| |
|
|
 |
|
|
| Didax "Class Ideas" Newsletter Archive |
|
|
|
June has arrived and summer vacation is right around the corner. Here in New England, we're having our first summer heat wave, and you can bet some of us will be heading over to nearby Crane Beach for a refreshing swim in those chilly Atlantic waters.
If you’re a parent looking for a fun and educational way to pass the summer afternoons with your young readers, look no further. This month’s guest author is Liz Baldwin, author of "I Hear with my Little Ear." This practical little book offers 102 games that teach phonological awareness and phonics using a multi-sensory approach. To sample these lively games, just scroll down to our downloadable activity pages section and click on the link. And don’t forget to check out our fantastic summer subscriber-only special on this book.
Thanks for reading, and have a great summer!
Cindy O’Neill, Editor |
| |
| Introduction to Phonic Skills |
|
 by Liz Baldwin
Listening to a spoken word and breaking it down into its component sounds is a fundamental skill for effective language learning. This skill develops long before children know anything about sound being represented visually through letters (graphemes). Young children are learning to analyze phonemes—individual units of sound that, when combined, make meaningful words. Poor phonological analysis skills may affect children in the following ways.
Development of literacy skills
Phonological analysis is widely recognized as the strongest predictor of literacy skills. Children may start reading and writing well, using the visual method of whole-word recognition. When they attempt to decode a new word, however, the visual method is not sufficient.
Development of language skills
To develop understanding of a word, children must listen to the word and lay down in their memory a representation of what it sounds like. Every time they hear that word they add meaning to it. When they lay down an incomplete or inaccurate representation of a word, the next time they hear it their memory store may not recognize it and the meaning is lost. These children are at risk of delay in the development of the understanding of spoken language, and likely to have a restricted spoken vocabulary.
Development of speech sounds
Difficulties with the phonological analysis of words may result in speech sound problems—phonological delay or disorder. The cause of many speech sound difficulties is not that children are unable to make the sounds physically but that their ability to analyze the sounds is restricted.
Phonological awareness is the ability to segment words into their components and build them up again. The child needs to segment to identify:
• Single words spoken within a sentence
• Syllables within words
• Initial sounds (phonemes)
• All other sounds (phonemes) within the word
They then need to be able to blend these sounds to say the word.
Using the games in I Hear with my Little Ear
The games in I Hear with my Little Ear allow for opportunities to practice these phonological skills, and provide a balance between identification (of individual syllables and phonemes) and generation (of words according to target sounds).
Each game has suggestions for making the task harder or easier, helping the teacher to pitch the game for the group or individual child’s ability. It also enables teachers to revisit games later and make them stretch children’s existing skills. Children will not learn these skills through being constantly asked to do something they cannot do, so these games should not be treated as a test. Intervene when children struggle: let them hear you working out sounds and let them experiment with making the sounds.
Such games are useful for consolidating existing phonological skills, stretching able children, and teaching those starting out on the phonological awareness journey. They can be a rich source of activities for children who need to practice a particular skill before being able to use that skill independently.
The games in I Hear with my Little Ear are divided into sections. Children starting to learn about phonological awareness should begin with syllable work, move to word initial sound practice, then to word final sound and rhyme, and finally manipulation and deletion of phonemes. This approach may not be necessary; the book may be used to enhance children’s existing skills or target a particular area or group of sounds.
Usually, children will find identification of sounds easier than generation of words. It is vital that children are skilled in identifying sounds, and it is recommended that teachers choose activities from each section of the book (or similar activities) to address this.
These games are designed to be played in group settings, enabling the children to learn in an interactive way and gain knowledge from their peers. Playing as a group also makes the activities less threatening for the child who is struggling. Above all, let the children have fun as they play with sounds! |
| |
| Downloadable Phonics Activity Pages |
|
 The lively phonic games in I Hear with my Little Ear are sure to be a hit with beginning readers. As you'll see from these sample pages, these multisensory games cover a wide range of skills, including identifying syllables, recognizing initial and final word sounds, rhyming knowledge, and phoneme manipulation. It's an ideal resource for teachers, teaching assistants, and speech and language therapists, as well as parents who want to encourage their children's literacy skills at home! |
| |
|
|
| |
| Phonics Internet Links |
|
 Learning to read starts with hearing words correctly. Phonological awareness is the ability to distinguish beginning and ending sounds, the number of syllables in a word, and so on. Hand-in-hand comes phonemic awareness, the ability to separate spoken words into distinct phonemes, the smallest units of sound, and to manipulate these sounds. Finally, phonics teaches beginning readers to connect sounds with letters or groups of letters and blend them, so that they can sound out new words. One exciting step at a time, a new reader is born.
For more information on this complex subject, as well as some online phonics fun, be sure to check out these Web resources. |
| |
|
|
| |
| July / August Newsletter Theme: Mental Math |
|
 The theme of our mid-summer issue is mental math, as in Daily Mental Math, a new edition of the popular Didax series for grades 2 through 7. The short, brain-teasing exercises in these workbooks are a great math refresher course, and we’re introducing them just in time to get kids ready for the new school year! |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
0 items 
Home 
