Exploration 2

As part of our course, we have explorations that we do, to understand terms and how they appear in classrooms. This is my exploration 2, showing their phonemic awareness skills.

Phonological Awareness
Most of the students are very good with phonological awareness. Many of them read aloud when doing any sort of reading, because that way they are able to sound out words aloud which is easiest for them. When they are reading, they are very good about sounding out words and they are very aware of the sounds that go along with each word. This is very apparent during their word study. They must sort the words twice and then state them out loud. When they are doing this, they sound out each part when they aren’t quite sure of what the word actually says. I have spent time reading with the students before and they really do understand the sounds that go along with words. I spent some time reading a book called “Adventures in Cartooning” with one of the students who is one of the better readers in the class and many of the words were difficult for him to read, however, the book was one he had a lot of interest in. He asked me to help him with some of the words that he didn’t know, and what I did was have him sound out the parts. He was able to sound out every part of the words and could figure out what the word said almost every time. However, there are some students who still have a difficult time with this. One student is able to sound the words out, but he cannot put the sounds together to form a word.  Mrs. G tries to spend extra time with him, helping him with this, because he has a very difficult time reading since he can’t sound the words out to figure out what it says.

Alphabet Knowledge

The students are all pretty good with alphabet knowledge. They are able to recognize words by the sounds that they hear. Also, when they are trying to spell a word, they are able to sound out what the word should sound like, which makes it so they know what letter goes along with the sounds. They have not really learned much about vowels yet, they know what vowels are but they haven’t learned their sounds or how to produce them yet. Mrs. G says that they will begin working on this soon. When they try to figure out how to spell something, Mrs. G has them sound it out and asks them what letters make those sounds. With the exception of the vowels, they usually get the word right. Also, the students have handwriting notebooks that they write in to help them with their writing of letters. The students all know all of their letters, but sometimes when they write them they write them a backwards. The notebooks show them how to write them, have them trace the letters, then have them write them on their own. Also, the students all have the alphabet written in their nametags and also on their reading workshop folders.

Letter Recognition

The students are all very good at letter recognition. This is the only topic that all the students really understand. It is clear that the students know this when they are writing, reading and doing their word sorts. They are very good about knowing the sounds that go along with the letters, even if sometimes they have a hard time putting the sounds together to form a word. When the students see a letter, or are trying to write one, they are very good about saying the sound out loud to associate it with the letter. They also do this when they are doing their word sorts. Many times, Mrs. G and the para-educator, Mrs. H, go around and have the students sound out their word sort words and the words that they are writing. The difference between this and the alphabet recognition skills is that the students are all able to recognize specific letters and the sounds that go along with them, but they are not all able to put those letters and sounds into words.

 Phonemic Awareness/Alphabetic Principle (Beginning Sounds)

The students have been spending a lot of time working on beginning sounds. Many of the students are doing word sorts that have to do with the beginning sounds and diagraphs. The students are learning the words by learning the beginning sounds. They are very good with the sounds and once they start to sound it out, or once someone starts to make the sound for them, they can almost always figure out the word. Also, the computer program they use, called starfall helps with their beginning sounds. It emphasizes the beginning sounds of words as they go through the alphabet, giving numerous words for every letter, to help them associate the sounds with the letters.

 Concept of Word

Mrs. G spends a lot of time working on words and their meanings out of context. She has them do word lists every week to test to see which ones they have picked up on and which ones are still difficult for them. She also gives them flashcards to practice these words on throughout the week. The website starfall also helps with concept of word a lot. One of the big things that starfall has the students do is sequence words into sentences after reading them the sentence, or just giving them the words. The students have to figure out how the words can go together and put them back into order, just given a list of them. They all seem to do very good with this topic as well. They have difficulty with some of the sight words, but they tend to do very well with the sequencing on starfall. I have noticed that the activities that they do using starfall actually help them to do a lot better, I’m not sure why, but it definitely is a trend that they do better with starfall.

 Concept Knowledge

The students work on concept knowledge with their word sorts. Many of them are doing beginning sound and diagraph word sorts, which give a sound and then only have pictures that correlate. They must figure out all of the pictures and put them in the correct category, under whichever beginning sound it has. They are categorizing by similar sounds and they are able to group them pretty well. Some students are at a different stage, so they use pictures in a little bit of a different way. Some are sorting by different vowel word families, so they have a card with a word on it, then have to match it up with the corresponding picture. They are still categorizing them, but it is more like matching than actually using the pictures to make the categories. The students have a more difficult time with these when they first get them, and it takes them longer to sort, but by the end of the week they are very good with sorting them and understanding where each picture is supposed to go.

Ganske’s Word Journey’s Connections to this Exploration

Page 79 – “Picture sorting is most appropriate for students at the emergent, letter name, and early within word pattern stages” – the first graders are still getting introduced to many of these phonological awareness ideas and they are at the beginning stages of them. Mrs. G tries to give them pictures a lot, which makes sense because that is what they can understand best.

 Page 83 – There is a chart showing possible rotations for groups which looks a lot like a chart that Mrs. G has in her room to show the students where they are supposed to be during reading workshop time.

 Page 117 – These sorts look very much like the sorts that the students are doing. I realize that probably all sorts look similar, but looking at these, it reminds me of the first graders sorts, which is really the foundation for their learning of phonological awareness.

 

Since the students are still learning the basics of these skills, not a lot of the things in Word Journey’s relates, but I can see where a lot could relate later on.