English Phonetics Diary (2)

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3x4HcbyRg

This week, inspired by the debate from the bilingual class, I’ve decided to explore sight words. I came across a website dedicated to introducing and teaching sight words, as well as building students’ phonemic awareness. Then, I watched a video about the differences between two methods of teaching reading (sight words and phonics) and one about introducing sight words to young learners.

This website covers a lot about the topic - there are different techniques to use while teaching sight words, flashcards and different games (e.g. bingo, memory, domino). Apart from the materials attached, there are videos explaining how to use them. The first video explains differences between two methods of teaching reading skills - phonics and sight words. It shows examples of different activities enhancing those skills, as well as both advantages and disadvantages of each of the methods. She finishes the video with an important message - there’s no one method clearly better than the other. It’s crucial to know why, and therefore, when to use each of them. The second video focuses on implementation of sight words method into the teaching. 
 
She presents a set of new words and sentences for one week. She:
  1. teaches a child the words in order
  2. changes their order
  3. asks to write the words 
  4. asks to find a word while next to new wordsuses different colours as well as various games (e.g. bingo, wordsearch) to check the progress
I found the discussion about reading methods interesting. It’s clear that both phonics and sight words have many advantages, but are also not enough to enable children to read all the words. For example, sight words allow them to recognize written words, but not the ones they didn’t come across. On the contrary, phonics teaches the sounds, which results in the ability to read new words. Though, a child has to be able to decode all of the sounds first, which may be a time-consuming process. With the implementation of sight words into a child's vocabulary, I was in awe of this child's ability to decode words correctly this fast. Considering that she has probably been doing it for a few years now, it’s no longer a big challenge for her. Either way, this video will serve for me as a reminder that it’s possible and doable (though rather in smaller classes of working individually).

Overally, those materials were very engaging and thought-provoking. They made me think about reading lessons I have observed during my practice - what methods were used there, what difficulties did students experience and how it may serve me in the future.

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