Phonics and phonological awareness
are things that are essential to a child’s literacy experience. Often times,
I’ve noticed that starting at an early age, kids can identify letters in their
own name and the irregular looking ones first, but it’s the other letters that
sometimes get all jumbled up. Something that I expected was that children learn
phonics in a sequence. They start out with letters, then letter sounds, then
words, and then the recognition of words and reading.
When I was little, my parents always
drove me to daycare before and after school. On the way to and from daycare
every day, we would pass a pizza place with a bright, bold red sign that said,
“PIZZA.” When I was a young girl, much too young to read, I pointed to the
pizza place and said “Look! Pizza!” I had never gone into this restaurant
before in my life, so my parents were in shock that I recognized the word. I
feel like it’s easy for children to recognize words that are memorable, like
the word pizza has two z’s in it. Something else that I read and expected to be
true, but find interesting is that the more often that a child is exposed to a
word, the more likely they are to recognize the word and/or its letters. Words
such as “stop,” which they may see as they are driven around are more
recognizable then words like “go” or “jump.” which they may not necessarily see
on an every day basis.
I think something that parents, and
even educators, assume to happen is for the kids to learn the entire alphabet
at once. However, the book says that it is most effective to focus on one, or a
couple, letter(s) at a time. You should introduce the letter in both uppercase
and lowercase form, focus on words that start with that letter, do
identification worksheets and have the kids pick out the letter, and maybe even
do an activity that starts with or uses that particular letter. I think that
environmental text would be super beneficial in this context because it helps
children actually see how the letter is used in words, and gives them the
opportunity to see it every day and practice it.
What are some ways you might help
children learn the alphabet and all of the letter sounds? What if you get a
student who just can’t seem to figure out the alphabet? How might you help
them?
I agree with you that phonics and phonological awareness are crucial to a child's literacy experience. I like how you said that they learn phonics in a sequence, even though I believe sometimes these sequences can change depending on the child's learning abilities and the experiences they acquire. I really enjoyed the "pizza" story you told because I think it really demonstrates how children can learn, hear, or recognize certain words and repeat them and adults immediately assume they are reading. I believe it's important to draw these connections that they might know words just from prior experiences not necessarily that they are actually to the point of reading and recognizing all letters in the alphabet. Many teachers go about teaching a letter a week, but the book mentions studies on teaching a letter a day that show vast improvements. This route also allows you time to go back and review, so even though you are learning a lot at once you are building off of prior knowledge. If you have a student in your classroom that is struggling, this is when you need to go back and review where the child is struggling and focus on that part specifically. Maybe they were not taught or are lacking in an area of phonological awareness. This is where you go back and review these skills with this specific student. I think you did a great job at summarizing this chapter and I really enjoyed your personal story! Thank you for sharing it!
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