With my main-place being in all-day kindergarten, I’m seeing similarities between the phonemic work my buddy uses with what I used in my September Experience. The most prominent similarity is “stretching words”. This process of segmenting sounds, gives students the opportunity to pronounce each phoneme in the same order in which it occurs (p.43).
In our “getting to know you” activity, as a group we worked together to stretch out the word monkey. Our buddy used his letter-sound relationship (p.10) to stretch the word and spelled it MKE. From the activity, I could see that he has a strong understanding of consonants and is still developing vowels, which is typical for his developmental level.
As a buddy-team we also utilized other ways of spelling and writing words. When asked his favorite animal, our buddy said “cheetah”, but after stretching the word he still struggled with determining the letters. As a group we talked about other ways of writing cheetah other than with letters. He drew an excellent picture of a cheetah and when he didn’t have a black crayon, he said he could use brown, “because some cheetah’s have brown spots”. He knew a lot about cheetahs and was able to convey his knowledge through his drawing.
One strategy used at my main-placement and I just started to talk to my buddy about is, “being a letter and word detective”. Each kindergarteners have a fabulous placemat that includes colors and shapes, as well as, how to spell them. My buddy’s favorite color is blue. He stretched the word out and came up with BL, but I noticed he had BLUE on his placemat and we started the conversation about using the classroom and his placemat to find words, just like a detective. I’m going to talk about this again in future activities because it’ll help him become aware of the words he knows around him.
It sounds like you had a great experience with your buddy! I love how you and your partner did everything you could to encourage your buddy to write BUT made it a fun activity. Since he had a hard time spelling the word, you encouraged him to draw a picture of a cheetah. There are many other ways of communicating our thoughts to the people around us and it doesn’t always have to be with letters. I think we forget that many times. Your procedure was great. It seemed to have gotten rid of his frustration, which could have resulted in him putting a wall up. Instead, you opened up his mind and had him share even more things about cheetahs, like some cheetahs having brown spots too.
ReplyDeleteIn my main placement we have also been talking about stretching words. I’ve actually carried a rubber band in my pocket which I use sometimes to demonstrate stretching a word out. Kids are very visual, and this has worked well for me when I’m stretching out the words with them. In this class, however, they don’t have special placemats. I wonder if it would help some of them. Many of the students are excellent readers and writers, but there are some students that could definitely benefit from having this at their desk, rather than having to rely on memory or look around the room. Depending on the age of my future class, I would probably do something like this as well. Although, in my dyad placement, my teacher told me that she doesn’t like having this at their desks because she wants the kids to learn to use their surroundings to help them. The alphabet is in many places around the room, and many words are spelled out on walls and posters. She wants the kids to use the resources in their classroom, and I can see how this is valuable too.
I learned a new stretching words activity to add to your kitchen cuboard of ideas. Try moving a small, colorful, plastic slinky in and out as you say the word (or try using hand motion). This is a fun way to engage K and 1st graders in phonics. When students use letter-sound strategy, they annunciate individual consonant sounds, beginning with an onset /p/, and verbally stretching out the sound to form a new word. For example: /p/e/t/. /pet/.
ReplyDeleteI think writing begins with being aware of sounds and thinking how specific letters match specific sounds. There is an ongoing relationship between the two. Word manipulation includes: blending, segmenting, isolating, and substituting.
I like to think of literacy as having a domino effect: decoding - word reading - comprehension - fluency. According to Fox (2008), learning phonics letter sounds leads to greater awareness of English words, expanded vocabulary leads to improved reading comprehension, which in turn, aids spoken language and self-expression in both oral and in written form. When we offer students increased opportunity to interact and experience English, they draw connections, form their own analysis, and see threads between writing and speaking... Learn more at:
http://repyakteach.blogspot.com/