English Phonetics Diary (3)

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRuuvC-vmU4

This week, I spent some time on sight words, which is the topic I started exploring last week and wanted to know a little bit more about. I’ve decided to watch a video of Susan Jones, former literacy and early education teacher talking about working with young learners. I listened to the video of her talking about sight words and examples of activities for classroom use. In this material, she talks about three different activities: phoneme mapping, multi-sensory approach and comparing, sorting and matching words by sound.

The first activity she introduces is phoneme mapping. She:
  1. shows the word and asks students to repeat it out loud
  2. segments the phonemes in it
  3. asks students to separate each phoneme in it (finding them in the written word)
  4. extends it by introducing sound boxes - choosing correct box, fill it (e.g. with play doh, cubes)

Second activity is based on a multi-sensory approach. It’s supposed to further practice what was introduced by phoneme mapping. Students can write the word in the sky or use materials available in the classroom - finger lights or magnets. The third activity is comparing, sorting and matching words by sound. Similarly to the previous one, it’s supposed to further practice previously learned words. Students word with a number of words with similar sounds and try to match beginning or ending that sound the same.

The first thing I noticed is that I, similarly to the presenter, had the wrong idea about what sight words are. They aren’t necessarily the ones students can’t spell out. They are encouraged to memorise them as a whole, in order to avoid decoding them. There are multiple useful strategies for students to memorise sight words.

I found this video exceptionally useful. Firstly, it’s a topic I don’t know much about and it’s very important in terms of developing students' literacy skills. Then, there are multiple examples showing how to introduce or practice a concept. To be honest, I think I will continue exploring this topic and this channel in the coming weeks.

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