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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflection on a lesson (2)

Image
During our class we have watched the beginning of a video containing an English lesson with young learners. Learners are students of Polish primary school. This lesson was devoted to practicing vocabulary and introducing new words. Vocabulary used by the teacher and students includes:  colours ( yellow, blue, grey, pink, black, green ) names of animals ( teddy bear, spider, fish, snake, penguin ) other characters ( witch, Santa Claus ) fruits ( apple, banana ) numbers from 1 to 15 new words ( good and bad ) During the class students practiced reacting to instructions ( stand up, sit down, clap your hands, jump, stop, turn around, point to the ... ) and answering questions ( What's your name?, What is it?, How many?, Who is good?, What color is it? ).  Teacher used blackboard and chalk, a picture book and flashcards with numbers. Activities used by the teacher include: cirlce time (introduction, answering questions) team game ( listen and touch ) TPR (reacting to teacher's ins...
Read more

Reflection on the webinar (2)

Image
source: https://bridge.edu/tefl/blog/teach-english-online-from-home/ Right before the Christmas break, me and other students of the GPTE programme took part in the webinar with Ms Justyna Wasek called 'Working in a bilingual preschool and teaching children online'. The presenter works in the international preschool. She also has experience teaching both in the preschool and in the primary school. She starts the webinar with introducing herself, describing her workplace and her coworkers' background. Then, she briefly characterises the programmes (to learn the language, motor skills, maths) and methods used there, as well as illustrates the learning environment with some photos. She emphasises on the importance of teacher-students and teacher-parents relationships. In the second part of the webinar, the presenter highlights some of the difficulties while teaching online - with using technological devices, engaging the students, avoiding distractions. She compares classes con...
Read more

Reflection on a lesson (1)

Image
During our class we have watched a video containing parts of an English lesson with young learners. Students (boys only) were six years old. I enjoyed watching this lesson. Though we saw just a glimpse of it, it was enough to get an idea of this teacher's methods and techniques of working with students. The lesson focused on animals and numbers. Vocabulary contained:  adjectives ( big, small, short, tall, happy, sad, good, bad ) nouns (names of animals)  numbers from 1-12 Apart from that, students were practising:  forming sentences ' It's a … (name of an animal)'  asking questions ' Is it … (chosen number) ? ' The lesson was fast-paced and full of activities. Teacher was only using L2 (English) and encouraged students to do the same. His instructions were highlighted by multiple gestures (pointing, counting, mimicking). Instead of pointing out and correcting mistakes, the teacher made them repeat the correct sentence or pronunciation of the word. Visual aid...
Read more