Phonemes are the best!

We are all studying to be teachers. However, besides teaching our children we must also entertain them in the process. What good is chanting A is for apple if our students don't understand that A makes the /a/ noise? Our readings for this week were quite thorough on the subject. Yopp & Yopp's article Supporting Phonemic Awareness in the Classroom demonstrated some fun ways to incorporate games into phonemic games in the classroom. I loved them! They were all fun and interactive!

Here are the ones I want to incorporate in my classroom:

• Clap the syllables to our names EM *clap* I *clap* LY *clap*
• Count the letters in the classes' names and make a chart
• go over the longest and shortest names and discuss how we figured this out.
• Read a silly rhyming book and see if my students can guess what the real word is

• kurtle for turtle, zat for cat and so on        

 Which ones did you guys like from the reading and why?

NAEYC & IRA's article, Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children  reiterated a lot of the concepts and also gave me so many ideas for reading in my classroom. I loved their idea of giving each students a minimum of 5 books to read and placed comprehension ahead of "Accuracy." So many people focus on kids "reading" a word, and not understanding the word. We need to build our student's "up" with the reading confidence, not tear it down because they aren't perfect. Read-alouds are going to be my go to lesson for reading everyday. We will capture intrigue and spark classroom dialogue, giving my students critical thinking skills and so on. 

Anybody have any ideas on how to improve critical thinking skills?
                                                                                                                      


The last reading was my favorite because it inspired me the most. Primary Voices: k-6 Letting go of the letter of the week made me want to start planning writing activities right now. I loved how they said that ALL students come into class knowing how to read and write. All kids can read McDonald's and all kids can write, even if it's just in scribbles. The part I loved most was her classroom wrote everything and thought-aloud together while doing it. These kids not only learned writing skills but also critical thinking skills and how to edit. We should all remember that literature is everywhere. I want to start collecting well-known objects for my students to read to me on the first day!

What did you guys think of the article? Did it inspire you like it did me?



Before I go, I will leave you teachers with this fun phoneme chant and let's all get creative :