Phonics

Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative political activist and a devout Catholic, who was involved in mobilizing women against the Equal Rights Amendment, passed away at the age of 92 at her home in St. Louis, Missouri. She was a vocal anti-feminist, who famously told Newsweek in 1979 that feminism "has caused a lot of women to have low self-esteem, to convince themselves [that they] are repressed." Her political activism helped steer the Republican Party to broadly adopt many of the conservative…

and developing inquiry and play based learning. My desire to improve my practice has increased over the years and I am committed to lifelong learning. The Deslea Konza Literacy Program enhanced my literacy head set particularly around the area of phonics. Developing inquiry and play based learning allowed me to research and…

The focus of chapter 12 is assessment and evaluation. Through out this book it discusses inquiry circles and how to implement them into the classroom. One question some teachers may have is how to assess the inquiry circles and what determines the grade or score the students receive. In this chapter, I did not come across any particular statistics, but did find an idea mentioned by Jim Vopat to interesting. Vopat had the idea of the “good faith effort” as the assessment. Vopat believes that…

Within my 2nd grade English Language Arts classroom in Pittsburgh, PA, I teach my students to read using constructivist methods and with a whole-language approach. Teaching in a constructivist manner involves first and foremost assessing my students on individualized interests, ability levels, and learning styles before I can begin successfully differentiating reading instruction to meet students’ individualized needs. Within my teaching pedagogy for English Language Arts instruction, I focus on…

My practicum placement this semester was at R.A. Mitchell Elementary School. I was placed in Mrs. Gebhardt’s 2nd grade classroom. Mrs. Gebhardt picked the student she thought would be best for my case study. The hardest part was that she chose the lowest student in the class. I must admit, the biggest challenge was assessing her and determining where to start. When a student is as low as this one is, it can be overwhelming to think of all the areas that need work! I began with introducing myself…

pictures to match their sentences. Wednesday, I went to observe a full-day Kindergarten class at Ponderosa Elementary School in Cherry Creek. The class was further ahead in literacy due to having a 90-block period specifically tailored to learning phonics and having a writing workshop daily. Our kindergarten class only has a 40-block time dedicated to literacy. We only do writing workshop once a week. It is amazing the difference between half day and full day kindergarten. Thursday, I…

In this 21st century society, it is absolutely essential that every child is fully equipped with the ability to speak, read and write using the international language— English. Anyone unable to do these skills would enormously face a limitation in this information- flooded world. In order to speak, read and write using the English language, one has to acquire phonemic awareness. According to Dewitz and Pearson (1997), phonemic awareness is the understanding that language is composed of small…

Component Skills of Reading (pp. 2-8) A. Reading involves understanding written language. (p. 2) B. Five skills necessary for reading development: phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension. (p. 2) 1. Phonological awareness –sensitivity to the structure of sounds in language 2. Phonics—relationship between phonemes and graphemes 3. Vocabulary—words and word meanings in language 4. Fluency—naming quickly familiar symbols, letters or numbers, and reading…

This house believes that high stakes testing in English schools is detrimental to students, teachers and schools and does not help develop truly educated people. High stake testing is tests which establish and/or identify a student’s future education, additionally presenting consequences if a ‘good’ grade is or is not achieved. Therefore by the use of high stake testing students are being sent the message that tests are more important, than actual learning and that if something is not on a test,…

Mia is a fun-loving six-year-old girl and is in kindergarten. During my literacy observation with her, we read Mr. Jones and Mr. Bones by Janis Asad Raabe and The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Mr. Jones and Mr. Bones is an assigned phonics reader which will improve her consonant vowel consonant words and sight word memorization. While reading, Mr. Jones and Mr. Bones, Mia became frustrated with the unfamiliar words such as “bites, dines, ties, etc.” She was focused on finishing the book…