Monday, October 18, 2010

Literacy Blog 2

Before I start to discuss my thoughts on some of the reading so far, I would like to say that all this information would have been very helpful to know about when taking the West E. I wish that we either took this class soon or that we had a longer time to allowed to take the West E. With saying this I hope that instructors will encourage students to read books like Word Identification Strategies to help them prepare for the test. Now that I have that off my mind I will move into my thoughts about the Fox reading.
Word Identification: I have always wondered if the program Hooked on Phonics really worked and what it did for kids. I know my parents purchased the program for my brother and I when we were young however I do not remember much about it. When reading Fox I realized that it is really important to teach Phonics to kids and it seems to me that without realizing it I have used phonics to help kids read through hard words. I just can’t help but wonder if a kid sounds out a word and comes up with a wrong spelling if it will have impact on them later. When a teacher corrects these mistakes will they feel bad about the mistake they made? I look at figure 1.4 and it seems like I have seen it before amongst seconders. When is the right time to show them the correct spelling?
Phonemic Awareness: The last week in September I remember helping several kids with this area. I spent times help them break the words they didn’t know into chunks and sounds to help them figure out how to spell them and read them. Many of the kids now have goals they are working on while reading and several of their goals relate to phonemic awareness. I will be visiting the class on Friday and now that I am more aware of this I would like to talk with my mentor teacher about how she decides what the kids need to work on in this area. I am excited to give some of the activities suggested a try either in my dyad, main placement, or with the kindergartener that I will be seeing some.
I knew that there are many different ways to teach kids how to read and write but I never realized up until now that I have used several of the techniques that have been suggested in this book. However, there were many more ideas that I have not really thought much about and now that I am more aware of them I am excited to try and use them.

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