Phonemic Awareness - helps students to write their story without stopping.

After 3 weeks of using 'sentence frame' I found this problem; my students would stop in the middle of their sentence if they do not know how to write an unknown word. They would stop and would never continue.

My hunch therefore for the next three weeks is:

Support students to hear and record sounds using jingles and rhymes for 20 minutes every day, and clap hands during writing to hear and record sounds. Will this help my students to write confidently without stopping?

I need to give my students some strategies to help them to keep on writing even if they don't know how to spell a word.

Students need to have develped phonemic awareness and to understand that there is a relationship between spoken sounds and the letters that represent them. They also need to learn and know all letters with their associate sounds. I hope that this would help them to record letters for the sounds they hear of any unknown words.

What I have plan to do is to use clapping as a strategy for my students to use and practice a lot to help them fluent with their writing. I am also using 'quick60 program' which is a program that also supports the same thing.

Here is a video of how quick60 works and that's what I have been doing. I hope this would help teachers out there who have the same kind of inquiry as I do.

Use this LINK to read more about Phonemic Awareness if you want more. 

Check Point #1: After 3 weeks of using 'sentence frame' to help my students improve their paritcipation in writing.

What exactly happened in class with my students?

During oral discussions with students about a particular topic or whatever, I provided a sentence frame for them to use as a starter. Often students talk but not in a sentence, it would be in one word or couple of words and that's all. Using 'sentence frame' was to help my students to talk more and increase confidence to write more as well.

How did I do it in class?

As I mentioned above, I provided the chn with a sentence frame most of the time during whole class/group discussions. I wrote the sentence frame on a piece of paper and read it to the chn and then we read it together. I gave them an example before I let them start talking.

1. Talk with a pair (Teacher listens to each pair - sometimes add on or prompt for more info)
2. Everyone shares back their story - sometimes I make them share what their partner has said. (using the sentence frame provided of course)
3. Get their book and start writing down their ideas after forming their own sentence.

                                                      

Critique (Pros & Con)

- it was really helpful especially with scaffolding oral language and writing skills.

- anyone in class benefited from using of sentence frame (ESOL or not)

- I think, sentence frame could be used at any time such as in Maths - for learning new mathematical language to explain thinking. (I will be using sentence frame in Maths and other areas, too) - will talk about that later.

- definitely increased students talk, participation, and confidence (independent writers)

- only one con that I think of now - ie. sentence frame could limit the ability of a child to be creative and write what they want to. (One boy in my class can talk without sentence frames but he often wants to copy others in class.)

Final Thought
I think overall, sentence frame really helped my students to be creative and enable them to add more information to their story. I think my students were grateful to have sentence frames as a guide to help them get started with their talk and writing.

Next Step:

support students to hear and record sounds by clapping hands, and using jingles and rhymes for 20 minutes every day. I have noticed that most students stopped writing when come across a word that they don't know. Their confidence to hear and record sounds is very limited.

What's going on in class with my students? - dictation and quick60

Last term, I said that I will continue doing few things in the second term. And I thought I'll update what I am doing at the moment regarding those ideas. 

First one would be the dictation. Here are some photos of what we're doing in class at the moment. 

               
And a link from youtube if you want to really look at how some teachers are doing it. It is good to have seen a variety of ways. Hope this might help you.

Secondly, I said that I will continue using Quick60 program. Right now, there are two groups running in my class. One is a reading group, and the other one is an alphabet group. The alphabet groups are the new students who have started school in the middle of term 1, and the reading group are the ones who have completed the alphabet program.

Last focus was on handwriting. This is an ogoing work because it has to be done everyday and for all letters of the alphabets. I can see progress starting from how chn hold their pencils to how they form letters, and I am very proud of them. 

      

Using of TALK MOVES is also ongoing. I once focus on making sure that children repeats each others' ideas as a way of encouraging them to talk and participate. Term 2, my focus will be on WAITING TIME. I will be asking colleagues to observe and give me feedback on how much time that I give a child to process his/her answer.