. There is no such sound in their language for some of the sounds they need to make in English! This is something I had never considered before, and it certainly puts a new light on things, helping me understand why these students might struggle to pick up the English language. I have heard people speak in other languages, and there are definitely sounds in their languages that I couldn't make! So it's important to be aware of this. I also agree with you that both phonics and phonemic awareness are important in teaching children to be better readers. Otherwise, they are just looking at a group of letters without any understanding of how they fit together or what sound they make. This would require them to memorize all words as sight words - an impossible feat.
I had never thought about how easily we produce our sounds in English and how ELLs would have a problem reproducing these sounds without specific instruction. I also enjoyed all the rhymes and jingles found in this chapter, and I plan on using some of them in my tutoring sessions.
Jenny, I find it interesting, as well, that there are sounds that ELL students can not say. My daughter lived in Japan for 3 years while her husband was stationed there. The Japanese are absolutely wonderful people. I don't think they know the meaning of dishonesty! But that's another story, anyway, they can't pronounce the "L" sound. I had a student from Taiwan who couldn't pronounce "L". I went to Japan when my daughter and her family was there and in a restaurant the menu advertised that you could order "harf" orders! When I asked my daughter what it was, she told me the Japanese learn "Engrish" in school! Really does put things in prospective, doesn't it?
Mary you make a great point about how we take for granted and often times over look many some of the differences between English and other languages. Often times this can lead to great confusion, which you alluded to in your post. My brother and sister both had to learn other languages in their post-secondary education, one learned mandarian chinese and the other japanese. These differences in basic phonemes was something they talked about being really challenging in learning a secondary language.
Chapter 4 talks about phonemic awareness and how as a teacher you should understand what each child knows about their letter and sounds at the beginning of the year. There are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness that include ability to hear syllables within a word, distinguish between rime and rhyme, and blend sounds together orally to make a word. Phonemic awareness is a child's understanding and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units. When it comes to English learners particularly from Mexico have to learn to produce the 44 most common phonemes of the English language to become English speakers. I thought this to be interesting because I had no idea about how many phonemes they would have to know. This chapter goes on to talk about the importance of learning phonemic awareness a child and a reader but as some think that instead of intense instruction over phonemes that students when actively engaged in literacy activities become aware of sounds within words. Singing songs are good for students because they involve alliteration and rhyme. This chapter has many activities you can you to help students such as using tongue twisters, go fish games, bingo, and poetry. One question I have would be when in this chapter it talked about some experts disagreeing and saying that phonemic awareness can be an educational hazard. How would it be a hazard when you have to know how to say words in order to read? I look at the issue of singing in elementary and how important it is for students in helping them with learning sounds. I never thought much of it when the teacher would be singing silly songs during carpet time or songs while lining up or cleaning up. In my own experience I can remember making poems books in school and I think poems really help with learning phonemic awareness. Also while taking children's literature it helped to show how important phonemic awareness is and the many different ways you can help with this.
Jared, Until these past two semesters, I really never knew what it took to teach language arts and all the fine details that go into the "big 5" approaches. I agree with you on the carpet time and the silly songs that the teacher always did. For kids, it is fun to do and many will sing them at home for their parents as well, but those lessons are vital to the development of their reading and writing skills. I feel that this chapter gave many examples and wonderful activities that we can use in our tutoring lessons, as well as in our classrooms someday.
I completely agree with you. I think that phonemic awareness is critical and I think through the use of poems, it can really be set free. I think that poems and children's literature it definitely opens the child's mind. I think that it is so critical to succeeding in the classroom. I know there are some out there that do not believe it is important, but I think it is up to the teacher. I think that I will definitely teach it inside my classroom!
Phonemic awareness and phonics, from the next chapter, are honestly the two parts of the “Big 5” of reading that I struggle with understanding how to teach. There are so many sounds in the English language to understand with both visual and auditory skills in order to be able to read. I find it overwhelming to teach all the pieces and connect them to whole words in methods that students will understand.
By breaking phonemic awareness into the seven dimensions helped me begin to develop an approach to teaching students to read using phonemic awareness. I appreciated the checklist example on page 83 as a tool to keep my focus on the reading goals of my students. By using this checklist throughout the year I could determine which phonemic skills each student had mastered and which skills still needed to be worked on. I also appreciated the various educational activities that the text provided for specific areas of phonemic awareness. I feel like I could use this book as a resource tool for my classroom.
I found it interesting that the English language has 44 phonemes, which can be agreed upon, and Spanish has 24 phonemes. This fact alone helped me have more compassion for ELL students. I also know from the experience of hosting a Japanese exchange student in our home that if I look at a Japanese word and try to pronounce it that I fail miserably because their phonemes are so different from ours. Being aware of the difference in phonemes between languages will be a great asset in our increasingly diverse classrooms.
Teaching phonics and phonemic awareness in reading curriculum is definitely a matter of debate. At this point in my journey in becoming a teacher, I feel like phonemic skills are part of the whole reading education process. An awareness of the sounds and syllables that words can have can give a student a chance to understand how to pronounce a word they have never seen. At the same time though, students need to understand how to blend words quickly and recognize whole words so that fluency and comprehension can be achieved. Effective reading is definitely a balance of many skills.
Ellen, I am in the same position as you, I have not had a lot of experience teaching these skills and it is hard to understand how to do this without hands on experiences. I like how the chapter covers each of the 7 dimensions and think this makes it a little easier to understand. I think it would be a challenge to teach phonemic awareness to an ELL since our phonemes are not the same as their native languages. My brother teaches English in Korea and he has mentioned that many of the sounds they use are not sounds we use. This is a hard concept for me to grasp. Nice post, Kara
I enjoyed reading the scenario in this chapter. I have not interned with any students under 3rd grade and when I substitute with the younger students I find myself needing to work on this skill with the students. It was nice to have a review of the 7 dimensions of phonemic awareness. After reading about this skill when associated with ELL’s I am aware that phonemes differ from one language to another. I think this fact would make it a particularly hard skill to teach to these students. I would be interested to learn about some different ways to approach this problem during instruction. I think the checklist or the 7 dimensions for phonemic awareness would be a good place to start when assessing since it shows what the child can and cannot do. It was interesting to read about all the different ways (i.e. songs, tongue twisters etc.), to engage children in language. As a mother it seems natural to do and share these things with a child but while working with students in the school I have seen that many children have not been afforded this luxury at home. I like that this chapter included activities that can be used for the different dimensions of phonemic awareness. I always like to save my textbooks because they have so many great activities and ideas I hope to have the opportunity to use one day.
I know this sounds silly but I had not even thought about the fact you mentioned. It is true even with myself that when my kids were young I did many of the activities, songs, and nursery rhymes. I think it paid off because they are all wonderful readers and two out of the three loves to read.
I also work mainly with children 4th grade or older so when I am in a younger classroom, I find myself going back and learning just as much as they are. Like you said, it is so easy to pick out the students who do not get worked with at home and it makes me sad. I have a three year old daughter who we read to atleast once a day, sing many songs, or play games daily. I also like to keep textbooks for that very reason!! Have a great semester, good luck tutoring this week!
Chapter 4 gave an in depth view of phonemic awareness. According to the text phonemic awareness is “a child’s understanding and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words.” By kindergarten a child will have mastered the first three dimensions of phonemic awareness. These dimensions are 1.)The ability to hear syllables in a word. 2) The ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration. 3) The ability to distinguish rime and rhyme. The last four should be mastered by first grade. These four dimensions are 4) The ability to distinguish oddity. 5) The ability to blend sounds together. 6) The ability to segment words. 7) The ability to manipulate sounds to create new words. This chapter gives great ideas for the educator to use in the classroom. There are games and activities to encourage growth within the student in each of the seven dimensions. This reading gave me a chance to see in greater detail the difference between our phonemes and those of other languages. I can appreciate the difficulty there is in a student attempting to learn English. When I thought about it I think of people in the small town I live in. A few of them have never been around people who speak Spanish to when they try to read a Spanish word it gets completely lost in translation because of those phonemes. I may say this a few times this semester but in my own experience with a program called Pathways to Reading, segmenting, blending, and knowing those phonemes are important. It teaches Vowel Town and the student must learn how the mouth moves and the spellings of certain vowel sounds such as o, aw, and au. I love this program because when I have the student reading to me I can name the rule to remind them how to segment those sounds.
Pathways to Reading is a great program, my children's school also does this. It is great when they are discussing vowels that they can bring in the sayings they learned in pathways. The text also opened my eyes to part of the reason why it is so difficult for English learners to learn our language.
Chapter four covered phonemic awareness and ways to implement it into our classroom instruction. There were seven dimensions listed in detail: 1. ability to hear syllables within a word, 2. hear initial letter sounds, 3. distinguish between rime and rhyme, 4. to distinguish oddity, 5. blend sounds together orally to make a word, 6. segment words, and 7. manipulate sounds to create new words. In reading and language arts, Dr. Walizer showed us many ways to implement these tools creatively and in a manner that the students will grasp the concepts. Two ways stick out for me: the vowel code rap and the sayings for all the flash cards. I feel it is vital to introduce these items in the early elementary grade levels, but continue to monitor and work on concepts throughout the school years.
There were also many examples given in the chapter that will be useful in our tutoring sessions and then later on in our classrooms. Since we are integrating PE and music throughout our lessons, I thought the idea of jump rope jingles and children’s rhyming books would be good to input. I also felt that the activities in the section of intervention was priceless. They are divided up by grade level and the seven dimensions. My tri-fold has a section for me to place independent work for my students to do while I am working individually with another student. I would like to have some of these activities to be a fun part of their independent work. Plus, I get to see if they are understanding those activities without them being the main focus of my lesson plans. Which could be an extension to my assessing tools. Another great informational chapter.
This chapter began by letting us know the difference between phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonemic awareness is when students are able to see that words are brought together by individual sounds and syllables. Phonics is recognizing the letter associated with the sounds. On page 82 I found it interesting that Smith (1999) believes that “phonemic awareness instruction is an educational hazard.” His example is that you cannot separate the sounds from a word that has been uttered any more than you can extract the ingredients from a cake that has been baked. I think this is not a fully thought out statement. When teaching phonemic awareness you start by teaching the letter sounds then you ask the student to identify the sounds they hear in a word. When you bake a cake you must first know what the ingredients taste like to make sure they will go together nicely. When you serve the cake you might have people taste it and say this taste like it has a touch of cinnamon in it. The person tasting the slightest taste of cinnamon must first know what cinnamon taste like. This is the same thing with phonemic awareness. A student can hear the word spill, and since they know that the “SSS” sound is made by the letter “S” they will hear it in the word. I enjoyed the fun riddles found on pages 84-89, I know I will use some of these with my tutees this semester. The intervention strategies and activities the book gives on page 89-99 are fun activities that can easily be worked into tutoring session to make them fun.
I agree, a student has to be able to know the "s" sound is made by the letter "s" in a word. I enjoyed the activities in this chapter as well. Several seem easy to use and fun for kids. I am working with struggling 6th grade readers and I found several of the activities that I will modify for them. Rhyming words are always fun no matter how old you are.
Chapter 4 in the text discusses phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to understand and be aware that speech is composed of identifiable units. The seven dimensions of phonemic awareness are the ability to hear syllables within a word, to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, to distinguish rime and rhyme, to distinguish oddity, to blend sounds together orally, to segment words orally, and to manipulate sounds orally to create new words. The text also helped explained that English learners have difficulty because we have phonemes that do not exist in their native language, along with different phoneme placement within words. The text offered many great songs, nursery rhymes, jump rope jingles, tongue twisters, and literature ideas that will be useful for tutoring sessions along with when we are teaching. I think these will be good to incorporate movement through actions. I enjoyed the intervention strategies and activities at the end of the chapter. I like how they were broken up into different parts of phonemic awareness and by grade level. I hope the next chapters have as many great activities and strategies as this one!
Nice job noting the information about English learners that was discussed in this chapter. It's clearly evident to even us as adults that the English language sometimes seems to make up its own rules in regards to sounds/letters and so forth! It's easy to understand how English learners would struggle!
This chapter talked about the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is being able to blend and take apart words, because students can recognize the sounds. Phonics is being able to recognize a letter. When working in kindergarten rooms, they have a time block that is directly for phonemic awareness. Students practice the sounds, blending, and then the reading of the word. They try to identify and think of words that start with that letter as well.
Like most classmates have talked about, this chapter talks about songs, rhyming, books, and jump rope jingles. From my personal experience, I have found putting anything to a song, students will remember that better. I look back and I can remember facts that I learned in a tune, along with being able to belt out a song that I have not heard in years. I really liked the jump rope jingles. This would be a great idea how you integrate PE in to a lesson.
Regardless of what strategy is used, it is important that students are able to succeed in phonemic awareness and phonics. I learned some good strategies I would like to use as a future teacher.
Since I will be tutoring students in Kindergarten, this chapter was great for me. I really liked how the beginning really broke down the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. It really gave me a lot more clarification and comfort knowing that I can refer to the beginning of this chapter if I get confused. I loved the last half of this chapter and all of the ideas and activities that can be used with students! I love it when I can get ideas and new ways to present lessons and ideas to a class. This has been my favorite chapter this far I think because I can relate to it well with the students I have worked with and working with currently.
The section that discussed English learners and phonemic awareness was really insightful to me. Though I knew that there are a lot of consonants in English that are not in other languages, it allows me to understand why different speakers of other languages have the same general problems with English. I never thought of jump rope jungles and tongue twisters to be introducing sounds really until I read this chapter. It makes sense, and children catch on well with them and love to use them. I loved how this chapter talked about these different ways that students can experiment with sounds of the English language. They are things that children love, and as educators should encourage it, when the time is right.
Since I work at a school as the lunch monitor, the students are constantly experimenting with jingles riddles, jokes, tongue twisters, and many other things. I think that is a really interesting way to think about building language, though it does make sense. I love how they gave the visuals with the nursery rhymes on page 85. I think it is really fun for the children to do and it also engages them more. I saw this often in my internship classroom last semester. The students loved it and learned a lot from it as well.
I did not have any questions over this chapter. It was just great information.
the website havefunteaching.com has a song for just about any concept you are teaching. My kids love them. All the songs use to be free, but now I think they are charging for using them. But, it is definately worth checking out. i never thought my students could have so much fun counting to 10!
Cassy, Isn't it funny, I remember the things put to music as well. In one of the classrooms I was in today, we are just starting cells and there was a rap the teacher played about cells are made up of organelles and students were already singing it. I know my middle son back in 2nd grade, he learned the seven continents and his 2nd grade teacher retired this past year and he went to her retirement reception and several of the kids talked about learning with music.
You are so right with the fact that putting something to a song will help the students remember something better. This chapter has so great activities and ideas; I thought all of ideas in the rhyming and jingle section were great, and would be a lot of fun. I have worked a lot with kindergarten and I have seen some great strategies, as well as some that are not quite as effective.
This chapter was something that I found extremely interesting and resourceful as, it focused on phonemic awareness. I am tutoring kindergarten students and I realize per all of the recordings there is a strong likelihood that phonemic awareness will be the focus of my instructional unit. This chapter defines phonemic awareness as the ability to distinguish oral sounds and syllables. This skill is a foundational skill in reading and there are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness; ability to hear syllables within a word, distinguish between rime and rhyme, and blend sounds together orally to make a word. Phonemic awareness is an essential component to teaching ESOL learners the English language.
My favorite portion of this chapter was the variety of activity examples that it provided relative to phonemic awareness. Many of these activities I could utilize in my upcoming tutoring sessions to reinforce and focus on teaching phonemic awareness. Often times, I think that this is something that is overlooked, because many times it is almost an implied skill. However, as the text reinforces it is a foundational skill for reading.
I am anxious to begin my assessments of my students simply to see where they stand regarding phonemic awareness. I have an idea, but I think that the assessments will give me insight into exactly where the students are. Especially, assessing their ability to identify initial, middle and ending sounds, since there was an emphasis on this in the text.
The only question I really had about the text, is the same as many other posts—simply to find out more information regarding those professionals that believe phonemic awareness is a hazard and isn’t essential. I think it’s always important to hear both perspectives.
I also enjoyed the activities section of the chapter. I really like how this book has activities that reinforce what they are explaining. I haven't looked ahead yet, but I am hoping they have those for all of the Big 5. They will be a huge help when it comes to planning lessons for our tutoring sessions!
Teaching students to read poetry is fascinating ass well as, fun. In a reading section of the State Assessments, I worked with students concerning comprehension and fluency and I chose poetry to work on this. We began with a poetry booklet the program supplied and the students read like this: Onthe18thofaprilin75hardlyamanisstillalive. The entire poem was read as if it was one sentence. "wow" So I brought in some Dr. Seuss books. They thought I was nuts until we read the stories using all levels of 'tone?'. We sang the stories to the tune of Amazing Grace, we read them way up high, and way down low. We read them in a roller coaster voice going up and down. Any way I could think of, the Jr. High students loved it and their griping of reading poetry went to "Can we do another poem?" They learned how to read a poem with the various tones and pauses thereby were able to comprehend what they were reading.
Chapter four does a great job of explaining the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness. One thing I've found interesting about phonemic awareness is the connection with nursery rhymes and poetry and a child's success in this area of reading development. In one of my child development classes we had a discussion about how parents are moving away from doing the fun nursery rhymes and songs with their young children because they think they aren't educational enough or beneficial. When in fact, this is having a negative impact on reading development, especially phonemic awareness. I think sometimes we can get caught up with the latest app or technology and forget that sometimes simple is best. In my classroom, I love doing a weekly poem with the students. It's fun to experiment with all the different ways we can read one piece of poetry.
I think poetry is great for kids! The SFA program has a lot of poems included in it. I was kind of surprised to find so many kindergarteners that do not know the "basic" nursery rhymes, such as Humpty Dumpty, Three Blind Mice, etc. Having students write their own poems is also a good way to integrate writing!
I think it is so sad that most children these days don't know any nursery rhymes. It breaks my heart when I hear a child say that they don't have any books at home. Both of these are extremely important and beneficial to the development of language in children. I love to go to garage sales and that is where I have purchased most of my own children's books. Once I get closer to having a classroom of my own I plan on hitting the garage sales again and stocking up for my classroom library as well as books to give to those students that don't have any of their own at home.
Chapter 4 discusses phonemic awareness. There are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness, and I did not know that until I read the chapter. I really liked how they broke down all the different parts; it made it easier to differentiate between phonics and phonemic awareness. On page 81 the book says "Many elementary teachers believe phonemic awareness instruction is important for reading achievement." I think ALL teachers should think this way! This chapter really shows the importance of phonemic awareness for emerging readers. It also shows the importance of parents reading poems and books, singing songs, and just talking to their kids in general. Parents play a very important role in their child's learning. I like how this chapter really pushes the importance of working with children early in life. Towards the end of the chapter, there are a lot of activities that can be used that all correspond to the seven dimensions that were listed in the beginning of the chapter. I don't have any questions about this week’s reading. One other thing I wanted to add is how much I like the website www.pbskids.org. If you haven't checked it out, it is definitely worth your time to do so!
I too think all teachers should see the benefits of phonemic awareness! It disappoints that there is not proven research it makes students better readers. But I think if all teachers were to cover it in their classroom, they would see how it really does help. Hopefully this is figured out soon!!! I know last semester in reading methods it helped me a lot because I honestly don't remember learning it in elementary school. I really wish I would have, because it definitely makes things a little easier to understand.
I also liked all the activities at the end of the chapter. It helps to actually see what can be done and the grades they would be used in to help students. I have always read to my kids and sang songs to them since they were infants and they both (14 and 4) have very large vocabularies!
Chapter 4 covered every aspect of phonemic awareness. The chapter started off defining it and then listing out all 7 of the dimensions of phonemic awareness. But what it talked about next, phonemic awareness and English learners, is what really made me realize just how hard it could be for an English learner to catch on to phonemic awareness because each and every language has different phonemes. It makes complete sense, just not something I thought about before. Some English learners struggle because of the way they pronounce words.
Next the chapter covered what teachers need to know about phonemic awareness. Things such as if the child has hearing problems or does the student possible have a speech impediment that is the reason why they are struggling with phonemes.
It did surprise me that there really isn't proven studies that students who master phonemic awareness are not more proficient readers. I really thought that phonemic awareness would be one of those necessary topics that students would need to master. I know Dr. Walizer mentioned that it isn't necessary for students to cover phonemic awareness last semester in Reading Methods, but I was shocked then. But I think, as a future educator, that if I am teaching in the lower grades, I'm going to make sure and cover it in my classroom.
I really liked the examples of assessment in this chapter. Definitely something I will be doing in my classroom, and probably even incorporate it in different ways than just with phonemic awareness. The examples of different types of language at the end of the chapter was really fun and interesting to read through. It's hard to be aware of all the differences, but after reading that section I feel a little bit more informed. I also enjoyed and found the activities at the end of the chapter very useful. It was very nice that they were separated out in topics and also grade level.
I agree with you reference phonemic awareness and having it in the classroom. I think it is one of those things that has not been proven either way and is therefore open for interpretation. I think that it is crucial. I think that phonemic awareness sets the child up for future success in the classroom. I really can not imagine not covering it in my classroom.
Chapter 4 in the text revolved around the first of the big 5, phonemic awareness. By definition phonemic awareness is the child’s understanding and awareness that speech is broken down into syllables and sounds. The chapter goes on to break down phonemic awareness into different dimensions. Those dimensions are the ability to hear syllables within a word, the ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, the ability to distinguish between rime and rhyme, the ability to distinguish oddity, the ability to blend sounds to make a word, the ability to segment words orally, and the ability to manipulate sounds orally to create new words. The chapter goes on to discuss what teachers should know about phonemic awareness, and poses questions that we as educators must find our own answers to. The text wants us to formulate our own opinions about whether or not phonemic awareness is necessary for students to become proficient readers. In my opinion I believe that phonemic awareness is very important. One of the main reasons why I believe this is because I don’t think we would have spent time discussing it as one of our big 5 if it wasn’t. I also think that students need to be able to sound out words that they don’t know. This is a great tool for learning to spell words. The chapter went on to list songs, nursery rhymes and poems, jingles, tongue twisters, and children’s literature that helps emphasize our language in a colorful way that children will enjoy.
I loved the jingles, tongue twisters, and songs beyond measure! Great resources for us as future educators. I too think that phonemic awareness is very important. It's the ground work right? I feel as though it lays down the path for students to advance from sounding out letters/syllables to even greater things in regards to reading! Good information!
Chapter 4 in our Literacy Assessment and Intervention textbook provided a great deal of information regarding phonemic awareness. The beginning of this chapter introduced the topic and dimensions that are included within phonemic awareness. Having had Dr. Walizer last semester for RLA Methods, I learned a lot about this topic. Phonemic awareness encompasses quite a few components which include the ability to hear syllables within a word, the ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, the ability to distinguish rime and rhyme, and so forth. #7 referred to the ability to manipulate words and provided a great example for this as well.
I was really interested by the questions posed for teachers to think about in regards to children and their phonemic awareness. There were some great questions, that make perfect sense to be or become aware of in regards to the students in your classroom. Some of the questions included knowing how often a child is read to by an adult, or does the child have hearing problems, speech impediments, etc. All of these components would play a huge role in one's ability to be successful in regards to phonemic awareness.
I also found the assessment portion of this chapter very helpful. I remembered from my RLA internship last semester that my mentor would incorporate phonemic awareness activities into the read-aloud times. If a vocabulary word was present she'd have the students sound out the letters, syllables, and so forth. It really seemed to help with pronunciation in general.
My favorite section of this chapter was the tons of chants, poems, and even activities that were shared at the end. I love textbooks that provide great activities for future use - they then become not only beneficial to my education, but my future students as well! Great chapter!
I am excited to see that the next several chapters are dedicated to the big 5 as well as writing and spelling. I am also enjoying the scenarios found at the beginning of each chapter. There are not as many as the Beers text from RLA methods, and they are not as personal but they are still really good. I really like all of the figures provided in this phonemic awareness chapter. I have a strong background in the speech and language field so I am pretty good at understanding what people are saying even if there pronunciation is a little off. I was thrilled when I discovered the charts with phonemes from other languages. What a great resource to have! This chapter is so full of great ideas and amazing resources. My favorite section was that of the songs, nursery rhymes, jingles, tongue twisters and more. I think it is incredibly important for students to be exposed to these in school especially since so many children don't hear these at home anymore. They are a great way for children to learn and build their language. I was also really excited to see that there were so many activities listed at the end of the chapter. I can't wait to see what skills I need to work on with my tutoring group. I am sure that I will find some great activities within this book that will be perfect for my group!
I am also very excited to see the big 5 coming up in these next few weeks. These chapters are proving that they are going to make this book a great resource for all of us from the activities as well as the opening stories. I agree with the phonemes from other languages will be very beneficial.
This weeks chapter was chapter 4 and it was titled Phonemic Awareness. The chapter began with the definition of phonemic awareness, which is a child's understanding and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds. I think this is an extremely important idea to begin with as it sets the stage for the rest of the chapter but also, I believe, sets the foundation for all reading comprehension. The chapter then moves on to phenemic awareness and the English learner. The next important portion is a section on is phonemic awareness necessary for students to become proficient readers. I think phonemic awareness is not only important but critical to reading. The chapter then moves through assessing a child's level of phonemic awareness, the introduction of children to the wonderful sounds of our language, nursery rhymes and poems, children's literature, tongue twisters, and many activities for us to use. One activity that I really enjoyed was initial sound bingo. This activity I think really mixes learning, thinking, and fun at just the right amount. I think this chapter really sets us up for success for our tutoring next week. I am so excited to begin. I have had so many of the parents come up to me and thank me working with their child. I am really starting to feel like I am making a difference finally!
I too, liked the initial sound bingo. It sounds like an activity that my tutoring students would love. I'm tutoring 5th graders and it is nice that this chapter offers a few activities in case I need to go back and touch on phonemic awareness. Thanks for sharing, good luck this upcoming week with your tutoring!
Chapter 4, Phonemic Awareness, was a good review of a topic for me. One the first page of the chapter, it starts off with an inspiring quote from B.F. Skinner, "Education is what survives after what has been learned has been forgotten." What a perfect quote to sum up phonemic awareness!! This chapter starts off reviewing and listing the 7 dimensions of phonemic awareness: The ability to hear syllables within a word, the ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, the ability to distinguish rime and rhyme, the ability to distinguish oddity, the ability to blend sounds together orally to make a word, the ability to segment words orally, and the ability to manipulate sounds orally to create new words. It was helpful to read the list of what teachers should know about phonemic awareness. This made me think back to every time that Dr. Walizer told us to NEVER EVER tell a child to, "sound out the word." If they haven't mastered phonemic awareness, they probably will not be able to sound out the word. We have to go back to the basics and really figure out where the child is lacking in the fundamental area first. I thought that the checklist on page 83 was a great resource when it cam time to assess the level of phonemic awareness for each child in the classroom. My favorite part of this chapter started on page 84, when our textbook gave us ideas on how to introduce children to the "wonderful sound of our language." They offered ideas such as listening to songs and poems, doing jump rope jingles, doing tongue twisters, and engaging the students in children's literature. The last few pages offered lesson plan activities to help develop phonemic awareness. I am always thankful for ideas of activities to incorporate into the lesson. Like I said at the beginning, it was a great chapter to read to review phonemic awareness. I do not have any further questions after reading this chapter.
Okay, I keep losing this post, so let's hope it 'sticks' this time.
Chapter four focused wholely and solely on phonemenic awareness. I love that there was a ton of games, activities, and manipulatives provided. Another part I loved is that these were all DIY, meaning that I don't have worry about being hooked up to the internet or to a fancy color printer. I can just grab some supplies and whip these puppies up. They can be as basic or elaborate as I want them to be. This book is going to be incredibly helpful when I start tutoring next week, because I know I will be able to pull some activities that are research proven straight from this book.
I was very excited to read about phonemic awareness in this chapter. I will be working with students this semester who will need help in the phonemic awareness area. Starting out this chapter was the scenario with a kindergarten teacher playing a repeating came with letter sounds. This sounded like a great game to get students involved and to determine which students and/or letters some need additional help with. On page 80 and 81, there were some figures that showed what phonemes were present in certain languages and not in others. I think this is great for teachers to know now, especially with taking ESOL classes. It will be important to know which ones the students have having difficulties with and why. In the rest of this chapter was great activities to do with the students to help them with phonemic awareness. I am excited to use these activities in my upcoming lessons.
Megan, I agreed with your statement that teachers should be familiar with the similarities and differences of foreign language students, as well as the suggested ways in which these things should be taught. It only makes sense that you would teach what is already familiar before bringing in tougher stuff.
There was a great deal of information in this chapter regarding phonemic awareness. It helps for me to know what it is and what to look for in students that may be struggling in this area. I think the best part of the chapter was the intervention portion. I love that it gave us specific activities including the grade levels that they would be best suited. This helps alleviate some of the stress from not being completely sure on how to help students with these types of problems. I also liked how it stated that Spanish speaking ELL students should be first shown the phonemes that are the same between Spanish and English and then shown the ones that do not exist in Spanish. It is better to start with the similarities before confusing them with something completely unknown. This chapter has helped me to see what I not only need to look for in students but also with my own children.
I agree, there were great ideas that we can use for the tutoring sessions. I had not considered how complicated the phonics would be for ELL students to hear. I knew that English was a complicated language, but seeing it spelled out how it would be difficult for them was an eye opener.
Chapter 4 is packed full of great information about how to make students aware of the parts of speech and that words are made up of individual sounds. I found that one of the greatest points that the book put forward is that phonemic awareness can be affected by the amount a student was read to as a small child. It seems like such a simple thing but as teachers we can not do anything about this by the time we get them in the classroom. It takes us all back to the point that parents play such an integral part of a student's success and something that we as teachers have no control over. This chapter showed me that how as a teacher we can do things to make up for the deficit. The jump rope jingles and books with rhyming are very interesting to me. I think that Dr. Seuss books are a great thing for students to be exposed to. I have chosen two Dr. Seuss books to use for my read alouds for the first week. Working in a middle school I am continually surprised when I come across students who have never read a Dr. Seuss book or other popular children's books.
I remember when I first met my husband, he did not like Dr. Seuss. We read a ton to our children, but not Dr. Seuss (To the oldest). Then, once that oldest one hit kindergarten, something clicked, and my husband became quite the fan.
We have an excellent Parents as Teachers program in our community. I know the instructor encourages those parents to read to their children. We need to somehow get the word out to other parents as well.
I agree that we as teachers can make up the deficit if kids aren't exposed to reading at home. That is what EFFECTIVE teachers do. I also believe when we give our students these essential tools like phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary,etc., and we show them the passion, excitement, and joy that reading can bring, we will create lifetime readers.
I have worked in a kindergarten classroom for four out of my past six years in being in an elementary school. I was familar with the onset and rime, along with breaking the words apart and putting them back together. I liked all of the different activities that the chapter provided for helping with the different sounds in the different words. I also liked the examples of different types of poems, songs and stories that emphasized how words worked with each other.
When my boys were young, we played a lot of word games. We mostly did rhyming, but they were familar with reading, phonics and phonemic awareness before the entered kindergarten. Perhaps the Parents as Teachers instructor could incorporate this sort of idea with the preschoolers and toddlers she sees.
Heather, I thought the text provided some great activities, as well, for phonemic awareness. I personally think that the songs and literature opportunities are very positive and effective ways of exposing students the many varieties of phonemes and phonemic awareness.
This chapter of DeVries focuses on phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness involves the words, syllables, and sounds of speech; its’ different than phonics which targets the letters that make the specific sounds. There are actually seven dimensions to phonemic awareness which involve hearing the syllables within a word, hearing the letter sounds and distinguishing what alliteration is. Phonemic awareness also involves on rhyme and rime, oddities, blends, among others. As the number of English learners increases in our country, we’ll need to pay close attention to those phonemes that are different for other languages. Many other languages do not share many of the phonemes found in the English language. Assessments are the first step in evaluating phonemic awareness. Nursery rhymes, poetry, and songs are some wonderful examples of introducing children to things like alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, and nonsense words. Our text provides numerous examples of songs, poetry, and children’s literature that are full of rhyme, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. Exposure to this should be frequent, certainly a daily occurrence for children. The text presents a question as to the importance of phonemic awareness in relation to reading proficiency. I agree with the assertion our text makes regarding this subject that many elementary teachers do feel it lends to reading achievement. When we have so many different sounds in our language, it just makes sense that learning about these sounds as they appear in different words would greatly benefit student reading progress. The phonogram cards would be a great tool in this endeavor. For me, this chapter confirmed my opinion of the value and significance of phonemic awareness. It is important that children know letter sounds and pronunciations of the various blends and phonograms in our English language, and equally important is the consistent exposure to these sounds through things like children’s literature and music. I will definitely plan to expose my students to a variety of sounds through quality children’s literature and music to provide beneficial opportunities for them to develop their phonemic awareness. In addition to using literature and music selections, tools such as the phonogram cards can be extremely helpful and make a difference in helping children learn those letter sounds.
I enjoyed this chapter on Phonemic awareness because it breaks it down into the seven dimensions such as segmentation, oddity,blending, and rime and rhyme. In all the times I had heard the words phonemic awareness, I wasn't completely aware of what that entailed. In the text it talks about not all EXPERTS agreeing that phonemic awareness is necessary to be a proficient reader, but I feel that it is extremely valuable in building the child's base/foundation to reading and one that can make the child's experience in learning to read much more enjoyable. I absolutely love the activity ideas in the text with regards to children learning through songs, nursery rhymes, and literature as a whole. I remember reading a lot about this in my Children's literature class. Children are introduced to many rhymes, patterns, syllabication, songs, and tongue twisters that help them to understand letter sounds better. During my time in the classroom as an intern and a substitute, I have often seen teachers using the clapping technique or the hand under the chin to count syllables. Having this text is going to be a great tool for the classroom because not only does it give good information, it has great ideas for activities which is probably what most teachers want. I am looking forward to reading about the rest of the Big 5.
The one question I have is why so many Experts question the necessity of phonemic awareness? The way I look at it is that if it helps in ANY way for children to better understand the sounds associated with words, than why not use it?
I plan on using the information I have learned from this chapter, Reading and Language Arts methods, and the information to come in my future classroom to foster better readers for the future. I believe these are great tools and must be done early to build a strong reading foundation.
And to answer your question about why some experts don't like phonemic awareness - it puts too much emphasis on parts of the word instead of the whole word. They believe children should learn to read the words at site (mostly based on context) because a focus on phonemics breaks the word down into too many parts and like was mentioned in the text, those with speech, and hearing difficulties and ELL students struggle more with the phonemic approach rather than learning the whole word with its meaning.
Chapter 4 focused on phonemic awareness and gave many suggestions of specific things to teach to help students in this area. One idea is making sure the students can hear the syllables in each word. Having students clap out syllables helps them hear them. Other important things to emphasize are alliteration, rime, and rhyme. It suggested using nursery rhymes and poems, as well as jump rope jingles to help teach students about rhyming words. Other suggestions were to use Mother Goose and songs to help students see how words rhyme. The book also said tongue twisters are good sentences to use to teach students about the beginning letter sounds of words. Onomatopoeia is another good source of words to have students read, and these are found often in poems or in rhyming books.
ReplyDeleteAs I read through all the suggestions given in this chapter, I was excited to put them into practice. There were many good ideas, some of which I had never before considered. So I didn’t really have any questions about the chapter, but wrote down numerous ideas to try in our tutoring sessions, and to keep in mind for my future classroom. The text listed a number of books that would be appropriate to use in classrooms to teach some of these specific topics, so I hope to find some of those books and use them. Poetry can be a great tool to use, but I do think it’s important to pick poetry that the kids will enjoy and understand. Using poetry that is “out there” will not register with the students, and I think they would quickly lose interest.
One of the things that interested me the most was using jump rope jingles, poetry, songs, or even rhyming books and then have students come up with a verse of their own. Reading all of these things can be good teaching tools for students to see rhymes, but having them write something of their own in that same style would teach them to apply the idea. I hadn’t considered this before, so I want to use this idea when we begin tutoring sessions. Writing poetry is good but sometimes challenging, so if I can use an already existing verse and have students make a few changes here and there, it will be less frustrating for the students, yet still teach them about rhyming words.
It sounds like you are just as excited as I am about the ideas in the chapter. I spend time looking on the internet for activities but sometimes I don't find quite what I'm looking for and with this book it's already full of ideas, most of which have been tried and proven I'm sure. It's also easy for me to see how some of the activities can be adapted to fit certain needs but the suggestions provided allow for a good basis for establishing concrete activities for the students to be involved with while having fun and learning at the same time!!! How perfect is that. I'm just so excited to do this tutoring!!!
DeleteI really like your idea of using the poetry and jump rope jingles and then having the students come up with their own verses so they can learn to apply their ideas. Some of the ideas that this chapter talked about would be could ones to use during tutoring or at least try them. I agree poetry can be tricky because you have to find some that students will enjoy.
DeleteYou have great ideas. Involving jingles really help students remember things. Songs that I have learned in school has helped me to this day remember certain things. I love the jump rope jingles and even the hand claps. I recently just remembered some due to pinterest :) It brought back great memories. Great reflection
DeleteI liked the use of jump rope jingles too! I think rhyming books are great for students to understand phonemes. Dr. Seuss books are great for this practice it also engages the student's imagination and aid the student in creating their own rhyming pages or stories.
DeleteDeVries Chapter 4
ReplyDeletePhonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness differs from phonics in that it is the ability to recognize that speech is made of spoken words and sounds. Phonics is knowing that letters are represented by specific sounds. Phonemic is aural and oral while phonics involves the written letters with aural process. There are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness: ability to hear syllables in a word, hear initial letter sounds, distinguish rime and rhyme, distinguish oddity, blend sounds to make a word, segment words orally, and manipulate sounds to create new words. I had NO IDEA there was that much involved in it. I guess we just take it for granted that we learn by example but then I think about how my brother struggled to say words correctly. He had suffered terrible ear infections as a child, which we later found out created scaring that affected how he heard sounds, which in turn affected how he repeated the words he was hearing. I think back to the vowel code rap we learned in RLA and how the letter “a” can make three different sounds. That would be a hard concept to teach to an ELL since there are so many English phonemes that are not found in Spanish. The chart on page 81 shows just how many English sounds are not part of several other languages, especially Chinese. Most states require schools to document phonemic awareness growth. I want CRAZY seeing all the activities we could do to promote phonemic awareness: songs, nursery rhymes, poems, tongue twisters and jingles. The strategies and activities section in the test lists activities by levels such as K-3 or K-2. I will use some of these activities in my lesson plans for the tutoring sessions. If you haven’t looked at the “pop-off-the-bead” activity you should. This will help with individual sounds for letters in a word and how eliminating one will change the word. This also helps with fine motor skills and could be adapted by using something other than pop off beads that is easier to work with. There are so many good ideas in this section I just want to do them all with my tutoring group to see which ones work the best.
Amy
DeleteYour example with your brother and his scaring from ear infections affecting his learning is a great example of what we need to be on the lookout for as teachers. Each student is a unique person for us to figure out why they may not be able to learn a certain concept within our classroom. There are so many possibilities that could be interfering with each child’s learning that we need to try and investigate further than what we may see on the surface. I also liked the “pop off the bead” activity. I liked how the activity would give the students a kinesthetic experience of removing the bead which may help students that learn in different ways rather than just erasing a letter to change a word which I have seen used a lot.
mjb
DeleteChapter 4 explained the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness. Phonics is the understanding that letters represent certain sounds, and phonemic awareness is speech composed of syllables, sounds, and words. One of the items I found interesting was the chart on page 80. Figure 4.2 shows the sounds not found in Spanish, and figure 4.3 shows what is found in both Spanish and English. I understand now why students have looked at me funny when I ask a question of them and they say, there is no word in Spanish to answer the question with. Asian speakers find the English language difficult as well because the do not produce sounds with their tongue and lips. When I read that, I had to stop and say the letters sounds to see how much the lips and tongue are really used. It is funny how much we do not even think about that stuff because we are all so used to it. I love all the poems and jingles that have a rhythm to them, it makes them fun to say and easy for kids to remember. Phonemic awareness is important for producing good readers, they must know that words are made up of distinct sounds and what those sounds are in order to sound out or break up a difficult word.
ReplyDeleteYes, it was very interesting to read why ELL learners sometimes have a hard time saying English words. There is no such sound in their language for some of the sounds they need to make in English! This is something I had never considered before, and it certainly puts a new light on things, helping me understand why these students might struggle to pick up the English language. I have heard people speak in other languages, and there are definitely sounds in their languages that I couldn't make! So it's important to be aware of this. I also agree with you that both phonics and phonemic awareness are important in teaching children to be better readers. Otherwise, they are just looking at a group of letters without any understanding of how they fit together or what sound they make. This would require them to memorize all words as sight words - an impossible feat.
DeleteI had never thought about how easily we produce our sounds in English and how ELLs would have a problem reproducing these sounds without specific instruction. I also enjoyed all the rhymes and jingles found in this chapter, and I plan on using some of them in my tutoring sessions.
DeleteJenny,
DeleteI find it interesting, as well, that there are sounds that ELL students can not say. My daughter lived in Japan for 3 years while her husband was stationed there. The Japanese are absolutely wonderful people. I don't think they know the meaning of dishonesty! But that's another story, anyway, they can't pronounce the "L" sound. I had a student from Taiwan who couldn't pronounce "L". I went to Japan when my daughter and her family was there and in a restaurant the menu advertised that you could order "harf" orders! When I asked my daughter what it was, she told me the Japanese learn "Engrish" in school!
Really does put things in prospective, doesn't it?
mjb
DeleteMary you make a great point about how we take for granted and often times over look many some of the differences between English and other languages. Often times this can lead to great confusion, which you alluded to in your post. My brother and sister both had to learn other languages in their post-secondary education, one learned mandarian chinese and the other japanese. These differences in basic phonemes was something they talked about being really challenging in learning a secondary language.
ReplyDeleteChapter 4 talks about phonemic awareness and how as a teacher you should understand what each child knows about their letter and sounds at the beginning of the year. There are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness that include ability to hear syllables within a word, distinguish between rime and rhyme, and blend sounds together orally to make a word. Phonemic awareness is a child's understanding and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units. When it comes to English learners particularly from Mexico have to learn to produce the 44 most common phonemes of the English language to become English speakers. I thought this to be interesting because I had no idea about how many phonemes they would have to know. This chapter goes on to talk about the importance of learning phonemic awareness a child and a reader but as some think that instead of intense instruction over phonemes that students when actively engaged in literacy activities become aware of sounds within words. Singing songs are good for students because they involve alliteration and rhyme. This chapter has many activities you can you to help students such as using tongue twisters, go fish games, bingo, and poetry.
ReplyDeleteOne question I have would be when in this chapter it talked about some experts disagreeing and saying that phonemic awareness can be an educational hazard. How would it be a hazard when you have to know how to say words in order to read?
I look at the issue of singing in elementary and how important it is for students in helping them with learning sounds. I never thought much of it when the teacher would be singing silly songs during carpet time or songs while lining up or cleaning up.
In my own experience I can remember making poems books in school and I think poems really help with learning phonemic awareness. Also while taking children's literature it helped to show how important phonemic awareness is and the many different ways you can help with this.
Jared, Until these past two semesters, I really never knew what it took to teach language arts and all the fine details that go into the "big 5" approaches. I agree with you on the carpet time and the silly songs that the teacher always did. For kids, it is fun to do and many will sing them at home for their parents as well, but those lessons are vital to the development of their reading and writing skills. I feel that this chapter gave many examples and wonderful activities that we can use in our tutoring lessons, as well as in our classrooms someday.
DeleteI completely agree with you. I think that phonemic awareness is critical and I think through the use of poems, it can really be set free. I think that poems and children's literature it definitely opens the child's mind. I think that it is so critical to succeeding in the classroom. I know there are some out there that do not believe it is important, but I think it is up to the teacher. I think that I will definitely teach it inside my classroom!
Deletemjb
DeletePhonemic awareness and phonics, from the next chapter, are honestly the two parts of the “Big 5” of reading that I struggle with understanding how to teach. There are so many sounds in the English language to understand with both visual and auditory skills in order to be able to read. I find it overwhelming to teach all the pieces and connect them to whole words in methods that students will understand.
ReplyDeleteBy breaking phonemic awareness into the seven dimensions helped me begin to develop an approach to teaching students to read using phonemic awareness. I appreciated the checklist example on page 83 as a tool to keep my focus on the reading goals of my students. By using this checklist throughout the year I could determine which phonemic skills each student had mastered and which skills still needed to be worked on. I also appreciated the various educational activities that the text provided for specific areas of phonemic awareness. I feel like I could use this book as a resource tool for my classroom.
I found it interesting that the English language has 44 phonemes, which can be agreed upon, and Spanish has 24 phonemes. This fact alone helped me have more compassion for ELL students. I also know from the experience of hosting a Japanese exchange student in our home that if I look at a Japanese word and try to pronounce it that I fail miserably because their phonemes are so different from ours. Being aware of the difference in phonemes between languages will be a great asset in our increasingly diverse classrooms.
Teaching phonics and phonemic awareness in reading curriculum is definitely a matter of debate. At this point in my journey in becoming a teacher, I feel like phonemic skills are part of the whole reading education process. An awareness of the sounds and syllables that words can have can give a student a chance to understand how to pronounce a word they have never seen. At the same time though, students need to understand how to blend words quickly and recognize whole words so that fluency and comprehension can be achieved. Effective reading is definitely a balance of many skills.
Ellen,
DeleteI am in the same position as you, I have not had a lot of experience teaching these skills and it is hard to understand how to do this without hands on experiences. I like how the chapter covers each of the 7 dimensions and think this makes it a little easier to understand. I think it would be a challenge to teach phonemic awareness to an ELL since our phonemes are not the same as their native languages. My brother teaches English in Korea and he has mentioned that many of the sounds they use are not sounds we use. This is a hard concept for me to grasp. Nice post, Kara
mjb
DeleteI enjoyed reading the scenario in this chapter. I have not interned with any students under 3rd grade and when I substitute with the younger students I find myself needing to work on this skill with the students. It was nice to have a review of the 7 dimensions of phonemic awareness. After reading about this skill when associated with ELL’s I am aware that phonemes differ from one language to another. I think this fact would make it a particularly hard skill to teach to these students. I would be interested to learn about some different ways to approach this problem during instruction. I think the checklist or the 7 dimensions for phonemic awareness would be a good place to start when assessing since it shows what the child can and cannot do. It was interesting to read about all the different ways (i.e. songs, tongue twisters etc.), to engage children in language. As a mother it seems natural to do and share these things with a child but while working with students in the school I have seen that many children have not been afforded this luxury at home. I like that this chapter included activities that can be used for the different dimensions of phonemic awareness. I always like to save my textbooks because they have so many great activities and ideas I hope to have the opportunity to use one day.
ReplyDeleteI know this sounds silly but I had not even thought about the fact you mentioned. It is true even with myself that when my kids were young I did many of the activities, songs, and nursery rhymes. I think it paid off because they are all wonderful readers and two out of the three loves to read.
DeleteI also work mainly with children 4th grade or older so when I am in a younger classroom, I find myself going back and learning just as much as they are. Like you said, it is so easy to pick out the students who do not get worked with at home and it makes me sad. I have a three year old daughter who we read to atleast once a day, sing many songs, or play games daily. I also like to keep textbooks for that very reason!! Have a great semester, good luck tutoring this week!
Deletemjb
DeleteChapter 4 gave an in depth view of phonemic awareness. According to the text phonemic awareness is “a child’s understanding and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words.” By kindergarten a child will have mastered the first three dimensions of phonemic awareness. These dimensions are 1.)The ability to hear syllables in a word. 2) The ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration. 3) The ability to distinguish rime and rhyme. The last four should be mastered by first grade. These four dimensions are 4) The ability to distinguish oddity. 5) The ability to blend sounds together. 6) The ability to segment words. 7) The ability to manipulate sounds to create new words. This chapter gives great ideas for the educator to use in the classroom. There are games and activities to encourage growth within the student in each of the seven dimensions.
ReplyDeleteThis reading gave me a chance to see in greater detail the difference between our phonemes and those of other languages. I can appreciate the difficulty there is in a student attempting to learn English. When I thought about it I think of people in the small town I live in. A few of them have never been around people who speak Spanish to when they try to read a Spanish word it gets completely lost in translation because of those phonemes.
I may say this a few times this semester but in my own experience with a program called Pathways to Reading, segmenting, blending, and knowing those phonemes are important. It teaches Vowel Town and the student must learn how the mouth moves and the spellings of certain vowel sounds such as o, aw, and au. I love this program because when I have the student reading to me I can name the rule to remind them how to segment those sounds.
Pathways to Reading is a great program, my children's school also does this. It is great when they are discussing vowels that they can bring in the sayings they learned in pathways.
DeleteThe text also opened my eyes to part of the reason why it is so difficult for English learners to learn our language.
mjb
DeleteChapter four covered phonemic awareness and ways to implement it into our classroom instruction. There were seven dimensions listed in detail: 1. ability to hear syllables within a word, 2. hear initial letter sounds, 3. distinguish between rime and rhyme, 4. to distinguish oddity, 5. blend sounds together orally to make a word, 6. segment words, and 7. manipulate sounds to create new words. In reading and language arts, Dr. Walizer showed us many ways to implement these tools creatively and in a manner that the students will grasp the concepts. Two ways stick out for me: the vowel code rap and the sayings for all the flash cards. I feel it is vital to introduce these items in the early elementary grade levels, but continue to monitor and work on concepts throughout the school years.
ReplyDeleteThere were also many examples given in the chapter that will be useful in our tutoring sessions and then later on in our classrooms. Since we are integrating PE and music throughout our lessons, I thought the idea of jump rope jingles and children’s rhyming books would be good to input. I also felt that the activities in the section of intervention was priceless. They are divided up by grade level and the seven dimensions. My tri-fold has a section for me to place independent work for my students to do while I am working individually with another student. I would like to have some of these activities to be a fun part of their independent work. Plus, I get to see if they are understanding those activities without them being the main focus of my lesson plans. Which could be an extension to my assessing tools. Another great informational chapter.
mjb
DeleteThis chapter began by letting us know the difference between phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonemic awareness is when students are able to see that words are brought together by individual sounds and syllables. Phonics is recognizing the letter associated with the sounds. On page 82 I found it interesting that Smith (1999) believes that “phonemic awareness instruction is an educational hazard.” His example is that you cannot separate the sounds from a word that has been uttered any more than you can extract the ingredients from a cake that has been baked. I think this is not a fully thought out statement. When teaching phonemic awareness you start by teaching the letter sounds then you ask the student to identify the sounds they hear in a word. When you bake a cake you must first know what the ingredients taste like to make sure they will go together nicely. When you serve the cake you might have people taste it and say this taste like it has a touch of cinnamon in it. The person tasting the slightest taste of cinnamon must first know what cinnamon taste like. This is the same thing with phonemic awareness. A student can hear the word spill, and since they know that the “SSS” sound is made by the letter “S” they will hear it in the word.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the fun riddles found on pages 84-89, I know I will use some of these with my tutees this semester. The intervention strategies and activities the book gives on page 89-99 are fun activities that can easily be worked into tutoring session to make them fun.
I agree, a student has to be able to know the "s" sound is made by the letter "s" in a word. I enjoyed the activities in this chapter as well. Several seem easy to use and fun for kids. I am working with struggling 6th grade readers and I found several of the activities that I will modify for them. Rhyming words are always fun no matter how old you are.
Deletemjb
DeleteChapter 4 in the text discusses phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to understand and be aware that speech is composed of identifiable units. The seven dimensions of phonemic awareness are the ability to hear syllables within a word, to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, to distinguish rime and rhyme, to distinguish oddity, to blend sounds together orally, to segment words orally, and to manipulate sounds orally to create new words. The text also helped explained that English learners have difficulty because we have phonemes that do not exist in their native language, along with different phoneme placement within words.
ReplyDeleteThe text offered many great songs, nursery rhymes, jump rope jingles, tongue twisters, and literature ideas that will be useful for tutoring sessions along with when we are teaching. I think these will be good to incorporate movement through actions. I enjoyed the intervention strategies and activities at the end of the chapter. I like how they were broken up into different parts of phonemic awareness and by grade level. I hope the next chapters have as many great activities and strategies as this one!
Nice job noting the information about English learners that was discussed in this chapter. It's clearly evident to even us as adults that the English language sometimes seems to make up its own rules in regards to sounds/letters and so forth! It's easy to understand how English learners would struggle!
Deletemjb
DeleteThis chapter talked about the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is being able to blend and take apart words, because students can recognize the sounds. Phonics is being able to recognize a letter. When working in kindergarten rooms, they have a time block that is directly for phonemic awareness. Students practice the sounds, blending, and then the reading of the word. They try to identify and think of words that start with that letter as well.
ReplyDeleteLike most classmates have talked about, this chapter talks about songs, rhyming, books, and jump rope jingles. From my personal experience, I have found putting anything to a song, students will remember that better. I look back and I can remember facts that I learned in a tune, along with being able to belt out a song that I have not heard in years. I really liked the jump rope jingles. This would be a great idea how you integrate PE in to a lesson.
Regardless of what strategy is used, it is important that students are able to succeed in phonemic awareness and phonics. I learned some good strategies I would like to use as a future teacher.
mjb
DeleteSince I will be tutoring students in Kindergarten, this chapter was great for me. I really liked how the beginning really broke down the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. It really gave me a lot more clarification and comfort knowing that I can refer to the beginning of this chapter if I get confused. I loved the last half of this chapter and all of the ideas and activities that can be used with students! I love it when I can get ideas and new ways to present lessons and ideas to a class. This has been my favorite chapter this far I think because I can relate to it well with the students I have worked with and working with currently.
ReplyDeleteThe section that discussed English learners and phonemic awareness was really insightful to me. Though I knew that there are a lot of consonants in English that are not in other languages, it allows me to understand why different speakers of other languages have the same general problems with English. I never thought of jump rope jungles and tongue twisters to be introducing sounds really until I read this chapter. It makes sense, and children catch on well with them and love to use them. I loved how this chapter talked about these different ways that students can experiment with sounds of the English language. They are things that children love, and as educators should encourage it, when the time is right.
Since I work at a school as the lunch monitor, the students are constantly experimenting with jingles riddles, jokes, tongue twisters, and many other things. I think that is a really interesting way to think about building language, though it does make sense. I love how they gave the visuals with the nursery rhymes on page 85. I think it is really fun for the children to do and it also engages them more. I saw this often in my internship classroom last semester. The students loved it and learned a lot from it as well.
I did not have any questions over this chapter. It was just great information.
the website havefunteaching.com has a song for just about any concept you are teaching. My kids love them. All the songs use to be free, but now I think they are charging for using them. But, it is definately worth checking out. i never thought my students could have so much fun counting to 10!
Deletemjb
DeleteAnd thanks for the website link Lisa
Cassy,
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny, I remember the things put to music as well. In one of the classrooms I was in today, we are just starting cells and there was a rap the teacher played about cells are made up of organelles and students were already singing it. I know my middle son back in 2nd grade, he learned the seven continents and his 2nd grade teacher retired this past year and he went to her retirement reception and several of the kids talked about learning with music.
You are so right with the fact that putting something to a song will help the students remember something better. This chapter has so great activities and ideas; I thought all of ideas in the rhyming and jingle section were great, and would be a lot of fun. I have worked a lot with kindergarten and I have seen some great strategies, as well as some that are not quite as effective.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter was something that I found extremely interesting and resourceful as, it focused on phonemic awareness. I am tutoring kindergarten students and I realize per all of the recordings there is a strong likelihood that phonemic awareness will be the focus of my instructional unit. This chapter defines phonemic awareness as the ability to distinguish oral sounds and syllables. This skill is a foundational skill in reading and there are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness; ability to hear syllables within a word, distinguish between rime and rhyme, and blend sounds together orally to make a word. Phonemic awareness is an essential component to teaching ESOL learners the English language.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite portion of this chapter was the variety of activity examples that it provided relative to phonemic awareness. Many of these activities I could utilize in my upcoming tutoring sessions to reinforce and focus on teaching phonemic awareness. Often times, I think that this is something that is overlooked, because many times it is almost an implied skill. However, as the text reinforces it is a foundational skill for reading.
I am anxious to begin my assessments of my students simply to see where they stand regarding phonemic awareness. I have an idea, but I think that the assessments will give me insight into exactly where the students are. Especially, assessing their ability to identify initial, middle and ending sounds, since there was an emphasis on this in the text.
The only question I really had about the text, is the same as many other posts—simply to find out more information regarding those professionals that believe phonemic awareness is a hazard and isn’t essential. I think it’s always important to hear both perspectives.
I also enjoyed the activities section of the chapter. I really like how this book has activities that reinforce what they are explaining. I haven't looked ahead yet, but I am hoping they have those for all of the Big 5. They will be a huge help when it comes to planning lessons for our tutoring sessions!
Deletemjb
DeleteTeaching students to read poetry is fascinating ass well as, fun. In a reading section of the State Assessments, I worked with students concerning comprehension and fluency and I chose poetry to work on this.
ReplyDeleteWe began with a poetry booklet the program supplied and the students read like this: Onthe18thofaprilin75hardlyamanisstillalive. The entire poem was read as if it was one sentence. "wow"
So I brought in some Dr. Seuss books. They thought I was nuts until we read the stories using all levels of 'tone?'. We sang the stories to the tune of Amazing Grace, we read them way up high, and way down low. We read them in a roller coaster voice going up and down. Any way I could think of, the Jr. High students loved it and their griping of reading poetry went to "Can we do another poem?" They learned how to read a poem with the various tones and pauses thereby were able to comprehend what they were reading.
Opps, sorry, my finger must have stuttered.
DeleteChapter four does a great job of explaining the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness. One thing I've found interesting about phonemic awareness is the connection with nursery rhymes and poetry and a child's success in this area of reading development. In one of my child development classes we had a discussion about how parents are moving away from doing the fun nursery rhymes and songs with their young children because they think they aren't educational enough or beneficial. When in fact, this is having a negative impact on reading development, especially phonemic awareness. I think sometimes we can get caught up with the latest app or technology and forget that sometimes simple is best.
ReplyDeleteIn my classroom, I love doing a weekly poem with the students. It's fun to experiment with all the different ways we can read one piece of poetry.
I think poetry is great for kids! The SFA program has a lot of poems included in it. I was kind of surprised to find so many kindergarteners that do not know the "basic" nursery rhymes, such as Humpty Dumpty, Three Blind Mice, etc. Having students write their own poems is also a good way to integrate writing!
DeleteI think it is so sad that most children these days don't know any nursery rhymes. It breaks my heart when I hear a child say that they don't have any books at home. Both of these are extremely important and beneficial to the development of language in children. I love to go to garage sales and that is where I have purchased most of my own children's books. Once I get closer to having a classroom of my own I plan on hitting the garage sales again and stocking up for my classroom library as well as books to give to those students that don't have any of their own at home.
Deletemjb
DeleteChapter 4 discusses phonemic awareness. There are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness, and I did not know that until I read the chapter. I really liked how they broke down all the different parts; it made it easier to differentiate between phonics and phonemic awareness. On page 81 the book says "Many elementary teachers believe phonemic awareness instruction is important for reading achievement." I think ALL teachers should think this way! This chapter really shows the importance of phonemic awareness for emerging readers. It also shows the importance of parents reading poems and books, singing songs, and just talking to their kids in general. Parents play a very important role in their child's learning. I like how this chapter really pushes the importance of working with children early in life. Towards the end of the chapter, there are a lot of activities that can be used that all correspond to the seven dimensions that were listed in the beginning of the chapter. I don't have any questions about this week’s reading. One other thing I wanted to add is how much I like the website www.pbskids.org. If you haven't checked it out, it is definitely worth your time to do so!
ReplyDeleteI too think all teachers should see the benefits of phonemic awareness! It disappoints that there is not proven research it makes students better readers. But I think if all teachers were to cover it in their classroom, they would see how it really does help. Hopefully this is figured out soon!!! I know last semester in reading methods it helped me a lot because I honestly don't remember learning it in elementary school. I really wish I would have, because it definitely makes things a little easier to understand.
DeleteI also liked all the activities at the end of the chapter. It helps to actually see what can be done and the grades they would be used in to help students. I have always read to my kids and sang songs to them since they were infants and they both (14 and 4) have very large vocabularies!
Deletemjb
DeleteChapter 4 covered every aspect of phonemic awareness. The chapter started off defining it and then listing out all 7 of the dimensions of phonemic awareness. But what it talked about next, phonemic awareness and English learners, is what really made me realize just how hard it could be for an English learner to catch on to phonemic awareness because each and every language has different phonemes. It makes complete sense, just not something I thought about before. Some English learners struggle because of the way they pronounce words.
ReplyDeleteNext the chapter covered what teachers need to know about phonemic awareness. Things such as if the child has hearing problems or does the student possible have a speech impediment that is the reason why they are struggling with phonemes.
It did surprise me that there really isn't proven studies that students who master phonemic awareness are not more proficient readers. I really thought that phonemic awareness would be one of those necessary topics that students would need to master. I know Dr. Walizer mentioned that it isn't necessary for students to cover phonemic awareness last semester in Reading Methods, but I was shocked then. But I think, as a future educator, that if I am teaching in the lower grades, I'm going to make sure and cover it in my classroom.
I really liked the examples of assessment in this chapter. Definitely something I will be doing in my classroom, and probably even incorporate it in different ways than just with phonemic awareness. The examples of different types of language at the end of the chapter was really fun and interesting to read through. It's hard to be aware of all the differences, but after reading that section I feel a little bit more informed. I also enjoyed and found the activities at the end of the chapter very useful. It was very nice that they were separated out in topics and also grade level.
I did not have any questions for this chapter.
I agree with you reference phonemic awareness and having it in the classroom. I think it is one of those things that has not been proven either way and is therefore open for interpretation. I think that it is crucial. I think that phonemic awareness sets the child up for future success in the classroom. I really can not imagine not covering it in my classroom.
Deletethanks,
Julie Copeland
mjb
DeleteChapter 4 in the text revolved around the first of the big 5, phonemic awareness. By definition phonemic awareness is the child’s understanding and awareness that speech is broken down into syllables and sounds. The chapter goes on to break down phonemic awareness into different dimensions. Those dimensions are the ability to hear syllables within a word, the ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, the ability to distinguish between rime and rhyme, the ability to distinguish oddity, the ability to blend sounds to make a word, the ability to segment words orally, and the ability to manipulate sounds orally to create new words.
ReplyDeleteThe chapter goes on to discuss what teachers should know about phonemic awareness, and poses questions that we as educators must find our own answers to. The text wants us to formulate our own opinions about whether or not phonemic awareness is necessary for students to become proficient readers. In my opinion I believe that phonemic awareness is very important. One of the main reasons why I believe this is because I don’t think we would have spent time discussing it as one of our big 5 if it wasn’t. I also think that students need to be able to sound out words that they don’t know. This is a great tool for learning to spell words.
The chapter went on to list songs, nursery rhymes and poems, jingles, tongue twisters, and children’s literature that helps emphasize our language in a colorful way that children will enjoy.
I loved the jingles, tongue twisters, and songs beyond measure! Great resources for us as future educators. I too think that phonemic awareness is very important. It's the ground work right? I feel as though it lays down the path for students to advance from sounding out letters/syllables to even greater things in regards to reading! Good information!
Deletemjb
DeleteChapter 4 in our Literacy Assessment and Intervention textbook provided a great deal of information regarding phonemic awareness. The beginning of this chapter introduced the topic and dimensions that are included within phonemic awareness. Having had Dr. Walizer last semester for RLA Methods, I learned a lot about this topic. Phonemic awareness encompasses quite a few components which include the ability to hear syllables within a word, the ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, the ability to distinguish rime and rhyme, and so forth. #7 referred to the ability to manipulate words and provided a great example for this as well.
ReplyDeleteI was really interested by the questions posed for teachers to think about in regards to children and their phonemic awareness. There were some great questions, that make perfect sense to be or become aware of in regards to the students in your classroom. Some of the questions included knowing how often a child is read to by an adult, or does the child have hearing problems, speech impediments, etc. All of these components would play a huge role in one's ability to be successful in regards to phonemic awareness.
I also found the assessment portion of this chapter very helpful. I remembered from my RLA internship last semester that my mentor would incorporate phonemic awareness activities into the read-aloud times. If a vocabulary word was present she'd have the students sound out the letters, syllables, and so forth. It really seemed to help with pronunciation in general.
My favorite section of this chapter was the tons of chants, poems, and even activities that were shared at the end. I love textbooks that provide great activities for future use - they then become not only beneficial to my education, but my future students as well! Great chapter!
I am excited to see that the next several chapters are dedicated to the big 5 as well as writing and spelling. I am also enjoying the scenarios found at the beginning of each chapter. There are not as many as the Beers text from RLA methods, and they are not as personal but they are still really good. I really like all of the figures provided in this phonemic awareness chapter. I have a strong background in the speech and language field so I am pretty good at understanding what people are saying even if there pronunciation is a little off. I was thrilled when I discovered the charts with phonemes from other languages. What a great resource to have! This chapter is so full of great ideas and amazing resources. My favorite section was that of the songs, nursery rhymes, jingles, tongue twisters and more. I think it is incredibly important for students to be exposed to these in school especially since so many children don't hear these at home anymore. They are a great way for children to learn and build their language. I was also really excited to see that there were so many activities listed at the end of the chapter. I can't wait to see what skills I need to work on with my tutoring group. I am sure that I will find some great activities within this book that will be perfect for my group!
ReplyDeleteI have to agree, I am certain that we will be finding lots of great activities in this book! It's going to be a very valuable and useful tool.
DeleteI am also very excited to see the big 5 coming up in these next few weeks. These chapters are proving that they are going to make this book a great resource for all of us from the activities as well as the opening stories. I agree with the phonemes from other languages will be very beneficial.
Deletemjb
DeleteThis weeks chapter was chapter 4 and it was titled Phonemic Awareness. The chapter began with the definition of phonemic awareness, which is a child's understanding and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds. I think this is an extremely important idea to begin with as it sets the stage for the rest of the chapter but also, I believe, sets the foundation for all reading comprehension. The chapter then moves on to phenemic awareness and the English learner. The next important portion is a section on is phonemic awareness necessary for students to become proficient readers. I think phonemic awareness is not only important but critical to reading. The chapter then moves through assessing a child's level of phonemic awareness, the introduction of children to the wonderful sounds of our language, nursery rhymes and poems, children's literature, tongue twisters, and many activities for us to use. One activity that I really enjoyed was initial sound bingo. This activity I think really mixes learning, thinking, and fun at just the right amount. I think this chapter really sets us up for success for our tutoring next week. I am so excited to begin. I have had so many of the parents come up to me and thank me working with their child. I am really starting to feel like I am making a difference finally!
ReplyDeletethanks,
Julie Copeland
I too, liked the initial sound bingo. It sounds like an activity that my tutoring students would love. I'm tutoring 5th graders and it is nice that this chapter offers a few activities in case I need to go back and touch on phonemic awareness. Thanks for sharing, good luck this upcoming week with your tutoring!
Deletemjb
DeleteChapter 4, Phonemic Awareness, was a good review of a topic for me. One the first page of the chapter, it starts off with an inspiring quote from B.F. Skinner, "Education is what survives after what has been learned has been forgotten." What a perfect quote to sum up phonemic awareness!! This chapter starts off reviewing and listing the 7 dimensions of phonemic awareness: The ability to hear syllables within a word, the ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, the ability to distinguish rime and rhyme, the ability to distinguish oddity, the ability to blend sounds together orally to make a word, the ability to segment words orally, and the ability to manipulate sounds orally to create new words. It was helpful to read the list of what teachers should know about phonemic awareness. This made me think back to every time that Dr. Walizer told us to NEVER EVER tell a child to, "sound out the word." If they haven't mastered phonemic awareness, they probably will not be able to sound out the word. We have to go back to the basics and really figure out where the child is lacking in the fundamental area first. I thought that the checklist on page 83 was a great resource when it cam time to assess the level of phonemic awareness for each child in the classroom. My favorite part of this chapter started on page 84, when our textbook gave us ideas on how to introduce children to the "wonderful sound of our language." They offered ideas such as listening to songs and poems, doing jump rope jingles, doing tongue twisters, and engaging the students in children's literature. The last few pages offered lesson plan activities to help develop phonemic awareness. I am always thankful for ideas of activities to incorporate into the lesson. Like I said at the beginning, it was a great chapter to read to review phonemic awareness. I do not have any further questions after reading this chapter.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I keep losing this post, so let's hope it 'sticks' this time.
ReplyDeleteChapter four focused wholely and solely on phonemenic awareness. I love that there was a ton of games, activities, and manipulatives provided. Another part I loved is that these were all DIY, meaning that I don't have worry about being hooked up to the internet or to a fancy color printer. I can just grab some supplies and whip these puppies up. They can be as basic or elaborate as I want them to be. This book is going to be incredibly helpful when I start tutoring next week, because I know I will be able to pull some activities that are research proven straight from this book.
mjb
DeleteI was very excited to read about phonemic awareness in this chapter. I will be working with students this semester who will need help in the phonemic awareness area. Starting out this chapter was the scenario with a kindergarten teacher playing a repeating came with letter sounds. This sounded like a great game to get students involved and to determine which students and/or letters some need additional help with. On page 80 and 81, there were some figures that showed what phonemes were present in certain languages and not in others. I think this is great for teachers to know now, especially with taking ESOL classes. It will be important to know which ones the students have having difficulties with and why. In the rest of this chapter was great activities to do with the students to help them with phonemic awareness. I am excited to use these activities in my upcoming lessons.
ReplyDeleteMegan,
DeleteI agreed with your statement that teachers should be familiar with the similarities and differences of foreign language students, as well as the suggested ways in which these things should be taught. It only makes sense that you would teach what is already familiar before bringing in tougher stuff.
mjb
DeleteThere was a great deal of information in this chapter regarding phonemic awareness. It helps for me to know what it is and what to look for in students that may be struggling in this area. I think the best part of the chapter was the intervention portion. I love that it gave us specific activities including the grade levels that they would be best suited. This helps alleviate some of the stress from not being completely sure on how to help students with these types of problems. I also liked how it stated that Spanish speaking ELL students should be first shown the phonemes that are the same between Spanish and English and then shown the ones that do not exist in Spanish. It is better to start with the similarities before confusing them with something completely unknown. This chapter has helped me to see what I not only need to look for in students but also with my own children.
ReplyDeleteI agree, there were great ideas that we can use for the tutoring sessions. I had not considered how complicated the phonics would be for ELL students to hear. I knew that English was a complicated language, but seeing it spelled out how it would be difficult for them was an eye opener.
Deletemjb
DeleteChapter 4 is packed full of great information about how to make students aware of the parts of speech and that words are made up of individual sounds. I found that one of the greatest points that the book put forward is that phonemic awareness can be affected by the amount a student was read to as a small child. It seems like such a simple thing but as teachers we can not do anything about this by the time we get them in the classroom. It takes us all back to the point that parents play such an integral part of a student's success and something that we as teachers have no control over. This chapter showed me that how as a teacher we can do things to make up for the deficit. The jump rope jingles and books with rhyming are very interesting to me. I think that Dr. Seuss books are a great thing for students to be exposed to. I have chosen two Dr. Seuss books to use for my read alouds for the first week. Working in a middle school I am continually surprised when I come across students who have never read a Dr. Seuss book or other popular children's books.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I first met my husband, he did not like Dr. Seuss. We read a ton to our children, but not Dr. Seuss (To the oldest). Then, once that oldest one hit kindergarten, something clicked, and my husband became quite the fan.
DeleteWe have an excellent Parents as Teachers program in our community. I know the instructor encourages those parents to read to their children. We need to somehow get the word out to other parents as well.
Brandeena,
DeleteI agree that we as teachers can make up the deficit if kids aren't exposed to reading at home. That is what EFFECTIVE teachers do. I also believe when we give our students these essential tools like phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary,etc., and we show them the passion, excitement, and joy that reading can bring, we will create lifetime readers.
I have worked in a kindergarten classroom for four out of my past six years in being in an elementary school. I was familar with the onset and rime, along with breaking the words apart and putting them back together. I liked all of the different activities that the chapter provided for helping with the different sounds in the different words. I also liked the examples of different types of poems, songs and stories that emphasized how words worked with each other.
ReplyDeleteWhen my boys were young, we played a lot of word games. We mostly did rhyming, but they were familar with reading, phonics and phonemic awareness before the entered kindergarten. Perhaps the Parents as Teachers instructor could incorporate this sort of idea with the preschoolers and toddlers she sees.
Heather,
DeleteI thought the text provided some great activities, as well, for phonemic awareness. I personally think that the songs and literature opportunities are very positive and effective ways of exposing students the many varieties of phonemes and phonemic awareness.
mjb
DeleteThis chapter of DeVries focuses on phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness involves the words, syllables, and sounds of speech; its’ different than phonics which targets the letters that make the specific sounds. There are actually seven dimensions to phonemic awareness which involve hearing the syllables within a word, hearing the letter sounds and distinguishing what alliteration is. Phonemic awareness also involves on rhyme and rime, oddities, blends, among others. As the number of English learners increases in our country, we’ll need to pay close attention to those phonemes that are different for other languages. Many other languages do not share many of the phonemes found in the English language. Assessments are the first step in evaluating phonemic awareness. Nursery rhymes, poetry, and songs are some wonderful examples of introducing children to things like alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, and nonsense words. Our text provides numerous examples of songs, poetry, and children’s literature that are full of rhyme, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. Exposure to this should be frequent, certainly a daily occurrence for children.
ReplyDeleteThe text presents a question as to the importance of phonemic awareness in relation to reading proficiency. I agree with the assertion our text makes regarding this subject that many elementary teachers do feel it lends to reading achievement. When we have so many different sounds in our language, it just makes sense that learning about these sounds as they appear in different words would greatly benefit student reading progress. The phonogram cards would be a great tool in this endeavor.
For me, this chapter confirmed my opinion of the value and significance of phonemic awareness. It is important that children know letter sounds and pronunciations of the various blends and phonograms in our English language, and equally important is the consistent exposure to these sounds through things like children’s literature and music.
I will definitely plan to expose my students to a variety of sounds through quality children’s literature and music to provide beneficial opportunities for them to develop their phonemic awareness. In addition to using literature and music selections, tools such as the phonogram cards can be extremely helpful and make a difference in helping children learn those letter sounds.
I enjoyed this chapter on Phonemic awareness because it breaks it down into the seven dimensions such as segmentation, oddity,blending, and rime and rhyme. In all the times I had heard the words phonemic awareness, I wasn't completely aware of what that entailed. In the text it talks about not all EXPERTS agreeing that phonemic awareness is necessary to be a proficient reader, but I feel that it is extremely valuable in building the child's base/foundation to reading and one that can make the child's experience in learning to read much more enjoyable. I absolutely love the activity ideas in the text with regards to children learning through songs, nursery rhymes, and literature as a whole. I remember reading a lot about this in my Children's literature class. Children are introduced to many rhymes, patterns, syllabication, songs, and tongue twisters that help them to understand letter sounds better. During my time in the classroom as an intern and a substitute, I have often seen teachers using the clapping technique or the hand under the chin to count syllables. Having this text is going to be a great tool for the classroom because not only does it give good information, it has great ideas for activities which is probably what most teachers want. I am looking forward to reading about the rest of the Big 5.
ReplyDeleteThe one question I have is why so many Experts question the necessity of phonemic awareness? The way I look at it is that if it helps in ANY way for children to better understand the sounds associated with words, than why not use it?
I plan on using the information I have learned from this chapter, Reading and Language Arts methods, and the information to come in my future classroom to foster better readers for the future. I believe these are great tools and must be done early to build a strong reading foundation.
mjb
DeleteAnd to answer your question about why some experts don't like phonemic awareness - it puts too much emphasis on parts of the word instead of the whole word. They believe children should learn to read the words at site (mostly based on context) because a focus on phonemics breaks the word down into too many parts and like was mentioned in the text, those with speech, and hearing difficulties and ELL students struggle more with the phonemic approach rather than learning the whole word with its meaning.