Chapter 4 Post & Reply Due 09-25-2011 DeVries, B. A. (2011). Literacy assessment and intervention for the elementary classroom. Chapter 13 Tutoring Chapter 4- Phonemic Awareness
Chapter 4 is about phonemic awareness, I am thankful that I was placed in a Kindergarten classroom last semester for my internship that dealt a great deal with phonemic awareness. Our books definition of phonemic awareness is “a child’s understanding, and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds.” To me this is the understanding of our alphabet that the several different sounds that go along with them. Reflecting back to my internship I can recall my mentor teacher working with her students on syllables and understanding how to say a world slowly as well as clap to place the syllables. By the time I left in December there were still some students struggling with certain words and detecting syllables. Thinking about the difficulty these students had it brings me to the topic of ESLO students and learning the English language. I cannot imagine being in a school where no one speaks my language then being asked to not only speak their language but understand it as well. I am grateful for our educators who take pride in teaching ESLO students. Phonemic awareness is the first building step to reading and comprehending what you are reading. With this being said phonemic awareness is extremely important for a young student to learn to help them being their own education.
One of my favorite sections of this chapter is located on pg. 84 & 85 it songs related to different language activities. As I child I can recall many activities we did to song that have stuck with me several years later. I believe music is a great way to make learning both fun and effective.
I also interned in kindergarten last semester! It was amazing to see the growth that each student made throughout the semester as far as phonemic awareness goes. I really enjoyed seeing the different activities that my mentor teacher did and reading about new ones in this chapter!
I also enjoyed the songs that were provided. I think they will be extremely helpful to students who are struggling. I think it would be very hard to be a student in a class where I didn't understand or speak the language. Those children are no different they just need extra help with the language barrier.
I also found that the sounds on page 84 and 85 will be very helpful in the future to use. I know that from my previous experience that songs help me remember things. This is why I feel that movement and singing are important to integrate in with your lessons.
Chapter four discussed the very important topic of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds. I was placed in kindergarten last semester for R/La internship with the most amazing mentor teacher. She always made sure I knew what she was doing and the reason she was doing it and at the age a lot of it consisted of phonemic awareness. She also let me sit in with her while she was doing assessments on the students and I got to see the progress and growth that some of the students made during the 16 weeks that I was there. I really liked how the text broke down the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. I feel like if you didn't understand what it consisted of before reading this chapter, you should definitely get it now! I also really enjoyed reading through all of the songs, rhymes, and activities that the author gave us to go off of. It is very helpful and I can't wait to apply them in my own classroom!
I would think that many kindergarteners would have outstanding progress over an amount of time. They are so amazing sometimes in what they internalize! I think the activities provided by the author will help as we enter our tutoring. Would you have ever thought about using jumping rope jingles?
1. Analysis of reading/issue. Chapter 4 includes discussion on phonemic awareness. There is discussion about the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. I enjoyed reading about phonemic awareness and ELLs because they are going to need the most help because some phonemes aren’t present in their native language. I thought the figures on pages 80-1 were highly informative because I never realized how many phonemes weren’t in the Spanish language. The author also discussed whether phonemic awareness mastery is necessary to become a proficient reader. It’s not necessary, but it’s a skill that should continue to build as the reader practices their reading. I found the intervention games at the end of the chapter to be helpful and interesting to get the ideas to the students. 2. Questions/contradictions about the reading/issues. I don’t have any questions or contradictions for this chapter. 3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently? This allowed me to see phonemic awareness in a different light when it comes to ELLs because I didn’t realize the number of phonemes missing from other languages. I also found it interesting in how to use the different types of getting the language across to the students. Using songs, poems, jump rope jingles, etc. will help them learn the different sounds and how to move their tongues and mouths. 4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience. I remember jumping rope and saying the jingles when I was in elementary school, but I didn’t realize how much it was helping me learn the language. I would have never thought of using them to help students.
Katie - I agree with your statement about phonemic awareness and the importance it has on students who are ELL. I can remember in High School taking Spanish and never really understanding the language. I am now wishing I would have taken more Spanish to better myself as an educator.
Katie W - I really liked the figures on page 80 and 81 as well. It was kind of an eye opener on how different other languages are. I can't imagine being an ELL student. It kept discussing that its best to start with the words that have common placement of phonemes. I think this makes complete sense and this information will be very helpful.
Chapter four discusses phonemic awareness, its seven dimensions, phonemic awareness and ELL students, other languages and phonemic awareness, and some activities that help introduce sounds to children. I really liked the section on the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness because it really cleared up a lot of questions I had. For instance, I always get rime and rhyme confused and this chapter distinguished the difference nicely. My favorite part of his chapter was the section on ELL students. The part that shocked me this most was that ELL students must learn to produce the 44 most common phonemes in order to become fluent in the English language. This wouldn’t be so hard if the ELL student was young but if you get an ELL student in 4th or 5th grade this would be very challenging. Since the Spanish language only has 24 phonemes I can understand why Spanish native speakers have the hardest time. The tables on pages 80 and 81 are very helpful. I feel like I will refer back to this page in the future. I also thought the checklist they had on page 83 for the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness was helpful. I really enjoyed learning the vowel code rap in Reading and Language Arts because I never learned anything like that when I was in school, or at least I don’t remember. The ending part of the chapter has songs, nursery rhymes, poems, riddles, jokes, and many more great resources to use in my future classroom.
It’s funny that you mentioned rime and rhyme; honestly I just recently learned that there was difference. I’m not for sure how I missed that valuable information in all of my studies but I’m glad that I know it now. You exactly right, I couldn’t imagine being an ELL student, and finding out that this new language has almost twice as many phonemes as my original language. This would be a huge feet for them, because most of these sounds they have never heard or used in their native language. I love the vowel code rap, and I have practice it a hundred times, but for some reason I am having the hardest time memorizing it. I think it is because I have never learned the sounds of the vowels like that. I remember learning them, but it wasn’t half as fun. I am going to work on a lot this semester, because I really do want to teach it to my tutoring group this semester (especially if I find that this is an area that needs focused on). I think you picked out about all the same areas of the chapter that I did, I guess we can see the important topics for this chapter. (lol)
Andrea- I could not imagine how difficult it must be for an ELL learner to learn the new phonemes. Learning early could be to their advantage. I remember taking beginning Spanish classes in high school and I found it difficult to ignore the English sounds I knew to begin learning the Spanish sounds. Up until this class, I was not aware of what a rime was. I thought all words that had the same ending sound were just called rhymes!
Andrea- I also thought it was nice that they distinguished between the rime and rhyme, I never knew they was a difference or that there was a rime before this class and this chapter. I could not imagine being a student that is ELL and try to learn all the different phonics, it was hard enough for me to in R&LA and English is my first language.
Chapter 4 discussed phonemic awareness, how it correlates for English Learners, and the controversy over how to teach it, how to introduce children to it, assessments for it and a list of many activities do to teach it. Phonemic awareness is the oral ability to distinguish sounds and syllables with words (pg. 105). There are seven dimension of the phonemic awareness that a student must be able to do to master this skill and be proficient readers. The next section discussed English learners. I didn’t realize that there were only 24 sounds in Spanish verses English’s 44 phonemes. It would make sense why EL students have so much trouble with these sounds, especially if they have never heard of them. This reminds me of my Spanish class in high school and how much easier it seemed than English class. The next topic was over the debate of it and how phonics should be taught. When I was in elementary school I remember the teacher introducing 2-3 phonograms each week and a worksheet that allowed us to practice the new sounds. Once I was in middle and high school the debate took off and I know for a few years the elementary school teachers were not focusing on them. Now as I observe I see the teachers teaching it more than ever, but in a new way tying it closely to other reading skills. It makes sense that it would be essential to reading and writing. I know that I still use it today when sounding out a word from the text or spelling a word. On the other hand I do see the argument; it is so difficult to explain to a young reader the many different ways one letter can sound. It is very confusing to early readers especially when they come across a word that uses a different sound than the one they have previous learned. The next section is over the many fun ways to teach students the sounds of our language. I was excited to see that the Dibels assessment was listed under the assessments it affirms to me that it is a well known, well studied, and used assessment. I feel that learning it will just put me one step above the competition when applying for jobs. The final area is 12 pages packed full of activities that focus on the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. This will be a great resource if I decide that my content focus ends up being phonemic awareness. I don’t have any questions about the reading.
-Chapter 4 discusses phonemic awareness. There are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness: 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, 4) the ability to distinguish oddity, 5) the ability to blend sounds together orally to make a word, 6) the ability to segment words orally, and 7) the ability to manipulate sounds orally to create new words. I knew that there were smaller skills that made up the big skill of phonemic awareness, and now looking at all of the smaller skills listed out, everything we learned in Reading and Language Arts methods makes even more sense now. It also makes sense as to why we give the tests that we do. There are many strategies out there to introduce sounds to children: songs, nursery rhymes and poems, tongue twisters, and children’s books. I really liked the Intervention section in this chapter. There are some great activities that focus on each individual skill. -I do not have any questions at this time. -This reading made me realize how difficult it can be for ELL’s to learn phonemes because so many of the English phonemes do not exist in Spanish. However, I think this chapter is a great resource for activities to help teach those unfamiliar sounds. It also made me think about how important each of the seven dimensions is. Each skill is necessary to have, some more than others, to help students learn to read and write. Again, the activities section will be very helpful when deciding how to emphasize each dimension. - I remember jumping rope at recess and singing all those jingles. I also remember poetry helping me with alliteration, rhyme, and rime. Although, at the time in elementary school, I was not aware that those were the correct terms for the skills I had been taught.
I was able to relate a lot of this chapter back to reading and language arts as well. The seven dimensions really broke phonemic awareness down for me. Like you, this chapter also made me see how difficult phonemes can be for ELL's. I guess we sometimes don't think about things like that until we see it on paper. Concepts like phonemic awareness can already be difficult for english speaking students so ELL's have it even more difficult. I guess as educators we will always need to put ourselves in their shoes and how things may or may not make sense to them. Like you said though, the activities section will be very helpful with ELL's struggles. Good post!
Sara- I did not realize how difficult it would be for ELL to learn all the different phonic sounds and blends. This chapter is a great resource for my future classroom with all the examples of songs and jingles.
I also found it interesting regarding the phonemes. I never realized how many there are and how they are different for many countries. I think this will make us better teachers to our ELL students, and make us more understanding to their struggle.
Ch. 4 I haven’t had much experience dealing with phonemic awareness yet so I’m very grateful to have read this chapter. I really liked the part on the dimensions of phonemic awareness. I knew about many of them but I really liked the examples listed for implementing each dimension. As an adult the concept of rhyme and rime can be confusing. I absolutely love the book list in appendix A.7. The books listed will greatly help young children understand the confusing concept of rhyme and rime. Another very informative part of this chapter was all of the songs, nursery rhymes, poems, jingles, tongue twister, and literature recommendations. I plan on using some of the jump rope jingles in tutoring to implement movement and teach rhythm and rhyme. I had many questions about phonemic awareness before reading this chapter but I feel much more knowledgeable about them now. The section on what teachers should know about phonemic awareness was extremely helpful with answering my questions also.
Shannon - It is always so helpful when a text book includes extra resources that we can use. I, too, like the book list as well as the sites that we will be able to utilize in the classroom - and maybe even our tutoring session! I hope you grow to love phonemic awareness. It's so cool to assess a child and be able to see what their need is. It may not be as apparent in some children as it is in others, but there are always little clues and patterns that give us clues about why they are having difficulty with their reading. Best of luck!
Shannon--I completely agree with you. This section of the text was filled with great, useful resources that will definitely come in handy in the near future. I really loved the songs, nursery rhymes, poems, etc. found at the end of the book. I believe students will really enjoy learning/listening to these throughout the classroom!
I find that everything centered around phonemic awareness confusing and find my head soon spinning in circles around blends, digraphs, etc., etc. Language and reading has so much more depth to it than just opening a book and reading words on a page. I am working with a girl who will be enrolling in Kindergarten next year on building reading skills, which is a task that I do not have experience with so it is as much of a learning experience for me as it is for her. We are only a few months in to the reading program and she is reading simple sentences because of sight words. Teaching a child how to read is amazing and it's important to always encourage children by reading to them when they are younger.
Nicole Schell: 1. Analysis of the reading/issue: I loved this chapter! I am a big fan of phonemic instruction. I appreciated the various assessment tools this chapter listed. The difference between rime and rhyme was something that I really needed to review. It is something I’ve never had to explain to children, so I’m glad to have examples of each and better understand how to define them. My favorite part of this chapter was the section on sounds of our language. Children really respond to song, rhyme, and rhythm in stories. They seem to learn more quickly when a text is attached to these things. It’s a great way for them to learn about things like alliteration or onomatopoeias and have fun at the same time. They quickly learn how to spot these things and use them to play with and manipulate sounds or words. I feel like it’s all about making them aware of sounds and how they come together to form words. If they can have fun with it, they are more apt to learn quickly and retain that information.
2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue: There does seem to be some debate about the best way to approach phonemic awareness. I've seen it in the schools, too. For me, it all boils down to what the child needs. Some students may not need the intensive instruction, but there are those that I feel really DO. It would be a shame to fight over which is best while there is a struggling reader in need of help. If one way or one method doesn't work, try something else. It's like with anything else in education...there is no ONE thing that works for everyone. We all learn differently, so the instruction should fit the child.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently? I have seen some kids who were able to receive only minimal phonemic assistance and get back on track, while others were in desperate need of real intensive instruction. Some kids either didn't receive the instruction at the school they first attended, and others simply had not mastered the concepts and strategies needed to be on grade level. When you test these kids, there are usually some things that come to light that really focus in on what they need to work on. The part that made me look at phonemic awareness differently was the section on ELLs. While I have some experience with Spanish & was aware of the differences in vowels, I have never considered the phonogram differences. This section was especially helpful to me and allowed me to realize the difficulties ELL students might have. I will be better equipped to evaluate students who are not English speakers and know how to approach their needs.
Nicole, once again you gave such a thorough description of the chapter... I have learned so much reading this book and feel it is directly applicable to our current tutoring and future teaching careers. Phonemic awareness was something that I thought was the same thing as Phonics but after reading this chapter I am now able to understand the difference in the two terms. My favorite part was the assessment tools and resouces the chapter gave. I am able to use to use some of these techniques with a student I am currently working with in my job as a Para. Interesting how reading this chapter connects the dots for me as a future teacher of reading skills.
In chapter four the text discusses how important phonemic awareness is for students to understand and what role teachers have on students. Until I took Reading & Language Arts Methods I did not ever member learning much on phonics. Obviously I learned different sounds to read, but I cannot remember much enfaces on phonemic awareness. I realize how important it is that children learn to recognize how different letter combinations can have different sounds and relationships, and if I would have learned about phonics the first time around in school I may have benefited from it. Teachers are not the only people that have a major impact on the child’s understanding of phonics. Parents and caregivers have a major role when it comes to children developing their phonics skills. Also if the child has any hearing difficulties or speech impediments, these will affect the way a child can understand and or speak.
When you say learning phonics before are you referring to your own education or thus far in your major? I remember learning all sorts of phonics in kindergarten... especially with the letter people. Each day we learned a new letter we would learn the sound (or sounds) the letter made, and eventually after all the letters were covered we took that further.
I completely agree with you that parents / guardians / caregivers play a huge role in a child's phonemic awareness development. It's interesting how much you can tell from a parent involvement aspect in this from just babysitting... It can also be incredibly sad, for example, when a 5 year old can't recite a single nursery rhyme. I wish ALL parents realized they play a part in their child's development, not just the teachers.
1. Analysis of the reading/issue. This chapter helped me to understand more about phonemic awareness. I now completely understand that it is all about sounds, spoken words, and syllables. Students need to develop a way to understand the sounds that they hear and speak. One thing that was brought up in prior reading was rime, it was good to reread about it. Students need to learn the difference in rime and rhyme. The difference is rime has the same letters at the end of a word and rhyme has the same sound, but not the same letters. The text also listed six things that children must know. I think these would be goals that a teacher would assess students on throughout the school year. One of the most interesting things that I read in this chapter was about the different languages and how their phonemes are different. After reading that it made it a little more clear as to why children who are not native English speakers. 2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue. This chapter was very straight forward. I don’t have any questions or issues. 3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently? As mentioned above learning about the different phonemes and how they are different for different countries. I can’t imagine trying to start all over in a new school and have to relearn pretty much everything. Now that I think back to high school when I took Spanish we sure did say thing backwards…well it seemed backwards to me. 4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience. When I worked in the kindergarten as an aid I remember doing lots of things with rhyming words. Kids were learning “word families” to me I just thought they needed practice, I never realized how much it mattered that they understand what they were doing. After reading this chapter I see how important it is for a child’s foundation. I also saw this to be true when helping them learn to read. If they could understand the /at/ sound then put it with the beginning sound they were able to get the word.
Chapter 4 is about phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding of the alphabet and the letter sounds. For reading I was placed in a 1st grade classroom and got to see first had the students learning the chunks and what sounds they made. My mentor teacher made sure to explain to me the importance of the chunks and why the student were learning what they were learning. The text did a great job in breaking down the dimensions of phonemic awareness. I also found that on pages 84 and 85 to be great resource for future teaching.
There is a surprising amount of supplements and large, poster sized print outs available for new educators and tools that any existing educator can use to build upon or establish existing phonemic awareness instruction. I believe that regardless of the age, it is always a strong suit for any educator to periodically review all elements and "shapes" of the alphabet. Allow older students to experience the differences together amongst ELL and all other students. Perhaps one will find that students are curious and eager to learn more about each other and the way they communicate.
I thought it was very interesting to see how children break words apart to learn them. It is so cool that you can teach a child the letter sounds and they can easily put them together to make words with more than 1 syllabi.
Chapter 4 focused on the importance of phonemic awareness. An interesting thing about phonemic awareness is that it is often something that is easily forgotten or simply neglected by many young educators. Many times we simply expect children to learn their letters and corresponding sounds/names, yet we must be more aware and do more to assist children of all ages from the very beginning. By properly laying a foundation to guide students, step by step, building that phonemic awareness will not be the difficult, troublesome instructional element that many educators see it as being. I believe this follows suit with ELL students as well. Yes, there are several differences between our two languages, yet, this does not mean that we, as educators, cannot educate ourselves and our students on how to better understand and connect linguistically with all individuals.
Megin, I agree, sometimes we just expect students to learn their letters and then figure that they know how to blend them together to make words. I took Spanish in high school, and was not very good at it, I could not imagine being and ELL student and having to learn English. English is a difficult language, my roommate is from China, she speaks well, but she said it was hard to learn English.
The definition the book gives for phonemic awareness is “a child’s understanding, and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds.” I have learned about this topic while providing inclsion services in 1st grade classrooms as a Para. I had not heard of this term until Reading and Langugage Arts but now understand it is a seperate term from Phonics. Before reading this chapter I was unsure how to assess a student's knowledge of phonemic awareness but this chapter provided wonderful examples of assessment tools and resources. Students respond positively to songs and rhymes. Students in general seems to learn quickly when learning is attached to song or rhythm. Onomatopoeias are one of my favorite things to teach. Manipulating sounds of words is a fun quick way to engage students in active learning. Phonemic awareness is all about making them aware of sounds and how they come together to form words. In my mind learning should be fun and engaging this is one content area where it is easy to integrate movement activities as well as music into lesson planning.
Chapter four is about phonemic awareness which is a child’s understanding and knowledge that speech is a collection of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds. There are seven parts of phonemic awareness: ability to hear syllables within a word, ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, ability to distinguish rime and rhyme, ability to distinguish oddity, ability to blend sounds together orally to make a word, ability to segment words orally, and ability to manipulate sounds orally to create new words. This chapter gives a list of element a student does need to know, and a list that tells how intense explicit phonemic awareness instruction impacts a student. Assessment ideas are given to see where the student’s level of phonemic awareness is at, and also their growth. To get them started in the English language use songs, nursery rhymes and poems, jump rope jingles, tongue twisters, and children’s literature. Throughout the rest of the chapter it gives activities for helping students learn phonemic awareness. I have no questions about this chapter. This chapter allowed me to look at phonemic awareness in new ways. How to help students learn, one child may learn better by songs, one by learning tongue twisters, each student is different. But this chapter was pretty much a review, a good review though. I have always loved to read, I know that comes from my mom. She loves to read, go to the library, and she would take us so I became a lover of the library. If I would have read this book last semester I could have used some of these activities to help the students in my internship class learn better. I really don’t have a certain experience to connect this chapter with.
This chapter also gave me new ways to look at phonemic awareness. That is great that your mom influenced reading in such a positive way for you when you were younger. Many students have negative feelings towards reading and some of this is because parents attitudes towards reading.
Phonemic awareness is so important for young children. I know that in my internship some of my children did not correctly learn the sounds of the letters and vowels. I can tell when assessing them that they do not quite get the vowel sounds. After reading this chapter I have seen just how advanced phonemic awareness really is. I love the part of the chapter about songs. It is so important to incorporate music and song into a child's day. The beat and rhythm help the child remember the words and meaning. This book has dozens of activities to help students with phonemic awareness. I think this chapter will help me teach my students phonemic awareness, since I now know all the elements of it.
Phonemic awareness is where my students have many issues also. They seemed confused on if they are using the right tense of the letter sound. I think it would be fun if we combined our groups did a fun kinesthetic lesson with songs and rhyme!
Chapter four is a great reference tool when teaching and improving student’s phonemic awareness. This past week it has been very eye-opening at the different reading levels students are at in the same grade level. I am planning on utilizing many of this chapter’s exercises for my next couple sets of lesson plans. I especially like the segments on tongue twisters and rhymes; I think that my group of students this semester would really enjoy both types of learning strategies. In addition, my group of students are very kinesthetic learners, which is why they would most likely enjoy clapping syllables to the rhymes and tongue twisters. Love the benefits of this chapter!
I agree, this chapter is going to be really helpful! There are so many good activity ideas. I really wasn't expecting a big difference in reading levels either, but it's definitely there.
Chapter four discuss about Phonemic awareness. This chapter is a great review for me. I did have some background knowledge over phonemic awareness from Reading and Language Arts methods, SLP courses, and my Linguistics class. One of my favorite sections to read in this chapter was over Phonemic Awareness and English Learners. Within the section it mentioned that Chinese phrases are difficult to pronounce because they have phonemes that are not part of the English language. I know someone that speaks Chinese and she has tried teaching me a few words and it just amazes me how they can speak. Also within the section I liked how they had several charts to show the differences and similarities between the languages. Using charts is such a great way to show information. Within the text it was said that phonemic awareness instruction is an educational hazard. This is because individual sounds within words are impossible because sounds are combined. I have never really thought about this. But, in my opinion, Smith is right. I also do think phonemic awareness should be taught too. I loved how chapter discussed the importance of songs, nursery rhymes, and poems, jingles, and tongue twisters. These are all important ways to teach language. It is fun for the children and adults, therefore the children will learn. Also the children of course will repeat these over and over to impress others. I also like how the chapter gave special attention to Dr. Seuss. I know some do not like his books since many words are made up. Even though this may be the case, it still does help the development of a language, just in a fun way. This was a fun chapter to read. I really liked how they suggested actives. My question is shouldn’t students that are ELL receive SLP services for phonemic awareness?
Dr. Seuss books are a great to develop language, especially in younger children. I like the made up words he used, because it is similar to our DIBELS No-Nonsense Words. The children have to use the knowledge that they have to sound out the words, as they are sometimes not real words. A good tool for teachers to use when working with phonemic awareness!
I also agree that Dr. Seuss are a great way for language development to occur and make it seem fun rather than a chore for children. Language should be something natural, and when Dr. Seuss is silly in his books, I think it connects with a child's instinct to be playful and they want to learn what the words are all about.
Chapter four was over Phonemic Awareness. Phonemic Awareness was defined from our text as "the understanding that speech is composed of identified units, such as, spoken words, syllables, and sounds". I think it was very helpful learning more in depth about what phonemic awareness was. I did learn a lot about phonemic awareness last semester in reading and language arts methods course but this text had a lot of useful information that will be very helpful for later use when we classrooms of our own. This information can also help us with our tutoring sessions depending on what age level you are tutoring. I really enjoyed reading about the ELL students. This will be great information to have because of the growing number of diversity in schools today. I also enjoyed reading about different activities to use to introduce sounds to your students. Learning phonemic awareness is definitely beneficial for us as future educators because it is such an important concept when it comes to reading. Without phonemic awareness it makes it very hard to be able to even read. I would say this is a major key factor in reading. This chapter was very informative and provided a lot of resources for future use.
I think that the activities and the intervention activities were all fantastic. I also learned a lot from the Reading / Language Arts Methods course, but there's something about this book that makes things seem so much more simple and clear. These activities will definitely come to be useful with tutoring, even if it's not one of the areas my students are struggling with.
Chapter 5 deals with one of the "Big Five", when dealing with Reading and Language Arts (phonemic awareness). The chapter starts off with the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. This was interesting to read, as I had not really ever broke down PA down like that. For me it makes teaching PA a little easier, as I understand what students need to learn from this area of the Big Five.
The author also talks about phonemic awareness, and how to teach the concept to ELL students. I found Figure 4.2 a good picture to examine, as it shows phonemes not found in Spanish. This helps teachers to know what phonemes students that speak Spanish might need help with. A good tool for any good teacher!
I appreciated the song, nursery rhyme, and poem examples given by the author. These are all ways to incorporate learning in a fun but educational manner. Children are more likely to remember facts and information when it is given that way as well!
Chapter 4 was centered around phonemic awareness. One of the most interesting parts of this chapter was the figure on page 81 that illustrated what phonemes were present in English that were not in other languages - it really is an eye-opener on how difficult and complex the English language is and have empathy for ELL students. I thought the figure on page 83 also helped tie all of the dimensions of phonemic awareness together in to one document that illustrates the tasks that a child must be able to do comfortably.
Furthermore, like other students, I like how this chapter addressed songs, nursery rhymes, and poems, jingles, tongue twisters, etc. Growing up you just think that it is something fun to do and you don't really realize that you are learning how to be language competent - but I think that's how learning should happen!
I was very glad to see the rhymes and songs. I'm amazed at how many children don't know nursery rhymes. I really liked the illustration on page 83 also. I thought it would be very helpful to us.
One of the first things that stood out to me in this chapter was the ability to hear syllables within a word. I could just start to imagine how that would affect someone who had a hearing disability. The words rime and rhyme came up again and I had to refresh my memory on the difference. Rime being the family and rhyme not having the same spelling. Everything about phonemic screams hearing, hearing, and hearing. This would affect hearing disabilities and ELL students. I just thought about children with speech impairments, they could hear the words and sounds correctly but if they said the words or sounds themselves they might not sound correct to them, this would also make reading difficult. I really liked the section on songs, nursery rhymes and poems. This chapter is also packed with activities.
I agree that everything about phonemic awareness screams hearing. I never really put much thought into that, and how it could affect a student with a hearing disability. Just gives us some things to consider when we are teaching.
I also enjoyed the activities with songs, nursery rhymes, and poems. I think these are so important, not only in a classroom setting, but for any child. I babysat for family for almost 2 years and the 5 year old couldn't tell me one nursery rhyme or sing any of the songs I remember singing when I was growing up. It makes me wonder what kind of problems he (and his two younger brothers) may encounter in the first few years of elementary school.
There was a lot of good information available in this chapter when it comes to English language learners. It was interesting to read that when working with a native Spanish speaker, when teaching the phonemes you want to focus on the ones that are common in English and Spanish. I would have just figured you would focus on the things that have yet to be discussed. Figures 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4 were helpful. They gave me a lot of insight on what other native language speakers are familiar with and unfamiliar with in comparison to the English language.
I was surprised to see how much of a discrepancy there is between different experts when it comes to phonemic awareness. I believe that everyone would agree that phonemic awareness is important in speaking or reading or writing; however, I didn’t ever take into account how others see it.
Towards the end of this chapter there were several ideas as to how phonemic awareness can be incorporated through different activities. I remember the jump roping jingles my friends and I would sing when we were younger. I even remember seeing a group of my third grade students last semester (from internship) doing some of these during recess.
This chapter was so helpful! All of the activities were great and had me thinking of all sorts of ideas I can use for my tutoring students. I think it is so important to make language fun. There are so many easy ways to do it. I personally like using songs and poetry. I am on the phonemic awareness bandwagon, even though some people disagree with it. I think it's helpful to all students to understand that words are made up of different parts that have distinct sounds.
A lot of the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness cover what I am assessing my kindergarten students on. It is so interesting to see how it actually works with real students. The information we read is good, but actually experiencing it can't be matched in any other way. The section on phonemes was especially helpful to me. I have three ELL students in my group and it is beneficial to know what phonemes we have in English that they don't have in Spanish and which phonemes they already knew. This chapter is definitely going to be useful to me in the future.
Kyleigh, I see that you are tutoring kindergarteners. The little ones are a lot of fun in my opinion. I was speaking to our kindergarten teacher the other day and she shared a phonemic awareness activity that might come in handy for you. She laminated lily pads with phonograms on them. She has the children use little plastic frogs that you push to make hop onto the lily pads. They have to say it correctly in order to proceed "through the pond". She says the kids love this game.
Phonemic awareness is so important for us to learn how to teach because it is a building block of reading. I like the section on nursery rhymes and poems. I have recited so many of these over the past five years I am surprised I have not sprouted goose feathers. Seriously though, I have used these with my own daughter since birth. She was speaking in full sentences well before she was two, and is now reading. She is also the model student in her class. I can say with certainty that rhymes work. I also liked the section on phonemic awareness and English learners. It is important to keep in mind how difficult it can be to learn a new language with different phonemes. When I was learning to speak Spanish amongst native speakers, one of the hardest parts was separating their words and pronouncing their phonemes.
After reading this chapter, I learned to that phonemic awareness is the basis of reading skills for children. Nursery rhymes are a great way to introduce children to reading building skills. So fun, to be reminded of these great rhyming tools to use for our students.
Chapter 4 discusses phonemic awareness. While we touched on many of these things in reading and language arts last semester, this chapter went more in depth and taught me quite a few things that I didn’t know before. I especially liked the section “What Teachers Should Know about Phonemic Awareness.” Teaching phonemic awareness is definitely an area of opportunity for me since I have the most experience working with fourth and fifth grade. This section gave me a great overview of what role phonemic awareness plays in reading instruction and also things to consider as an educator. I also liked the many activities under “introducing Children to the Wonderful Sounds of our Language.” There were many nursery rhymes, poems, jingles, and even Dr. Seuss references that look like a fun way to teach phonemic awareness. I may try to incorporate these or similar activities into my future lesson plans. Lastly, I will definitely be taking advantage of many of the intervention strategies and activities listed in the last part of the lesson. I like how they are organized by grade level and many are in game form. Even if this is not my overall content focus I can see using some of these activities to further build skills my students already have. Overall, this chapter was filled with a lot of great information and activities I see myself using now and in the future.
Thanks for sharing your own personal experience with phonemic awareness and nursery rhymes. Reading to young children provides them with some many advantages when they begin to learn and read themselves. Your daughter seems to already be benefiting and I'm sure will continue to benefit in the future.
After reading Chapter 4 covering the topic of phonemic awareness, I had a deeper understanding of what that means. Phonemic awareness means a child's understanding and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds. The book also defines it as meaning the ability to generate and recognize rhyming words, to count syllables, to separate the beginning of the word from its ending, and to identify the phonemes in a word. What stayed with me after reading the chapter is that phonemic awareness is aural and oral, while phonics focuses on written letters and the aural process. This chapter was full of information including activities for interventions, which I really liked and am sure I will reference in the future!
Phonemic awareness is a broad unit that encompasses many different topics. Chapter 4 does a great job of chunking together the important parts of phonemic awareness. This chapter offered many helpful hints on phonemic assessment. I appreciated the pages dedicated to nursery rhymes and poems and the importance they play in phonemic awareness. I feel that education techniques are getting away from songs and nursery rhymes due to the lack of time. The best part of the chapter was the intervention strategies and activities. I have witnessed many teachers using many of the activities listed in the text. This chapter will be a great resource with tutoring this semester as well as in the future in my classroom!
Chapter 4 is about phonemic awareness, I am thankful that I was placed in a Kindergarten classroom last semester for my internship that dealt a great deal with phonemic awareness. Our books definition of phonemic awareness is “a child’s understanding, and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds.” To me this is the understanding of our alphabet that the several different sounds that go along with them. Reflecting back to my internship I can recall my mentor teacher working with her students on syllables and understanding how to say a world slowly as well as clap to place the syllables. By the time I left in December there were still some students struggling with certain words and detecting syllables. Thinking about the difficulty these students had it brings me to the topic of ESLO students and learning the English language. I cannot imagine being in a school where no one speaks my language then being asked to not only speak their language but understand it as well. I am grateful for our educators who take pride in teaching ESLO students. Phonemic awareness is the first building step to reading and comprehending what you are reading. With this being said phonemic awareness is extremely important for a young student to learn to help them being their own education.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite sections of this chapter is located on pg. 84 & 85 it songs related to different language activities. As I child I can recall many activities we did to song that have stuck with me several years later. I believe music is a great way to make learning both fun and effective.
I also interned in kindergarten last semester! It was amazing to see the growth that each student made throughout the semester as far as phonemic awareness goes. I really enjoyed seeing the different activities that my mentor teacher did and reading about new ones in this chapter!
DeleteI also enjoyed the songs that were provided. I think they will be extremely helpful to students who are struggling. I think it would be very hard to be a student in a class where I didn't understand or speak the language. Those children are no different they just need extra help with the language barrier.
DeleteI also found that the sounds on page 84 and 85 will be very helpful in the future to use. I know that from my previous experience that songs help me remember things. This is why I feel that movement and singing are important to integrate in with your lessons.
DeleteChapter four discussed the very important topic of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds. I was placed in kindergarten last semester for R/La internship with the most amazing mentor teacher. She always made sure I knew what she was doing and the reason she was doing it and at the age a lot of it consisted of phonemic awareness. She also let me sit in with her while she was doing assessments on the students and I got to see the progress and growth that some of the students made during the 16 weeks that I was there. I really liked how the text broke down the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. I feel like if you didn't understand what it consisted of before reading this chapter, you should definitely get it now! I also really enjoyed reading through all of the songs, rhymes, and activities that the author gave us to go off of. It is very helpful and I can't wait to apply them in my own classroom!
ReplyDeleteI would think that many kindergarteners would have outstanding progress over an amount of time. They are so amazing sometimes in what they internalize! I think the activities provided by the author will help as we enter our tutoring. Would you have ever thought about using jumping rope jingles?
Delete1. Analysis of reading/issue.
ReplyDeleteChapter 4 includes discussion on phonemic awareness. There is discussion about the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. I enjoyed reading about phonemic awareness and ELLs because they are going to need the most help because some phonemes aren’t present in their native language. I thought the figures on pages 80-1 were highly informative because I never realized how many phonemes weren’t in the Spanish language. The author also discussed whether phonemic awareness mastery is necessary to become a proficient reader. It’s not necessary, but it’s a skill that should continue to build as the reader practices their reading. I found the intervention games at the end of the chapter to be helpful and interesting to get the ideas to the students.
2. Questions/contradictions about the reading/issues.
I don’t have any questions or contradictions for this chapter.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently?
This allowed me to see phonemic awareness in a different light when it comes to ELLs because I didn’t realize the number of phonemes missing from other languages. I also found it interesting in how to use the different types of getting the language across to the students. Using songs, poems, jump rope jingles, etc. will help them learn the different sounds and how to move their tongues and mouths.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience.
I remember jumping rope and saying the jingles when I was in elementary school, but I didn’t realize how much it was helping me learn the language. I would have never thought of using them to help students.
Katie - I agree with your statement about phonemic awareness and the importance it has on students who are ELL. I can remember in High School taking Spanish and never really understanding the language. I am now wishing I would have taken more Spanish to better myself as an educator.
DeleteKatie W - I really liked the figures on page 80 and 81 as well. It was kind of an eye opener on how different other languages are. I can't imagine being an ELL student. It kept discussing that its best to start with the words that have common placement of phonemes. I think this makes complete sense and this information will be very helpful.
DeleteChapter four discusses phonemic awareness, its seven dimensions, phonemic awareness and ELL students, other languages and phonemic awareness, and some activities that help introduce sounds to children. I really liked the section on the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness because it really cleared up a lot of questions I had. For instance, I always get rime and rhyme confused and this chapter distinguished the difference nicely. My favorite part of his chapter was the section on ELL students. The part that shocked me this most was that ELL students must learn to produce the 44 most common phonemes in order to become fluent in the English language. This wouldn’t be so hard if the ELL student was young but if you get an ELL student in 4th or 5th grade this would be very challenging. Since the Spanish language only has 24 phonemes I can understand why Spanish native speakers have the hardest time. The tables on pages 80 and 81 are very helpful. I feel like I will refer back to this page in the future. I also thought the checklist they had on page 83 for the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness was helpful. I really enjoyed learning the vowel code rap in Reading and Language Arts because I never learned anything like that when I was in school, or at least I don’t remember. The ending part of the chapter has songs, nursery rhymes, poems, riddles, jokes, and many more great resources to use in my future classroom.
ReplyDeleteIt’s funny that you mentioned rime and rhyme; honestly I just recently learned that there was difference. I’m not for sure how I missed that valuable information in all of my studies but I’m glad that I know it now. You exactly right, I couldn’t imagine being an ELL student, and finding out that this new language has almost twice as many phonemes as my original language. This would be a huge feet for them, because most of these sounds they have never heard or used in their native language. I love the vowel code rap, and I have practice it a hundred times, but for some reason I am having the hardest time memorizing it. I think it is because I have never learned the sounds of the vowels like that. I remember learning them, but it wasn’t half as fun. I am going to work on a lot this semester, because I really do want to teach it to my tutoring group this semester (especially if I find that this is an area that needs focused on). I think you picked out about all the same areas of the chapter that I did, I guess we can see the important topics for this chapter. (lol)
DeleteAndrea- I could not imagine how difficult it must be for an ELL learner to learn the new phonemes. Learning early could be to their advantage. I remember taking beginning Spanish classes in high school and I found it difficult to ignore the English sounds I knew to begin learning the Spanish sounds. Up until this class, I was not aware of what a rime was. I thought all words that had the same ending sound were just called rhymes!
DeleteAndrea- I also thought it was nice that they distinguished between the rime and rhyme, I never knew they was a difference or that there was a rime before this class and this chapter. I could not imagine being a student that is ELL and try to learn all the different phonics, it was hard enough for me to in R&LA and English is my first language.
DeleteChapter 4 discussed phonemic awareness, how it correlates for English Learners, and the controversy over how to teach it, how to introduce children to it, assessments for it and a list of many activities do to teach it. Phonemic awareness is the oral ability to distinguish sounds and syllables with words (pg. 105). There are seven dimension of the phonemic awareness that a student must be able to do to master this skill and be proficient readers. The next section discussed English learners. I didn’t realize that there were only 24 sounds in Spanish verses English’s 44 phonemes. It would make sense why EL students have so much trouble with these sounds, especially if they have never heard of them. This reminds me of my Spanish class in high school and how much easier it seemed than English class. The next topic was over the debate of it and how phonics should be taught. When I was in elementary school I remember the teacher introducing 2-3 phonograms each week and a worksheet that allowed us to practice the new sounds. Once I was in middle and high school the debate took off and I know for a few years the elementary school teachers were not focusing on them. Now as I observe I see the teachers teaching it more than ever, but in a new way tying it closely to other reading skills. It makes sense that it would be essential to reading and writing. I know that I still use it today when sounding out a word from the text or spelling a word. On the other hand I do see the argument; it is so difficult to explain to a young reader the many different ways one letter can sound. It is very confusing to early readers especially when they come across a word that uses a different sound than the one they have previous learned. The next section is over the many fun ways to teach students the sounds of our language. I was excited to see that the Dibels assessment was listed under the assessments it affirms to me that it is a well known, well studied, and used assessment. I feel that learning it will just put me one step above the competition when applying for jobs. The final area is 12 pages packed full of activities that focus on the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. This will be a great resource if I decide that my content focus ends up being phonemic awareness. I don’t have any questions about the reading.
ReplyDelete-Chapter 4 discusses phonemic awareness. There are seven dimensions of phonemic awareness: 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, 4) the ability to distinguish oddity, 5) the ability to blend sounds together orally to make a word, 6) the ability to segment words orally, and 7) the ability to manipulate sounds orally to create new words. I knew that there were smaller skills that made up the big skill of phonemic awareness, and now looking at all of the smaller skills listed out, everything we learned in Reading and Language Arts methods makes even more sense now. It also makes sense as to why we give the tests that we do. There are many strategies out there to introduce sounds to children: songs, nursery rhymes and poems, tongue twisters, and children’s books. I really liked the Intervention section in this chapter. There are some great activities that focus on each individual skill.
ReplyDelete-I do not have any questions at this time.
-This reading made me realize how difficult it can be for ELL’s to learn phonemes because so many of the English phonemes do not exist in Spanish. However, I think this chapter is a great resource for activities to help teach those unfamiliar sounds. It also made me think about how important each of the seven dimensions is. Each skill is necessary to have, some more than others, to help students learn to read and write. Again, the activities section will be very helpful when deciding how to emphasize each dimension.
- I remember jumping rope at recess and singing all those jingles. I also remember poetry helping me with alliteration, rhyme, and rime. Although, at the time in elementary school, I was not aware that those were the correct terms for the skills I had been taught.
Sara,
DeleteI was able to relate a lot of this chapter back to reading and language arts as well. The seven dimensions really broke phonemic awareness down for me. Like you, this chapter also made me see how difficult phonemes can be for ELL's. I guess we sometimes don't think about things like that until we see it on paper. Concepts like phonemic awareness can already be difficult for english speaking students so ELL's have it even more difficult. I guess as educators we will always need to put ourselves in their shoes and how things may or may not make sense to them. Like you said though, the activities section will be very helpful with ELL's struggles. Good post!
Sara- I did not realize how difficult it would be for ELL to learn all the different phonic sounds and blends. This chapter is a great resource for my future classroom with all the examples of songs and jingles.
DeleteI also found it interesting regarding the phonemes. I never realized how many there are and how they are different for many countries. I think this will make us better teachers to our ELL students, and make us more understanding to their struggle.
DeleteCh. 4
ReplyDeleteI haven’t had much experience dealing with phonemic awareness yet so I’m very grateful to have read this chapter. I really liked the part on the dimensions of phonemic awareness. I knew about many of them but I really liked the examples listed for implementing each dimension. As an adult the concept of rhyme and rime can be confusing. I absolutely love the book list in appendix A.7. The books listed will greatly help young children understand the confusing concept of rhyme and rime. Another very informative part of this chapter was all of the songs, nursery rhymes, poems, jingles, tongue twister, and literature recommendations. I plan on using some of the jump rope jingles in tutoring to implement movement and teach rhythm and rhyme. I had many questions about phonemic awareness before reading this chapter but I feel much more knowledgeable about them now. The section on what teachers should know about phonemic awareness was extremely helpful with answering my questions also.
Shannon - It is always so helpful when a text book includes extra resources that we can use. I, too, like the book list as well as the sites that we will be able to utilize in the classroom - and maybe even our tutoring session! I hope you grow to love phonemic awareness. It's so cool to assess a child and be able to see what their need is. It may not be as apparent in some children as it is in others, but there are always little clues and patterns that give us clues about why they are having difficulty with their reading. Best of luck!
DeleteShannon--I completely agree with you. This section of the text was filled with great, useful resources that will definitely come in handy in the near future. I really loved the songs, nursery rhymes, poems, etc. found at the end of the book. I believe students will really enjoy learning/listening to these throughout the classroom!
DeleteI find that everything centered around phonemic awareness confusing and find my head soon spinning in circles around blends, digraphs, etc., etc. Language and reading has so much more depth to it than just opening a book and reading words on a page. I am working with a girl who will be enrolling in Kindergarten next year on building reading skills, which is a task that I do not have experience with so it is as much of a learning experience for me as it is for her. We are only a few months in to the reading program and she is reading simple sentences because of sight words. Teaching a child how to read is amazing and it's important to always encourage children by reading to them when they are younger.
DeleteNicole Schell:
ReplyDelete1. Analysis of the reading/issue: I loved this chapter! I am a big fan of phonemic instruction. I appreciated the various assessment tools this chapter listed. The difference between rime and rhyme was something that I really needed to review. It is something I’ve never had to explain to children, so I’m glad to have examples of each and better understand how to define them. My favorite part of this chapter was the section on sounds of our language. Children really respond to song, rhyme, and rhythm in stories. They seem to learn more quickly when a text is attached to these things. It’s a great way for them to learn about things like alliteration or onomatopoeias and have fun at the same time. They quickly learn how to spot these things and use them to play with and manipulate sounds or words. I feel like it’s all about making them aware of sounds and how they come together to form words. If they can have fun with it, they are more apt to learn quickly and retain that information.
2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue: There does seem to be some debate about the best way to approach phonemic awareness. I've seen it in the schools, too. For me, it all boils down to what the child needs. Some students may not need the intensive instruction, but there are those that I feel really DO. It would be a shame to fight over which is best while there is a struggling reader in need of help. If one way or one method doesn't work, try something else. It's like with anything else in education...there is no ONE thing that works for everyone. We all learn differently, so the instruction should fit the child.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently? I have seen some kids who were able to receive only minimal phonemic assistance and get back on track, while others were in desperate need of real intensive instruction. Some kids either didn't receive the instruction at the school they first attended, and others simply had not mastered the concepts and strategies needed to be on grade level. When you test these kids, there are usually some things that come to light that really focus in on what they need to work on. The part that made me look at phonemic awareness differently was the section on ELLs. While I have some experience with Spanish & was aware of the differences in vowels, I have never considered the phonogram differences. This section was especially helpful to me and allowed me to realize the difficulties ELL students might have. I will be better equipped to evaluate students who are not English speakers and know how to approach their needs.
Nicole, once again you gave such a thorough description of the chapter... I have learned so much reading this book and feel it is directly applicable to our current tutoring and future teaching careers. Phonemic awareness was something that I thought was the same thing as Phonics but after reading this chapter I am now able to understand the difference in the two terms. My favorite part was the assessment tools and resouces the chapter gave. I am able to use to use some of these techniques with a student I am currently working with in my job as a Para. Interesting how reading this chapter connects the dots for me as a future teacher of reading skills.
DeleteIn chapter four the text discusses how important phonemic awareness is for students to understand and what role teachers have on students. Until I took Reading & Language Arts Methods I did not ever member learning much on phonics. Obviously I learned different sounds to read, but I cannot remember much enfaces on phonemic awareness. I realize how important it is that children learn to recognize how different letter combinations can have different sounds and relationships, and if I would have learned about phonics the first time around in school I may have benefited from it.
ReplyDeleteTeachers are not the only people that have a major impact on the child’s understanding of phonics. Parents and caregivers have a major role when it comes to children developing their phonics skills. Also if the child has any hearing difficulties or speech impediments, these will affect the way a child can understand and or speak.
When you say learning phonics before are you referring to your own education or thus far in your major? I remember learning all sorts of phonics in kindergarten... especially with the letter people. Each day we learned a new letter we would learn the sound (or sounds) the letter made, and eventually after all the letters were covered we took that further.
DeleteI completely agree with you that parents / guardians / caregivers play a huge role in a child's phonemic awareness development. It's interesting how much you can tell from a parent involvement aspect in this from just babysitting... It can also be incredibly sad, for example, when a 5 year old can't recite a single nursery rhyme. I wish ALL parents realized they play a part in their child's development, not just the teachers.
1. Analysis of the reading/issue.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter helped me to understand more about phonemic awareness. I now completely understand that it is all about sounds, spoken words, and syllables. Students need to develop a way to understand the sounds that they hear and speak. One thing that was brought up in prior reading was rime, it was good to reread about it. Students need to learn the difference in rime and rhyme. The difference is rime has the same letters at the end of a word and rhyme has the same sound, but not the same letters. The text also listed six things that children must know. I think these would be goals that a teacher would assess students on throughout the school year. One of the most interesting things that I read in this chapter was about the different languages and how their phonemes are different. After reading that it made it a little more clear as to why children who are not native English speakers.
2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue.
This chapter was very straight forward. I don’t have any questions or issues.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently?
As mentioned above learning about the different phonemes and how they are different for different countries. I can’t imagine trying to start all over in a new school and have to relearn pretty much everything. Now that I think back to high school when I took Spanish we sure did say thing backwards…well it seemed backwards to me.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience.
When I worked in the kindergarten as an aid I remember doing lots of things with rhyming words. Kids were learning “word families” to me I just thought they needed practice, I never realized how much it mattered that they understand what they were doing. After reading this chapter I see how important it is for a child’s foundation. I also saw this to be true when helping them learn to read. If they could understand the /at/ sound then put it with the beginning sound they were able to get the word.
Chapter 4 is about phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding of the alphabet and the letter sounds. For reading I was placed in a 1st grade classroom and got to see first had the students learning the chunks and what sounds they made. My mentor teacher made sure to explain to me the importance of the chunks and why the student were learning what they were learning. The text did a great job in breaking down the dimensions of phonemic awareness. I also found that on pages 84 and 85 to be great resource for future teaching.
ReplyDeleteThere is a surprising amount of supplements and large, poster sized print outs available for new educators and tools that any existing educator can use to build upon or establish existing phonemic awareness instruction. I believe that regardless of the age, it is always a strong suit for any educator to periodically review all elements and "shapes" of the alphabet. Allow older students to experience the differences together amongst ELL and all other students. Perhaps one will find that students are curious and eager to learn more about each other and the way they communicate.
DeleteI thought it was very interesting to see how children break words apart to learn them. It is so cool that you can teach a child the letter sounds and they can easily put them together to make words with more than 1 syllabi.
DeleteChapter 4 focused on the importance of phonemic awareness. An interesting thing about phonemic awareness is that it is often something that is easily forgotten or simply neglected by many young educators. Many times we simply expect children to learn their letters and corresponding sounds/names, yet we must be more aware and do more to assist children of all ages from the very beginning. By properly laying a foundation to guide students, step by step, building that phonemic awareness will not be the difficult, troublesome instructional element that many educators see it as being. I believe this follows suit with ELL students as well. Yes, there are several differences between our two languages, yet, this does not mean that we, as educators, cannot educate ourselves and our students on how to better understand and connect linguistically with all individuals.
ReplyDeleteMegin,
DeleteI agree, sometimes we just expect students to learn their letters and then figure that they know how to blend them together to make words. I took Spanish in high school, and was not very good at it, I could not imagine being and ELL student and having to learn English. English is a difficult language, my roommate is from China, she speaks well, but she said it was hard to learn English.
The definition the book gives for phonemic awareness is “a child’s understanding, and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds.” I have learned about this topic while providing inclsion services in 1st grade classrooms as a Para. I had not heard of this term until Reading and Langugage Arts but now understand it is a seperate term from Phonics. Before reading this chapter I was unsure how to assess a student's knowledge of phonemic awareness but this chapter provided wonderful examples of assessment tools and resources. Students respond positively to songs and rhymes. Students in general seems to learn quickly when learning is attached to song or rhythm. Onomatopoeias are one of my favorite things to teach. Manipulating sounds of words is a fun quick way to engage students in active learning.
ReplyDeletePhonemic awareness is all about making them aware of sounds and how they come together to form words. In my mind learning should be fun and engaging this is one content area where it is easy to integrate movement activities as well as music into lesson planning.
Chapter four is about phonemic awareness which is a child’s understanding and knowledge that speech is a collection of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds. There are seven parts of phonemic awareness: ability to hear syllables within a word, ability to hear initial letter sounds or recognize alliteration, ability to distinguish rime and rhyme, ability to distinguish oddity, ability to blend sounds together orally to make a word, ability to segment words orally, and ability to manipulate sounds orally to create new words. This chapter gives a list of element a student does need to know, and a list that tells how intense explicit phonemic awareness instruction impacts a student. Assessment ideas are given to see where the student’s level of phonemic awareness is at, and also their growth. To get them started in the English language use songs, nursery rhymes and poems, jump rope jingles, tongue twisters, and children’s literature. Throughout the rest of the chapter it gives activities for helping students learn phonemic awareness.
ReplyDeleteI have no questions about this chapter.
This chapter allowed me to look at phonemic awareness in new ways. How to help students learn, one child may learn better by songs, one by learning tongue twisters, each student is different. But this chapter was pretty much a review, a good review though.
I have always loved to read, I know that comes from my mom. She loves to read, go to the library, and she would take us so I became a lover of the library. If I would have read this book last semester I could have used some of these activities to help the students in my internship class learn better. I really don’t have a certain experience to connect this chapter with.
This chapter also gave me new ways to look at phonemic awareness. That is great that your mom influenced reading in such a positive way for you when you were younger. Many students have negative feelings towards reading and some of this is because parents attitudes towards reading.
DeletePhonemic awareness is so important for young children. I know that in my internship some of my children did not correctly learn the sounds of the letters and vowels. I can tell when assessing them that they do not quite get the vowel sounds. After reading this chapter I have seen just how advanced phonemic awareness really is. I love the part of the chapter about songs. It is so important to incorporate music and song into a child's day. The beat and rhythm help the child remember the words and meaning. This book has dozens of activities to help students with phonemic awareness. I think this chapter will help me teach my students phonemic awareness, since I now know all the elements of it.
ReplyDeletePhonemic awareness is where my students have many issues also. They seemed confused on if they are using the right tense of the letter sound. I think it would be fun if we combined our groups did a fun kinesthetic lesson with songs and rhyme!
DeleteChapter four is a great reference tool when teaching and improving student’s phonemic awareness. This past week it has been very eye-opening at the different reading levels students are at in the same grade level. I am planning on utilizing many of this chapter’s exercises for my next couple sets of lesson plans. I especially like the segments on tongue twisters and rhymes; I think that my group of students this semester would really enjoy both types of learning strategies. In addition, my group of students are very kinesthetic learners, which is why they would most likely enjoy clapping syllables to the rhymes and tongue twisters. Love the benefits of this chapter!
ReplyDeleteBrooke,
DeleteI agree, this chapter is going to be really helpful! There are so many good activity ideas. I really wasn't expecting a big difference in reading levels either, but it's definitely there.
Chapter four discuss about Phonemic awareness. This chapter is a great review for me. I did have some background knowledge over phonemic awareness from Reading and Language Arts methods, SLP courses, and my Linguistics class. One of my favorite sections to read in this chapter was over Phonemic Awareness and English Learners. Within the section it mentioned that Chinese phrases are difficult to pronounce because they have phonemes that are not part of the English language. I know someone that speaks Chinese and she has tried teaching me a few words and it just amazes me how they can speak. Also within the section I liked how they had several charts to show the differences and similarities between the languages. Using charts is such a great way to show information. Within the text it was said that phonemic awareness instruction is an educational hazard. This is because individual sounds within words are impossible because sounds are combined. I have never really thought about this. But, in my opinion, Smith is right. I also do think phonemic awareness should be taught too. I loved how chapter discussed the importance of songs, nursery rhymes, and poems, jingles, and tongue twisters. These are all important ways to teach language. It is fun for the children and adults, therefore the children will learn. Also the children of course will repeat these over and over to impress others. I also like how the chapter gave special attention to Dr. Seuss. I know some do not like his books since many words are made up. Even though this may be the case, it still does help the development of a language, just in a fun way. This was a fun chapter to read. I really liked how they suggested actives. My question is shouldn’t students that are ELL receive SLP services for phonemic awareness?
ReplyDeleteDr. Seuss books are a great to develop language, especially in younger children. I like the made up words he used, because it is similar to our DIBELS No-Nonsense Words. The children have to use the knowledge that they have to sound out the words, as they are sometimes not real words. A good tool for teachers to use when working with phonemic awareness!
DeleteMarei and Cody -
DeleteI also agree that Dr. Seuss are a great way for language development to occur and make it seem fun rather than a chore for children. Language should be something natural, and when Dr. Seuss is silly in his books, I think it connects with a child's instinct to be playful and they want to learn what the words are all about.
Chapter four was over Phonemic Awareness. Phonemic Awareness was defined from our text as "the understanding that speech is composed of identified units, such as, spoken words, syllables, and sounds". I think it was very helpful learning more in depth about what phonemic awareness was. I did learn a lot about phonemic awareness last semester in reading and language arts methods course but this text had a lot of useful information that will be very helpful for later use when we classrooms of our own. This information can also help us with our tutoring sessions depending on what age level you are tutoring. I really enjoyed reading about the ELL students. This will be great information to have because of the growing number of diversity in schools today. I also enjoyed reading about different activities to use to introduce sounds to your students. Learning phonemic awareness is definitely beneficial for us as future educators because it is such an important concept when it comes to reading. Without phonemic awareness it makes it very hard to be able to even read. I would say this is a major key factor in reading. This chapter was very informative and provided a lot of resources for future use.
ReplyDeleteI think that the activities and the intervention activities were all fantastic. I also learned a lot from the Reading / Language Arts Methods course, but there's something about this book that makes things seem so much more simple and clear. These activities will definitely come to be useful with tutoring, even if it's not one of the areas my students are struggling with.
DeleteChapter 5 deals with one of the "Big Five", when dealing with Reading and Language Arts (phonemic awareness). The chapter starts off with the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness. This was interesting to read, as I had not really ever broke down PA down like that. For me it makes teaching PA a little easier, as I understand what students need to learn from this area of the Big Five.
ReplyDeleteThe author also talks about phonemic awareness, and how to teach the concept to ELL students. I found Figure 4.2 a good picture to examine, as it shows phonemes not found in Spanish. This helps teachers to know what phonemes students that speak Spanish might need help with. A good tool for any good teacher!
I appreciated the song, nursery rhyme, and poem examples given by the author. These are all ways to incorporate learning in a fun but educational manner. Children are more likely to remember facts and information when it is given that way as well!
This is a good chapter to read!
Chapter 4 was centered around phonemic awareness. One of the most interesting parts of this chapter was the figure on page 81 that illustrated what phonemes were present in English that were not in other languages - it really is an eye-opener on how difficult and complex the English language is and have empathy for ELL students. I thought the figure on page 83 also helped tie all of the dimensions of phonemic awareness together in to one document that illustrates the tasks that a child must be able to do comfortably.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, like other students, I like how this chapter addressed songs, nursery rhymes, and poems, jingles, tongue twisters, etc. Growing up you just think that it is something fun to do and you don't really realize that you are learning how to be language competent - but I think that's how learning should happen!
I was very glad to see the rhymes and songs. I'm amazed at how many children don't know nursery rhymes. I really liked the illustration on page 83 also. I thought it would be very helpful to us.
DeleteOne of the first things that stood out to me in this chapter was the ability to hear syllables within a word. I could just start to imagine how that would affect someone who had a hearing disability. The words rime and rhyme came up again and I had to refresh my memory on the difference. Rime being the family and rhyme not having the same spelling. Everything about phonemic screams hearing, hearing, and hearing. This would affect hearing disabilities and ELL students. I just thought about children with speech impairments, they could hear the words and sounds correctly but if they said the words or sounds themselves they might not sound correct to them, this would also make reading difficult. I really liked the section on songs, nursery rhymes and poems. This chapter is also packed with activities.
ReplyDeleteI agree that everything about phonemic awareness screams hearing. I never really put much thought into that, and how it could affect a student with a hearing disability. Just gives us some things to consider when we are teaching.
DeleteI also enjoyed the activities with songs, nursery rhymes, and poems. I think these are so important, not only in a classroom setting, but for any child. I babysat for family for almost 2 years and the 5 year old couldn't tell me one nursery rhyme or sing any of the songs I remember singing when I was growing up. It makes me wonder what kind of problems he (and his two younger brothers) may encounter in the first few years of elementary school.
There was a lot of good information available in this chapter when it comes to English language learners. It was interesting to read that when working with a native Spanish speaker, when teaching the phonemes you want to focus on the ones that are common in English and Spanish. I would have just figured you would focus on the things that have yet to be discussed. Figures 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4 were helpful. They gave me a lot of insight on what other native language speakers are familiar with and unfamiliar with in comparison to the English language.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to see how much of a discrepancy there is between different experts when it comes to phonemic awareness. I believe that everyone would agree that phonemic awareness is important in speaking or reading or writing; however, I didn’t ever take into account how others see it.
Towards the end of this chapter there were several ideas as to how phonemic awareness can be incorporated through different activities. I remember the jump roping jingles my friends and I would sing when we were younger. I even remember seeing a group of my third grade students last semester (from internship) doing some of these during recess.
This chapter was so helpful! All of the activities were great and had me thinking of all sorts of ideas I can use for my tutoring students. I think it is so important to make language fun. There are so many easy ways to do it. I personally like using songs and poetry. I am on the phonemic awareness bandwagon, even though some people disagree with it. I think it's helpful to all students to understand that words are made up of different parts that have distinct sounds.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the seven dimensions of phonemic awareness cover what I am assessing my kindergarten students on. It is so interesting to see how it actually works with real students. The information we read is good, but actually experiencing it can't be matched in any other way. The section on phonemes was especially helpful to me. I have three ELL students in my group and it is beneficial to know what phonemes we have in English that they don't have in Spanish and which phonemes they already knew. This chapter is definitely going to be useful to me in the future.
Kyleigh, I see that you are tutoring kindergarteners. The little ones are a lot of fun in my opinion. I was speaking to our kindergarten teacher the other day and she shared a phonemic awareness activity that might come in handy for you. She laminated lily pads with phonograms on them. She has the children use little plastic frogs that you push to make hop onto the lily pads. They have to say it correctly in order to proceed "through the pond". She says the kids love this game.
DeletePhonemic awareness is so important for us to learn how to teach because it is a building block of reading. I like the section on nursery rhymes and poems. I have recited so many of these over the past five years I am surprised I have not sprouted goose feathers. Seriously though, I have used these with my own daughter since birth. She was speaking in full sentences well before she was two, and is now reading. She is also the model student in her class. I can say with certainty that rhymes work. I also liked the section on phonemic awareness and English learners. It is important to keep in mind how difficult it can be to learn a new language with different phonemes. When I was learning to speak Spanish amongst native speakers, one of the hardest parts was separating their words and pronouncing their phonemes.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this chapter, I learned to that phonemic awareness is the basis of reading skills for children. Nursery rhymes are a great way to introduce children to reading building skills. So fun, to be reminded of these great rhyming tools to use for our students.
DeleteChapter 4 discusses phonemic awareness. While we touched on many of these things in reading and language arts last semester, this chapter went more in depth and taught me quite a few things that I didn’t know before. I especially liked the section “What Teachers Should Know about Phonemic Awareness.” Teaching phonemic awareness is definitely an area of opportunity for me since I have the most experience working with fourth and fifth grade. This section gave me a great overview of what role phonemic awareness plays in reading instruction and also things to consider as an educator. I also liked the many activities under “introducing Children to the Wonderful Sounds of our Language.” There were many nursery rhymes, poems, jingles, and even Dr. Seuss references that look like a fun way to teach phonemic awareness. I may try to incorporate these or similar activities into my future lesson plans. Lastly, I will definitely be taking advantage of many of the intervention strategies and activities listed in the last part of the lesson. I like how they are organized by grade level and many are in game form. Even if this is not my overall content focus I can see using some of these activities to further build skills my students already have. Overall, this chapter was filled with a lot of great information and activities I see myself using now and in the future.
ReplyDelete@ Elizabeth Adams
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your own personal experience with phonemic awareness and nursery rhymes. Reading to young children provides them with some many advantages when they begin to learn and read themselves. Your daughter seems to already be benefiting and I'm sure will continue to benefit in the future.
After reading Chapter 4 covering the topic of phonemic awareness, I had a deeper understanding of what that means. Phonemic awareness means a child's understanding and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds. The book also defines it as meaning the ability to generate and recognize rhyming words, to count syllables, to separate the beginning of the word from its ending, and to identify the phonemes in a word. What stayed with me after reading the chapter is that phonemic awareness is aural and oral, while phonics focuses on written letters and the aural process. This chapter was full of information including activities for interventions, which I really liked and am sure I will reference in the future!
ReplyDeletePhonemic awareness is a broad unit that encompasses many different topics. Chapter 4 does a great job of chunking together the important parts of phonemic awareness. This chapter offered many helpful hints on phonemic assessment. I appreciated the pages dedicated to nursery rhymes and poems and the importance they play in phonemic awareness. I feel that education techniques are getting away from songs and nursery rhymes due to the lack of time. The best part of the chapter was the intervention strategies and activities. I have witnessed many teachers using many of the activities listed in the text. This chapter will be a great resource with tutoring this semester as well as in the future in my classroom!
ReplyDeleteGreat discussion everyone! Just remember that you get a deduction for last posting!
ReplyDeleteMs. Bergmann