The Wonderful World of Phonics

Fox Chapter 1:
Last Friday I was at my main placement where I had a chance to closely observe first graders writing and drawing for an alphabet book they are making for their class. While they were writing many of them did not know how to spell certain words such as long, queen, and butterfly. Many of them immediately asked for either my help or my master teacher but we had encouraged to try their best and not to worry about the spelling for now. Many of the students used the synthetic approach or "sounding out" each letter. For example for the word long, the student had a hard time trying to figure out the “ng” sound but were able to tell by just sounding it out that it started with an l followed by an o. She is a wiz kid so she did figure out that –ing make the “-ing” sound that possibly the spelling was “loing.” Another student was trying to figure out the word thin. He knew that it ended with the letter –in as he figured that it rhymed with fin and tin but was not sure about the “th” sound. Due to the analogy-based instruction he was about to recognize that the word was in the –in family and just needed to come up with the first part which he had problems with.

During my September Experience I had the opportunity to see my master teacher take the analytic approach where the students already knew the words but had to break them into parts. She would sit with group of five students and would start of with simple sight words that they should have known such as rat, chat, and ended in the week with story words such as happy or play a game before each reading block and practice phonics on the students’ names.

My master teacher has taught the analytic way, encourages the synthetic approach, and began the school year with teaching word families and moving onto a new family every three days or so, or when she feels that the students are ready. Depending on the student, and if they are writing or reading, some use the analogy-based method where they recognize the word family and work off of that, where many of them are still using the explicit method.

Fox Chapter 2:
This coming Friday I will be visiting my main placement to read to class "Good Night Owl" by Pat Hutchins. I had chosen this book to read with the help of my master teacher as the class is learning about nocturnal animals in science class. Attached is a video of the book being read. Although I have not read this book in front of the class yet, after listening to the reader from the Youtube video I conclude that with the numerous amount of onomatopeias, will help promote sound awareness. Children do like make up words but I have also noticed that they like animals sounds as well. As for this story, I could use the "Roll Call" or "Secret Name" activity when chosing children to answer the questions, for example "If your secret name is Dim (Jim) please answer the following question. Although it might not be a complement to the book, it could be an interesting way of calling their names.



Fox Chapter 3:
After reading chapter 3 I can conclude that "invented spelling" helps young readers not only reading but with expressing who they are. Last week was teacher parent conference and one of the parents asked my master teacher "what should I do when my daughter asks me how to spell a word? Should I tell her to sound it out or should I spell it for her?" My master teacher stated that it was important for her students to sound it out as that is what we do in the classroom. Sometimes it takes trial and error for a student to recognize if they are spelling a word or saying a workd incorrectly. It also helps students focus on the content of what they are writing as opposed to stressing on the if they are spelling a word right.