June 14th Readings

One thing that stood out to me in the article, Supporting phonemic awareness development in the classroom was the chart on page 131. I have always been confused by the terms, "phoetics," "phonics," "phoneme" and "phonemic awareness." This chart not only gave the definitions of these easily confused words but also examples. After reading this chart, I feel like I have a better grasp on these concepts. Another part of the article I found extremely helpful was the phonemic awareness instruction. I have learned about the importance of phonemic awareness but I've never really gotten a good understanding of how to incorporate phonemic awareness into the classroom. As we learned last week in class with fluency, fluency cannot be the entire language arts curriculum, it must be integrated into the literacy program. This article stresses the importance of phonemic awareness must be only part of the literacy program because many times phonemic activities will not be useful, unless it is placed in the context of actual readings.  This article pushed my thinking to realize not only is phonemic awareness important in the classroom but how to present it as well.

I enjoyed reading the article, What can I say besides "sound it out?" Coaching word recognition in beginning reading. I liked how the author referred to reading as a "powerful interaction with teachers." I don't believe all teachers or adults share this belief. Recently, I have seen teachers to expect the teachers to do all of the teaching, and the children to do all of the learning. I believe if teachers view reading more as an interaction then they will have more confident readers in their classroom. While reading through the different scenarios, the author states, "to coach successfully, one must... have specific knowledge of students' word recognition abilities" (p. 445). This statement reiterates the importance of getting to know your students. I always wished my teachers would've spent a little extra time getting to know me as a learner and what helped me learn. This article is tied in with the first one because for a teacher to effectively coach, the children must have understanding of phonic elements.

In chapter 5 of the book, while the author is explaining the "Making Words" activity, she explains that this activity is a type of instruction called, guided discovery. Guided discovery is the thought that, "in order to truly learn and retain strategies, children must discover them." I never thought of reading this way. The author also states that because not all children will discover words easily on their own, the teacher will need to guide their students to making these discoveries. A teacher could use the tips about coaching that were given in the article, What can I say besides "sound it out?" Coaching word recognition in beginning reading, to help their students make word discoveries. I also enjoyed the part of the chapter labeled, Modeling how to decode big words. I've always learned better when things were modeled for me, and this part of the book lays out a conversation the teacher can have with their students while modeling how to decode a word. I believe the language this example uses gives children the language they need for their private speech or thinking. I've always struggled with sounding words out and this chapter has explained to me that I was never fully equipped with the tools and the phonemic awareness to do so.