Vacation at last!
It has been a year full of experiences and has enriched us with a lot of knowledge, especially about the processes behind each learning.
We have talked about the fundamental role that emotions play in the teaching-learning process in this post.
We have given very practical indications on how to make the most of every subject taught in English in bilingual schools in this second post.
We have presented very valuable tools to improve our children's level of English with a view to the official Cambridge exams, but also to enjoy reading adapted classics and more contemporary stories: the 'readers'.
And finally we have concentrated on the processes of acquiring English literacy through the Jolly Phonics method: we have told you how I organized the classes, underlining the importance of the use of fine and gross motor activities, which should always accompany any learning, along with playful activities, since they have the great advantage of capturing 100% of the attention of the youngest; and finally we talked about pre-reading, first with short word blending exercises and then enriching the experience with stories and games.
I hope it was useful and that you enjoyed the process as much as I did.
See you in September!
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Hello everyone!
Today a super short post about the class I gave last week with my Jolly Phonics group of preschoolers because it turned out very well (the children were attentive and actively participating) and I want to share it with you.
Well, it turns out that before Easter we started working on the 4th group of synthetic phonics; we saw the digraphs /ai/ and /ou/ before the holidays, and this week was playing the third, /ie/, whose chant is about a sailor and his captain:
"The captain said, "/ie/-/ie/!"
"The captain said, "/ie/-/ie/!"
"Stand up straight!
Don't be late!"
"The captain said, "/ie/-/ie/!"
So, I thought that, in order to review a little what we did before the holidays and introduce the new phoneme, it would be a good idea to use a story from the OUP collection 'I Want To Be... Storybooks' and precisely the 'I Want to Be a SAILOR' book for the following reasons:
Fiest of all, because it has several short words, some of which we already worked with the children using the flashcards of the method, very useful words to practice blending.
Secondly, because, specifically, it contains the words s-ai-l, s-ai-l-or and b-oa-t which helped me to refresh the digraphs already seen.
And finally, because when the story ends, the kids are so involved in the story that it seems very natural for them to act like a sailor, imitating the military greeting when they hear the chant of the sound /ie/.
In addition the book has stickers that represent the characters, one for each page, and this helps our young students to maintain a good level of attention in order to follow the story, since they ask for the one they want to paste and they have to wait for the character to appear on the page, and on the other hand to review or learn specific vocabulary.
Also, if you want to go a little deeper into the subject of aquatic animals, the book has a few pages to work reading comprehension, some mini flashcards and a very cool action-song.
In short, we liked the story a lot and it provides a lot of different levels of interaction.
More about reading and writing in English, here.
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Hi there! The public examination to become a Primary school teacher is behind the corner here in Spain. That means that studying along with working leaves little free time to write blog posts. However today I have decided to take a break and here I am to tell you how the Jolly Phonics course proceeds.
Back from the holidays we finished the second group of sounds /c/ /k/ /e/ /h/ /m/ /r/ /d/ and started the third. At the same time I decided that it was time to start blending and I'm going to tell you how I decided to introduce it. But first I'll explain what blending is and how it influences the acquisition of reading and writing skills.
We know that the main objective of the synthetic phonics methodology is to teach how to associate phonemes (sounds) to graphemes (graphic sign). At first, they are taught one by one, and then they are joined together to form words. For example, once the vowel phonemes, such as /a/ /i/ /e/ /o/ /u/, and some consonant phonemes, such as /p/ /n/ /c/ and /t/, are seen, students are presented with words formed by the combination of these phonemes: pan, sit, ant, cat, cap, net, pet, nut, and so on. Blending is the process of pronouncing the sounds of a word individually and finally bringing them together to pronounce the whole word. That is: /p/, /a/, /n/ and children have to say the whole word -> pan.
At first it may be difficult for them to recognize the word, but with a little practice during every session their ability improves, and each time they gather the phonemes faster.
How do I do it? As my little group is very lively, at the moment, to be listened to for more than 8 seconds, I'm using Jolly Phonics Read and See books. They are small books where there are words followed by a flap that I only lift once the children have guessed which word they have just heard, underneath there is the image that corresponds to the word pronounced. It's a trick that keeps them attentive because of the surprise effect, which always works with younger children, and thanks to the attention they naturally pay, they learn.
Another material that I use are the Jolly Phonics flash cards and some cards that I have cut from the activity books I had at home. I do try to make sure that the word is always accompanied by the corresponding picture; first of all because it develops reading comprehension and then because the drawings are pretty and, as Maria Montessori said, children have to be given pretty things to create an affective link with learning.
And now, the big question... why do we teach them blending?
I suppose the answer has already been guessed right: once the children have learned to recognize the words broken down by the teacher, they will be equipped to start synthesizing words on their own, which means they will be able to read.
More about reading and writing.
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There's a big debate about whether or not children should be taught to read before they are 6. It seems that there's a chance that forcing them to read too early could impair the development of faster connections between the two lobes of their young brains.
Here in Spain, children start reading and writing vowels at the age of 4.
I'm definitely against this rush, and I have my own theory about the reasons why kids are tortured this way, but I'm not here to talk about Spanish education policies today!
Instead, I'm going to tell you what I think might be an intermediate solution to this big dilemma: Synthetic Phonics taught using the Montessori method.
Many of you probably already know the Jolly Phonics method. When I first heard about it, it was being advertised as an innovative way to teach reading and writing, but last summer, reading 'The Discovery of the Child' written by Maria Montessori and published in 1948 I realized that the use of the Synthetic Phonics method is not new at all; it has just been ignored for decades.
At its simplest, it consists of familiarizing the child with the sounds of the letters by presenting the vowels and consonants separately. However, while the Jolly Phonics method involves written exercises, the Montessori method only requires that kids to first trace the letters with their fingers, and later use a stick to learn the right direction in which a given graphic sign must be drawn, so that the visual and the muscle memory become associated with the letter's sound.
No child even has to pick up a pencil, so with this method, their synapses are safe and children can start to move along the correct path towards reading and writing.
The first phase (which is what I've been experimenting with my class over the last few weeks) consists of recognizing the first sound of a word. Here you can see a clear example of this exercise.
First you should make Initial Sound Boxes - Each box in the set of 26 contains objects or pictures that start with the letter that box represents.
Since I haven't got my own classroom (yet) I had to choose the pictures option and instead of using a little chest of drawers, as Maria Montessori suggests in her book, I'm storing the pictures into envelopes, one for each letter. Of course, it is also possible to use boxes, recycled egg cartons, and such. Just stick a letter on the outside of each container and you'll have your alternative chest of drawers to group pictures or toys according to the sound of the first letter in their names.
Here you can find the Jolly Phonics chants which will help kids remember each sound.
By presenting single sounds, the Synthetic Phonics method also allows teachers to point out the correct mouth positions needed to produce each sound and to avoid Spanish mispronunciation of English sounds for R, W, V, B etc.
At the moment, we're still on the letter 'M' and it seems that, little by little, the kids are building a certain awareness of the sounds. For example, the other day one of the kids said that the word SNAKE starts with an E. Of course this mistake was due to the fact that he was pronouncing it the Spanish way, which places an E before every word that starts with an S. The good thing was that I could point out the difference and the look on his face showed his surprise and interest in that unexpected information.
Also, recently, they were singing a winter song that goes: Winter! Winter! Winter's very cold!" which they were pronouncing the Spanish way, especially the vowels and the Rs. So I used Synthetic Phonics to teach them how to sing it properly and they did it perfectly. The funny thing is that now they are so aware of the difference between the right and the wrong way to sing it, that when I ask them to sing it, they sing it wrong, on purpose, just to see my horrified expression and make fun of me!
Although I have to admit, I find it kind of cool…!
Some free downloadable resources here
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Lucy
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