This week's topic focused on phonemic awareness and phonics. I really loved Kathleen Clark's article about the use of the coaching technique to help the children develop their word recognition skills. The coaching method gives the students tools to use when they come to words that they do not know. Instead of telling the student to "sound it out", the teacher provides instructional cues. In my opinion, this method is not only a valuable tool for the students, but also for the teachers because it is effective and efficient. In the phonemic awareness article (by Yopp and Yopp), three important standards were put forth in regards to the instruction of phonemic awareness. The third standard stuck out to me the most. This stated that teachers must recognize that while the development of phonemic awareness is important and necessary, it is only one part of the literacy program and too much time spent on phonemic awareness is not beneficial when it is not put to use "in the context of comprehensive reading instruction".
Check out Phonologicalawareness.org. It is a great site for finding fun activities to use in your classroom to teach and practice phonemic awareness!
Thank you for sharing that website- I think it has some great ideas for promoting phonemic awareness so I will have to keep that one bookmarked for my future class :)
ReplyDeleteI agree, I also enjoy this website. It has some great ideas for applying phonemic awareness in the classroom. I also like that it showed what grade level the activities would be appropriate for. This is definitely a useful tool, and I'm sure I will be using it in the future.
ReplyDeleteI like your last statement about how phonemic awareness is only one small part of literacy. I feel that that is a very important concept. Phonics is an important element but only in conjunction with other aspects of literacy.
ReplyDeleteWhat an awesome website! Thank you! I think coaching is a great strategy to help readers who are struggling. It will empower them and help their self esteem while reading because it will be giving them the strategies to do it on their own.
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