Module Two

Cindy Summerhill
Module Two
February 7, 2011
Dr. Thompson
1. Three concepts I gleaned from these readings include, how important phonemic awareness is to beginning readers and writers. Phonological awareness skills are the best predictors of how well children will learn to read. Children need this skill to be able to decode and segment words. This also helps them to store it in their memory. I knew PA was important but afeter eading this chapter I now know how important it is to the foundation of my students learning to read. It amazes me in class to see students who could not even tell me how many words were in a sentence and now they are recognizing intial and final sounds. Teaching PA skills and focusing on what a student needs helps them to have coinfidence that they are smart and can read. The second thing I liked is being reminded that children do not learn in the same way. Children are different and they learn things at different rates. I need to remember that it may take several encounters with a skill for a student own it. I do literacy workstations in my room and during this time I also have small group instruction. I have grouped children who have the same concepts to learn and I can really see all my students progressing. The third thing I gleaned from was the article on rimes and shared reading. The five steps in the article were readng the poem, introducing a skill, working with words, writing and rereading. It gave great ideas to use in my classroom. I loved what it said about shared reading it really reinforced doing this in my room. It says to provide repeated readings of predictable texts and poems, building students sight word vocabularies, fluency and phonics knowledge and that during these times make it enjoyable for studnets which in turn will cause a successful reading experience. This article and the two chapters this time were a great refreshers for me. I realize there things I am doing right and other things I can improve on. I want to have an environment that is conducive for learning and I think I am well on my way.
2. The concept I will implement is working more with letters to create words and rearranging letters to make new words in my small group time. I do it in whole group but I see the need for it in small group time more. I will begin using the words onset and rime in my room and showing my students what that means. They will be given their own letters so they can move them around to manipulate and make words. After building them they will write them and read them.
3. I like use rhyming in my classroom. I will read to them whether it be a poem or a book that rhymes.They will then tell me what words rhymed. I write down a word from the reading and have them tell me other words that rhyme with this word and while they tell me I write it down and it doesn't matter if it is a real or nonsense word. As long as they understand what a rhyme is. This is also a great opportunity to introduce word families. I need to make paper houses for my word families and put a differnt family on each. I have seen this done and it would also give me walls that teach. Children could refer to the word families to help them write their own poems and stories.