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Scott in HK
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: now in Incheon..haven't changed my name yet
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 Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 4:42 am Post subject: |
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The focus of the school as a whole and the literacy program in particular will be to provide age-appropriate instruction that will allow students the opportunity to use English in real life situations and to become comfortable with English as a tool for communication. It was been known for a long time that students who are introduced to a foreign language early have the best opportunity to acquire that language more naturally and with greater ease. Korean culture puts great emphasis on both children and learning, but there are few privately run immersion kindergartens. The educational focus in Korean is on the �hakwon� (private language schools) system where students study for an hour at a time. This sort of approach does not provide the time children need to truly acquire a language. These schools are rarely run by educators nor operated under a pedagogically sound curriculum. Therefore an immersion program run under a program designed with solid proven teaching methods should be a prized addition to the scholastic choices offered to parents. With child-centred classrooms and age-appropriate instruction, it is hoped that students and parents will see the benefit of committing their children to the care of this school.
The primary purpose of the literacy program is to foster the creation of emergent literacy skills (Soderman, Gregory et al. 1999; Gunn, Simmons et al. 2001) in the five basic areas: Conventional Literacy, Conventions of Print, Purpose of Print, Functions of Print and Phonological Awareness. Each of these components will be taught to the students as complements of each other and as part of an attempt to increase the student�s ability in spoken English. Students will be immersed within a language-rich environment and will be encouraged to use English in both oral and written forms to communicate with their fellow students and teachers. In order to develop their oral ability and foundational vocabulary students will be exposed to a variety of realia within the classroom. Phonological awareness will be stressed in the beginning classes of the program, as it will be important for students to be able to match the sounds and print forms of the alphabet at a later stage. Through their use and study of the L2 (English), students will be encouraged to see English as a useful tool and will want to develop their skills, so they can take part more fully in all classroom activities. In is hoped that as students develop their oral skills, they will at the same time learn to love story, books and reading. The literacy program will create a communal feeling of safety where the students are encouraged to share their love of reading. Although literacy will be stressed within this program, the overall purpose of the kindergarten is to look beyond language learning to create a communal atmosphere and provide experiences conducive to the overall development and achievement of the child (Soderman, Gregory et al. 1999). Finally, the program will extend outside the school by developing a parallel parental home literacy program in order to create a literacy-rich home. Research shows that a literacy-rich home is key to the development of good literacy skills(Calkins 2001; Gunn, Simmons et al. 2001). |
that is how i would do...of course i could go into more detail...but space here is limited....
the centre of my program would be label wall...where students and teachers would be able to post the pictures and names of things being used in the class or in the activities...the pictures would stay on the wall until the students could ask for them by name whereupon they would be transferred to a 'words we have learned' wall....
at all times the students would be immersed in words and literature....using it as part of their daily activities...
phonics...the idea of moving from the part to the whole has always struck me as a waste to time....
i much prefer a kid being able to link the picture/word/concept of c a t together rather than just being able to parrot the sounds...
phonics does not teach reading...if you don't know what the combo's of characters/letters mean...what they refer to...then you are not reading...i can sound out the hangul characters in a newspaper..but i cannot read korean....
the quote is from a paper i wrote in which i was told that i am not a very good proof reader...so any errors found i will blame on my dsylexia and general laziness...and of course...the friend that i trusted to proofread it... |
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crazylemongirl
Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Location: almost there...
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| Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 5:03 am Post subject: |
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how about snap?
make up some letter cards and play them like snap call out the sound and when you get the same same sound, SNAP!
my kids love snap.
I think that phonics are important but should be the be all or end all of a programme. I think knowing the sounds of letters and letter combinations is important for knowing how to spell. When we can't spell a word in my class we play a quick version of hangman. sounding out the word and trying to find the missing letters.
clg |
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Confused Canadian
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Scott in HK wrote: |
| Quote: |
The focus of the school as a whole and the literacy program in particular will be to provide age-appropriate instruction that will allow students the opportunity to use English in real life situations and to become comfortable with English as a tool for communication. It was been known for a long time that students who are introduced to a foreign language early have the best opportunity to acquire that language more naturally and with greater ease. Korean culture puts great emphasis on both children and learning, but there are few privately run immersion kindergartens. The educational focus in Korean is on the �hakwon� (private language schools) system where students study for an hour at a time. This sort of approach does not provide the time children need to truly acquire a language. These schools are rarely run by educators nor operated under a pedagogically sound curriculum. Therefore an immersion program run under a program designed with solid proven teaching methods should be a prized addition to the scholastic choices offered to parents. With child-centred classrooms and age-appropriate instruction, it is hoped that students and parents will see the benefit of committing their children to the care of this school.
The primary purpose of the literacy program is to foster the creation of emergent literacy skills (Soderman, Gregory et al. 1999; Gunn, Simmons et al. 2001) in the five basic areas: Conventional Literacy, Conventions of Print, Purpose of Print, Functions of Print and Phonological Awareness. Each of these components will be taught to the students as complements of each other and as part of an attempt to increase the student�s ability in spoken English. Students will be immersed within a language-rich environment and will be encouraged to use English in both oral and written forms to communicate with their fellow students and teachers. In order to develop their oral ability and foundational vocabulary students will be exposed to a variety of realia within the classroom. Phonological awareness will be stressed in the beginning classes of the program, as it will be important for students to be able to match the sounds and print forms of the alphabet at a later stage. Through their use and study of the L2 (English), students will be encouraged to see English as a useful tool and will want to develop their skills, so they can take part more fully in all classroom activities. In is hoped that as students develop their oral skills, they will at the same time learn to love story, books and reading. The literacy program will create a communal feeling of safety where the students are encouraged to share their love of reading. Although literacy will be stressed within this program, the overall purpose of the kindergarten is to look beyond language learning to create a communal atmosphere and provide experiences conducive to the overall development and achievement of the child (Soderman, Gregory et al. 1999). Finally, the program will extend outside the school by developing a parallel parental home literacy program in order to create a literacy-rich home. Research shows that a literacy-rich home is key to the development of good literacy skills(Calkins 2001; Gunn, Simmons et al. 2001). |
that is how i would do...of course i could go into more detail...but space here is limited....
the centre of my program would be label wall...where students and teachers would be able to post the pictures and names of things being used in the class or in the activities...the pictures would stay on the wall until the students could ask for them by name whereupon they would be transferred to a 'words we have learned' wall....
at all times the students would be immersed in words and literature....using it as part of their daily activities...
phonics...the idea of moving from the part to the whole has always struck me as a waste to time....
i much prefer a kid being able to link the picture/word/concept of c a t together rather than just being able to parrot the sounds...
phonics does not teach reading...if you don't know what the combo's of characters/letters mean...what they refer to...then you are not reading...i can sound out the hangul characters in a newspaper..but i cannot read korean....
the quote is from a paper i wrote in which i was told that i am not a very good proof reader...so any errors found i will blame on my dsylexia and general laziness...and of course...the friend that i trusted to proofread it... |
First of all, in your quote from your own paper, you specifically state that
"Phonological awareness will be stressed in the beginning classes of the program, as it will be important for students to be able to match the sounds and print forms of the alphabet at a later stage."
Isn't that what we're talking about here? We're talking about "Up and Away in Phonics 1", which deals with recognizing and writing the alphabet, and recognizing and learning the pronunciation of consonant sounds. We're not talking about some student who has been studying English for years, and is not an effective oral reader.
Secondly, I personally disagree with your "link the picture/word/concept idea". I, personally, find word - picture association a waste of time. If a child understands the concept of "cat" and can recognize it after seeing the word under the picture of a cat 20 times, but yet can't read the word "hat" when only one letter has been changed, does that child now need to see a picture of a hat with the word "hat" under it 20 times in order to now be able to "read" that word?
According to your system, theoretically, a student would have to learn to "read" every word in the English language, one at a time, similar to the idea of Chinese, where each character represents a word or concept. If you were teaching Chinese, your approach would make sense, however, as we're talking about English, a mostly phonetic language (granted, there are tons of exceptions), why wouldn't you use phonics to teach a phonetic language?
"...the idea of moving from the part to the whole" enables students to sound out words and read compound words. Teach students the rules for syllabication, and then they can read just about any word they come across, (i.e. antidisestablishmentarianism). Granted, there isn�t much use in a 2 grade student being able to read this word without understanding, yet the tools are there and in place for years down the road, when that student is in university, and perhaps comes across that word in Political Science class while studying at a foreign university.
However, I do agree that reading also includes comprehension. I, like you, can "sound out the hangul characters in a newspaper..but i cannot read korean..." However, I can also read Korean words that I do understand. The more I read, the more I study, the more I understand. However, it's a lot easier to ask someone what "this word" means, when I can pronounce it, rather than a) have to be taught how to pronounce it, and then b) learn what it means. As in my example above, the tools are in place for me to further my understanding of Korean by being able to �read�, or at least �sound out� any Korean word I come across.
Just my two cents worth�
Confused Canadian
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Scott in HK
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: now in Incheon..haven't changed my name yet
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2004 12:25 am Post subject: |
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Actually phoneme awareness and phonics are not the same thing...where phonics is more of a stand alone approach which can be systematic and use a lot of drilling...and often uses basal readers to review the lessons....these readers limit the students exposure to real reading and use unnatural language...
the idea of phoneme awareness is more like finding similar sounds to things the students already know....so if the wall is labelled with various pictures and there is a name wall as well with the students's names...then you can make connections between the two....it is much more about using real life situations and readings and making connections between things going on in your class....phoneme awarness included in all of the activities the teacher uses to teach reading....and i said it is there to show the connection between the sounds you make and the scratches on the paper...i didn't say that it is going to be used as the basis of a reading progam...
being able to but the 'h' sound in front of 'at' and say hat is not the same thing as being able to read the word hat....phonics simply does not teach you how to read...it teaches one part of the five basic concepts of reading...and it should not be done on its own...the student will still have to make that connection between the 'word' on the paper and and concept....and then fit the their knowledge of the word into the meaning of the story...
| Quote: |
| enables students to sound out words and read compound words. Teach students the rules for syllabication, and then they can read just about any word they come across, (i.e. antidisestablishmentarianism). Granted, there isn�t much use in a 2 grade student being able to read this word without understanding |
it is not that there is much use...there isn't any use...phonics will not give the student any help in understanding the word....but the 'whole' will...the student will have read the word in a piece of writing and using the piece of writing as a whole...they may be able to figure out what the word means...
if the question is whether you should use phonics to teach kids to 'read' and i mean actually understand the text....then you shouldn't because it does not teach reading...but if you think phonics should be included in an overall program to help teach students phoneme awareness..then that is okay...
one good example of where phonics fails is the subject of our discussion...
looking at the word 'read'....phonics will fail you half the time.... |
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