Phonemic Awareness 101




I do. We do. You do.

Effective phonemic awareness instruction teaches children to notice, think about, and work with sounds. You may use many activities to build phonemic awareness. Here is an example of each:

Phoneme Isolation:
Children recognize individual sounds in a word.
Teacher ~ What is the first sound in "wig"?
Student ~ The first sound in wig is /w/.


Phoneme Identity:
Children recognize the same sounds in different words.
Teacher ~ What sound is the same in "dog, dip, and den"?
Student ~ The first sound, /d/, is the same.

Phoneme Categorization:
Children recognize the word in a set of three or four words that has the "odd" sound.
Teacher ~ Which word doesn't belong: "hen, hat, rug".
Student ~ Rug does not belong. It doesn't begin with /h/.


Phoneme Blending:
Children listen to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes, and then combine the phonemes to form a word. Then they write and read the word.
Teacher ~ What word is /b/ /e/ /d/?
Student ~ /b/ /e/ /d/ is bed.
Teacher ~ Now let's write the sounds bed: /b/, write b; /e/, write e; /d/, write d.
Teacher ~ Writes the word on the board. Now we're going to read the word bed.

Phoneme Segmentation:
Children break a word into its separate sounds, saying each sound as the tap out or count it.
Then they write and read the word.
Teacher ~ How many sounds are in "frog"?
Student ~ /f/ /r/ /o/ /g/. Four sounds.


Phoneme Deletion
Children recognize the word that remains when a phoneme is removed from another word.
Teacher ~ What is "smile" without the /s/?
Student ~ Smile without the /s/ is mile.


Phoneme Addition
Children make a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word.
Teacher ~ What word do you have if you add /s/ to the beginning of "park"?
Student ~ Spark.

Phoneme Substitution
Children substitue one phoneme for another to make a new word.
Teacher ~ The word is "bug". Change /g/ to /n/. What's the new word?
Student ~ Bun.

Resource ~ Put Reading First...The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read

Pre-read Your Read Alouds

Pre-reading the books you choose for read alouds is very important.  Check out this video for helpful information.

Pout Pout Fish

This Pout-Pout Fish Song is so cute.  We are challenged to incorporate media into instruction.  Using this type of media gives  read aloud and media opportunity all in one.  Remember that we can't  use youtube directly so you'd need to download and then use.  http://youtu.be/Lron1wlXfxU

While perusing the internet, I came across this site: http://www.esiponline.org/classroom/foundations/reading/readalouds.html
It has some great information on the value of read alouds. I think it is worth reading.

Inspiration

Making a Difference

Tears are puddling in my eyes as I attempt to compose this post.  Yesterday I had one of those priceless moments as a teacher.  My friend Debbie Maranto was there to witness it.  After the CCSS training meeting, I noticed a young teacher pass by and said, "I taught her" (or her twin sister)  I scurried out to speak to her. I asked her what her name was and told her who I was.  She began to cry and said, "Oh my God it is you!  You are the reason I became a teacher!" She began to recount memories from her kindergarten year with me and explained what an impact I had on her life.  Little did I know that 30 years later I would have the blessing of hearing that.

Teachers, I share that with you because we do hope that we are making a difference in what we do for students. We plant the seeds of hope, promise and potential. You are making a difference!

p.s. She is going to be teaching at SGE with me this next school year!  God is good!

Common Core Humor

http://youtu.be/BwND8J2SvGE  Check out this Lady Gaga Parody!

Common Core State Standards

We must focus on having our students dive deeper into the text.

Common Core State Standards

Today was the first day of the CCSS training for first grade teachers.  I got to see S. G. first grade team.  We have a new member of the team and Ms. Basco looked very happy.  I am very confident that this great team will lead the way as we transition into the Common Core State Standards at our school.
During the training we were reminded of Dr. Anita Archer's website: http://explicitinstruction.org  Check this out for valuable information.  There is a link to her instructional videos.  As we strive to teach our students how to retell about inforation text, we will find her retell video very helpful.

Our Readers' Cafe

To celebrate the funding of my job for the 2012-2013 school year, I am launching this new blog.  Many of my teacher friends have asked for this... sooooo here goes!

My objectives for this blog are:
To provide professional development for my fellow reading teachers
To provide a forum for sharing of ideas to help students in their journey to become lifelong readers
To provide encouragement for my teacher friends

My personal goals in this blogs development are:
To redeliver material from my trainings
To provide visual examples of the how to of reading
To make weekly posts
To showcase teachers who are making a difference in students lives
To use other's input in making this blog useful and practical
To find humor in our lives