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Teaching Practice - Literacy Entry (1)

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source: https://www.participatelearning.com/blog/world-literacy-day-build-love-for-reading-and-writing/ During my practice this year, I’ve been observing mostly 3rd and 4th graders. Throughout those few weeks, I’ve seen different topics and subjects. I witnessed different stages of the units, including introduction of new units, revision of vocabulary and grammar structures, revision to the test and writing short tests. 4th graders have Literacy classes twice a week, where they focus specifically on language-related skills and working with different texts. Younger students acquire them during English classes they have every day. Depending on the age groups, goals of the lessons were very different. WIth younger students, the teacher focused more on fluency in spoken word , and only then on practising writing. With older students, she would spend more time on accuracy in writing , omitting spelling and grammatical mistakes. In the context of literacy, there was enough time spent on ora
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English Phonetics Diary - Final Reflection

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source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tipa_phonetics.svg As the semester is coming to an end, I would like to reflect on the course that I did lots of research for and the effects it had on me as a teacher and as a learner. In my last post about the English Phonetics course, I will try to remind myself of all the things that I have learned and the skills that I gained during this semester. I would like to look back at all the experiences that shaped my present understanding of what phonetics is and the importance of this area in teaching and learning English. Before this course, I had an idea what phonetics is. Having finished a course on pronunciation I thought it’s main focus was saying the words properly and using an IPA alphabet to omit mispronouncing them. I was pleasantly surprised that there is much more to the topic, therefore a lot needed to be explored. I tried choosing different sources, though once I started following one specific topic, I wanted to expand it as far
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Reflection on the webinar (6)

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source: https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator/using-authentic-materials-in-the-classroom/ Recently I got to catch up with one of the webinars we were invited to. It took place on May 16th, and was conducted by Ms Paulina Andruszkiewicz-Glińska. The topic of the webinar was ‘Authentic materials in education’. When I learned I wouldn’t be able to join in, I was quite unhappy. Not only I enjoyed this presenter's last appearance, I also really wanted to explore the topic more and I’m grateful for this opportunity.    As usual, this webinar started with a short introduction and an overview of the aspects of the topic included in it. The presenter decided to start with defining authentic materials, categorising them and reasons for incorporating them into the classroom. Then, she talked about examples of authentic materials and planning the lessons with their use.   One of the first things that caught my attention was the interactive form of this webinar. I really liked that the presente
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English Phonetics Diary (9)

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source: https://www.reallygreatreading.com/six-layers-phonemic-awareness Recently, I started working with my students on phonetic awareness. I made first attempts to incorporate one or two activities into my lessons. As it went quite well, I wanted to expand my knowledge and further explore the topic of phonemic awareness. I watched a video called ‘ 3 Examples of Phoneme Manipulation with Deleting Phonemes ’ from Learning At The Primary Pond channel. The presenter - early education teacher and literacy teacher - started from explaining the focus of the video and setting the context for the topic. She explained what phoneme deletion is, how it corresponds to other phoneme manipulation skills (addition and substitution) and its difficulty while compared to other skills. Then she introduced three types of phoneme deletion: initial phoneme, final phoneme and second phoneme deletion. At the end, she gave examples for each of them and showed how she would give instructions to students. One t
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English Phonetics Diary (8)

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source: https://learningattheprimarypond.com/blog/what-are-r-controlled-vowels-what-are-some-ideas-for-teaching-r-controlled-vowels/   This week, I’ve decided to dive deeper into the area of syllables. I’ve chosen to learn more about r-controlled vowels, which is one of the topics taken by Susan Jones in the video called ‘ How to Teach r-controlled vowels // teaching bossy r words in first and second grade ’. I realised listening and seeing how to approach different syllable groups is important both for me (so I get to check how well I understand it) and for the students (either native speakers or those in the ESL classroom would benefit from it). R-controlled vowels are the ones in which r comes right after the vowel - e.x. ur, ar, ir . We don’t read those two sounds separately but hear the syllable as one sound. After giving a few examples in the context - showing specific words, Susan Jones moves on to structure the process of introducing the syllable: Familiarising with the sound
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English Phonetics Diary (7)

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source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1U_UQ6m-eU&list=WL&index=15&t=8s    This week I came back to one of my favourite education-related youtube channels, which is Susan Jones Teaching. The topic of one of her newest videos is: ‘How to teach syllables in first and second grade // closed, Vce, & open syllables for 1st/2nd Grade’ . I thought focusing more on teaching syllables, especially examples of exercises and introduction in the classroom would be very valuable for me. This video focuses on three types of syllables: closed, open and Vowel-cons-e syllables. Closed syllables (about 43% of English syllables) consist of one short letter closed by at least one consonant. Exceptions to closed syllable rules include: ost, old, ild, ind, olt . They should be practised with students so they get used to the rule and remember the difference in syllable division. Vce (vowel-consonant-e) syllables consist of one long vowel syllable, consonant and a silent e . Examples can be s
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English Phonetics Diary (6)

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source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFU5kqxhD6s Inspired by our teacher, I’ve decided to learn more about corrected speech. I also used this opportunity to check a new youtube channel, which I may use in the future. I watched a video called ‘Connected Speech: Assimilation, Elision & Intrusion | English Pronunciation’ . It was uploaded almost two years ago on Billie English channel and focuses on introducing three features of connected speech in spoken language. At first, the video introduces and explains the concept of connected speech - a stream of words in spoken language, when there are no boundaries between words. In contrast to how we write sentences, while speaking we tend to connect words by either changing, losing or adding particular sounds. Concepts introduced in the video include: Assimilation - sounds change resulting in becoming more similar to the sounds near them Elision - sounds are lost, it often includes the sounds at the end of words Intrusion (or liaison) -
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