In the Bell and Jarvis article I found the example of Jael correcting her own reading by applying her knowledge of her classmate's name Soo Lin a partially powerful argument against using a letter of the week method. I feel that this article and example frames the argument into a discussion on what is and is not good teaching practice. For children to truly learn they need to be engaged, interested, and motivated. Arbitrary reading and letter of weeks programs do not accomplish this. As the example highlighted, Jael was not able to make this correction in her reading because that week they had chanted S and made S themed crafts. Instead, she applied knowledge that was meaningful to her, Soo Lin's name. Since her friend's name interested her, was meaningful to her, and familiar to her Jael was better able to remember and apply that knowledge while also using a useful cue. Since we already know that this is a more effective method of instruction in other areas, the question then becomes how do we make letter sounds/phonemes/etc. meaningful to children. I thought a particularly interesting concept that this article presented was environmental print. This type of print is inherently interesting to children because they come into contact with it everyday and, in many cases, because millions of dollars have been spent to make it interesting to children. It also very easily incorporated in the classroom and could potentially be a great way to get parents involved.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Making it Meaningful
In the Bell and Jarvis article I found the example of Jael correcting her own reading by applying her knowledge of her classmate's name Soo Lin a partially powerful argument against using a letter of the week method. I feel that this article and example frames the argument into a discussion on what is and is not good teaching practice. For children to truly learn they need to be engaged, interested, and motivated. Arbitrary reading and letter of weeks programs do not accomplish this. As the example highlighted, Jael was not able to make this correction in her reading because that week they had chanted S and made S themed crafts. Instead, she applied knowledge that was meaningful to her, Soo Lin's name. Since her friend's name interested her, was meaningful to her, and familiar to her Jael was better able to remember and apply that knowledge while also using a useful cue. Since we already know that this is a more effective method of instruction in other areas, the question then becomes how do we make letter sounds/phonemes/etc. meaningful to children. I thought a particularly interesting concept that this article presented was environmental print. This type of print is inherently interesting to children because they come into contact with it everyday and, in many cases, because millions of dollars have been spent to make it interesting to children. It also very easily incorporated in the classroom and could potentially be a great way to get parents involved.
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Environmental print is a fantastic way to make letters/words meaningful to children! Some of my favorite imaginary play that I have seen children participate in came out of providing real environmental print objects (cereal boxes, milk jugs, etc) for the children to interact with. Such a great way to share and talk about letters/words without drilling the concept to the children.
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