Phonemic Awareness

After reading each of the articles that were shared in class this week, I found myself able to relate most to the articles discussing phonological awareness. While phonological awareness is the ability to make and recognize rhyming words, count syllables and separate the beginning of a word from its ending, phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness that the speech stream consists of a sequence of sounds. Specifically, phonemic awareness instruction consists of concentration on units of sounds, tasks or operations, and use of cues. The article goes on to suggest kinds of activities that can be used to help the development of phonemic awareness in young children. Being a kindergarten teacher myself, it was very interesting to read about the different strategies and skills that I should be incorporating into my lessons. It was also reassuring to see that I already include some of the ideas in my reading groups.

In kindergarten, most students are not ready for reading instruction at the beginning of the year. Therefore, much of my time in the first half of the year is spent strengthening phonemic awareness skills in my students. I play many games with them to practice blending and segmenting words, and the students participate in silly poems and songs that focus on rhyming words during whole group lessons. We look at word families and have fun changing the words by simply changing the first letter. Segmenting and blending words is a skill that children should master in kindergarten. The following is a little song that I like to use with my class to practice phonemic segmentation:

Listen, listen to my word,
Then tell me all the sounds you heard: race
/r/ is one sound
/a/ is two,
/s/ is last in race it's true.
Thanks for listening to my word
And telling all the sounds you heard!

The kids love when it is their turn to choose a word for us to segment. They also love a game we play where we pretend to put a big piece of bubble gum in our mouths, chew it up really well, and then use our fingers to stretch the gum from our mouths as we listen for each sound in a given word. Some students used this technique during writers' workshop. It was so cute to see them use their "gum" to hear the sounds in the word they were trying to write. My point is, no matter what activities you do, if you teach pre-K, Kindergarten or first grade, you need to find a way to incorporate phonemic awareness activities into your daily routine. Until a student can segment and blend sounds of a word together, he/she will have a difficult time when faced with an unknown word.

Play in Kindergarten

This week in class was spent focusing on people who have played a large role in education's history. While I learned new information about many significant people, the one person who I found myself most interested in was Friedrich Froebel. Froebel changed the way we think about early childhood education. He designed balls, wooden blocks, tiles, sticks and rings to demonstrate that children learn by playing.

Being a kindergarten teacher myself, I sometimes find myself feeling torn between making sure all of the expected objectives are being met and making sure that my students are growing socially and emotionally, as well. Kindergarten used to focus more on the social growth of children, but lately I feel as though there is much less focus on social/emotional growth and much more stress on a child growing academically. There is not much time for play in a day filled with writers' workshop, reading lesson, literacy centers, guided reading groups, math lesson, math centers, math groups and a science/social studies lesson. I find myself having to incorporate "play" into our center blocks. While I would love to allow the children more free choice time and more time to role-play, our strict schedule does not allow it.

Luckily, others are starting to realize how important play is in the elementary classroom. A recent New York Times article focuses on just that: "During the school day, there should be extended time for play. Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions. A classroom like this would provide lots of time for children to learn to collaborate with one another, a skill easily as important as math or reading. It takes time and guidance to learn how to get along, to listen to one another and to cooperate. These skills cannot be picked up casually at the corners of the day." (2010). Thank goodness people are remembering how important play is in children's growth and development. Teachers should not be forced to squeeze play in throughout the day; children are actually learning through play. Froebel is probably thinking "finally!"

"Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul." Friedrich Froebel

Engel, S. (2010). Playing to learn. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/opinion/02engel.html

Learning at Home

The interaction between a parent and a child significantly impacts the child during the beginning phases of literacy development. The environment at home plays a major role in a child's development. As a result, it is important for teachers to gain an awareness of children's family literacy practices, especially when the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the children's families are different from their own. This helps them tap into children's prior experiences, draw upon their strengths and interests, and address their individual needs.

In order for a child to be most successful, learning needs to take place at school and at home. Home is a great place for reinforcement to take place. As a kindergarten teacher, I use many activities during reading groups that promote phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness improves children's word reading, reading comprehension and spelling. There are a number of strategies that I implement in the classroom, such as using songs, rhymes, poems, and chants, working with syllables, concentrating on the beginning sounds of words and playing word games. At home, parents can support their child's phonemic awareness by singing alphabet songs with their child, read stories that their child chooses, help their child clap the beats or syllables in words, point out letters in words around the house and play with language and rhymes. Parents can help further their child's learning by making sure that reinforcement takes place at home. By engaging parents in their child's reading acquisition, children will find greater success in school.

Welcome All

Hello to everyone interested in learning about literacy development in children. My name is Annie and I am a grad student at Johns Hopkins University. I am currently enrolled in my fourth class on my way to obtaining my masters degree in reading. I have been teaching kindergarten for the past 4 years, so I am always interested in learning about how I can help my students be successful readers. Kindergarten has definitely changed since I was there. Students are expected to be reading simple books by the time they exit kindergarten. I am excited about this class, Emergent Literacy, because I believe it will help me acquire more techniques and strategies that I can use to help my students develop their reading skills.