Entry 7: Phonics

Phonemic awareness is extremely important in the education of every person. I agree with the fact that phonemic awareness should be integrated throughout our education and teaching. I also believe that we should use our instruction and group activities to do these activities instead of worksheets to ensure that students are successful in their education. In the article Everything you wanted to know about phonics (but were afraid to ask), the authors state that, "What seems to work in phonics instruction is direct teacher instruction, not practice on worksheets" (Stahl et. al., 342). Continuing on to say, "This may be because completing worksheets takes students time away from reading stories or content material, and because instructional aspects of worksheets are often poorly designed" (Stahl, et. al., 342). I believe that worksheets are not important in the way they have been in the past when looking at phonics and spelling. Instead we can use other activities that are stated by both Stahl et. al., and Tompkins such as Elkonin boxes, sound segmentation activities, sound blending activities, sound addition activities, sound subtraction activities, and sound matching activities as well as other activities that instead of giving a child a worksheet where they are mindlessly writing words out, I want the children to be engaged in the learning so that they can get the most from the lesson being taught. 

Making sure that as a teacher I incorporate activities and educational fun ways to learn is important to my teaching, especially teaching youth who are all different in their ways of learning. I will make sure to incorporate all activities and include graphic organizers to make sure children get all forms of teaching for the best result! I would also include different books from different cultures in the classroom library to make sure the children are exposed to multiple different words that have different meanings. Some of these books include; Same But Different by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw, Esquivel! Space age sound artist by Susan Wood, and Magic Trash: A Story of Tyree Guyton and His Art by J.H. Shapiro, along with other books! These books would help the children create a larger vocabulary, and have them experience life through others lives and bring awareness to others backgrounds. 

These activities that are listed above are several activities that I am going to incorporate into my future classroom! My goal is to have a 3rd grade classroom when I get my own classroom and using these exercises and having a fluent knowledge of the English language will help all students in their schoolwork and readings. If there is a student that is below the average for third grade as well I would also use these exercises to help the child create an understanding for early phonics and literacy so they can understand better instead of them just getting worksheets. Using these different activities for the students that are in need of extra help can help the students go from sound blending to reading words to reading texts that are provided in class.