Identifying syllables is just one part of developing literacy for students and increasing phonemic awareness. The articles this week named a few ways to help develop literacy and phonemic awareness, such as:
- Have every student write in their own format then explain that each student may write differently and that is okay. For example, one student may draw pictures then label them; another may start to form words based on the sounds of the letters.
- Practice repetition and rhyming with nursery rhymes, such as "Humpty Dumpty"
- Connect letters with common words or names to help students better understand, for example have them name a student in the class who's name starts with the letter 'M'
These are just a few ideas for developing literacy in the classroom. In the IRA/NAEYC position paper, the motto "challenging, but achievable" was used. I like this quote as it is very relevant when teaching students more abstract concepts, such as syllables.
Here is an idea for teaching phonemic awareness in the classroom:
The activity above is called the Sound Hop! Students will be given a word. As they sound out the syllables, they will hop to a new circle with every new syllable. This would be a great lesson especially for students who learn best from hands-on activities.
I will leave you with two thoughts:
- How do we know when to add accents to words in a sentence? How do we best teach this to our students? For example, these two sentences are not pronounced the same, even though they look identical.
- "I play the bass guitar."
- "I caught a bass fish."
- I find it so intriguing that we learned the basis of phonemic awareness at a young age and still use it everyday. How do we make sure as teachers that we form a solid foundation and understanding of phonemic awareness in order to foster literacy for the student in the future?
I really like that hands on activity! It's perfect for hyper active students needed a more interactive lesson. As far as the phonemic lesson is concerned, I'd probably approach it in a silly way. That way, my students can HEAR the difference between the accents and which is correct.
ReplyDeleteI was actually thinking about how to explain different words with same spellings myself the other day. The one I thought of was "tear" and "tear" (As in, the girl's dress had a tear versus the girl's eye had a tear). I remember my teacher used to say "English is weird, this is one of those times" and then we would say the words and go around the room making up different sentences using them.
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