Word Recognition

As a student teacher in a 1st grade class I know that getting children to recognize the sounds of words is not easy....It is actually really hard. It takes so much practice for children to just know these words. And additionally, the english language often does not make sense, which makes this so much more difficult for children. However, there are numerous ideas that I have found online that will help children learn to recognize these sounds

1. Easter Word Recognition Activity

2.Site Word Bingo

3. Site Word Ideas for First Grade

Here are some of the ideas that I have found! Have you found any good ideas online? Do you have any great ideas that you came up with by yourself?

Letting go of the letter of the week...Wait, what?

The title of this week's reading by Bell and Jarvis was shocking to me! The letter of the week is something that has been used in every young child's classroom I have ever been or heard of, plus is popularly used on children's shows such as Sesame street. How can all these teachers, shows, educational researchers and so forth be wrong about this, I wondered as I began the article.

Bell and Jarvis made an undeniable case for not using the letter, though. First, they recognized, and made me, that it was boring for many children. Unless meaning is associated to these letters children are not going to remember them. I have been taught that this concept is true to learning spelling, and to get children to write, however, I have never considered this an idea to apply to learning the letters (despite it seeming pretty obvious).

This idea of linking children's names to the letters did leave one question lingering in my mind; what if there was a letter that none of the children had in their name such as "Q," how was the teacher suppose to teach that lesson?

I came up with some ideas for how a teacher might teach this nameless letter:
1. Find something that the children enjoyed that had the letter Q in it, and then use that item as Q was taught.
2. Discuss how Q was a letter that is unique in that it is not found alone, and instead is always followed by U when you teach the children U.
3. Q-Q-Question the children about what are some words they know that have Q in them, and let the children each come up with their own Q word.

Here is an idea that I found on pinterest that shows how a teacher relates children's names to the letter of the day:
Mrs. Bremer's Kindergarten: Letter of the Day

Learning the letters is essential for children to do, but this article raises some questions in my mind
about the way we have been teaching this concept.

Now I will leave you with some questions to consider: How do you think it is best to teach this concept? What did you think about the letter of the day when you were in school? How would you teach letters that are not in any of the children's names?

Week 3: Pretending to Read

In Chapter 3 of Classrooms that work the author poses the question, "Did you ever sit down with a
younger child or stuffed animal and pretend that you could read a book?" to readers ( Cunningham & Allington,  2011). This question brought back a rush of memories for me, since I did this often to say the least. Interestingly enough, some of the oldest the memories I can recall are of me having a tea parties for my dolls, and at these I would almost always read a book. I want to say that I was about 3 for the first one that I can remember, which occurred on a blanket in the living room as my mom was watching her soaps. Little did I know at the time though, but as I was doing this I was building a foundation for literacy that would help me to become such an avid reader. There are many different and interesting stages to reading that I learned about in the is chapter that children go through, and the one that I just told a story about is the first of them, known as:

• Pretend Reading: (Ages: 3-4) Children are eager to learn to read, know that the content had to sound a certain way and make sense. This is an "indicator of future reading success," according to the authors ( Cunningham & Allington,  2011).

If you would like to read more about early child literacy you can pick up Classrooms that Work at your local bookstore or online.

Week 2: Class Characteristics and Helping Boys Like Books

     In the first chapter of Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read and Write the authors explain  commonalities that were observed between educators of classrooms that had unusually high achievement rates. One of those that I found to be thought provoking was that "meaning was central and teachers emphasized higher-level thinking skills." I have found that understanding the meaning of what I am doing really affects the amount of effort I put into it. For example if I consider an assignment to be busy work, then I do not work as hard on it. For this reason it does not surprise me that classes of children do better when they give meaning to what they are learning.







       In the second chapter of this book I read another interesting piece of information about how a child's gender related to the children's interest in reading. It is so sad that boys often believe that real men do not, but not very surprising. I believe that in general fathers should start taking a more active role in helping to develop their children's literacy skills. Additionally, I appreciated how the writers added a story about how a school gave children male role models. The school in this situation was really taking initiative to help the children gain an interest in reading, and to get the community involved in the school.  As well as that I  found the story about a teacher who had an epiphany while reading Charlotte's Web enlightening. I have always considered that to be a story that everyone enjoys, and I wonder how many other books I might consider to be gender neutral may not actually be that way.