AIIS, Fun With Phonics, Day 2

Day 2 began with some additional teachers joining the group. Those who attended the first day were asked for feedback. One of the goals is to create a culture of feedback in the school and the classroom. We had a discussion on the differences between assessment vs. evaluation. These two terms are not synonymous, the 21st Century classroom is based on the former.  The teachers who attended Day 1 self-assessed their first day with WWW and EBI.

Our warmup activity was a short clip on the worldwide mania for learning English. It was another indicator on how important these teachers' subject is to students. English teachers play a pivotal role in the student's academic career. It also cast its shadow of influence over post-graduation job search. Through English proficiency, our students will have more numerous opportunities in the local & international job market. Not to mention, most of their classes in university will be conducted in English. There's an international trend, English teachers are in vogue and English is a hot subject critical to a student's future success.

We kicked off this session by defining two Phonemic Awareness terms: onset & rime. These terms are very helpful when applied to blending. They also help peel back another layer of the code. It was at this moment we introduced digraphs as an addition to our 26 sounds from the previous day. We learned actions associated with a few of the most popular digraph sounds. Flashcards were used to practice all the digraphs. Teachers became experts at identifying the onset & rime of every word. The technique of blending onset & rime words became second nature. The concept of word families was also explored.

The teachers had a task associated with onset & rime. This task was based on group work. They were given a chart of digraphs with the rime 'ack'. The object was to make as many sensical words with the word family 'ack'. Each group came up with over 21 words. The code was revealing its usefulness. These 21 words will not slow down young readers when encountered in text. Instead of spending time on trying to pronounce the word, they are free to allot that valuable time to comprehend the sentence they are reading.  This task can be duplicated in the classroom with all the word families.

Now with digraphs out of the way, it was time to tackle the remaining sounds in the form of diphthongs. When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. Diphthongs are scary looking to young readers, they see them and wonder, "Which vowel do I pronounce?"

Luckily, phonics trains the reader how to pronounce them. It creates a long vowel sound. Of course, there are a few tricky ones like 'oo' and 'ou' then can get sorted via explanation and demonstration. Yahooo! We just completed all the 44 sounds in phonics. It was a milestone, but it was not our final destination.

To get the party started right, we played 2 rounds of diphthongs bingo. To make the game more challenging, we showed a picture of a word and the teachers had to find the corresponding diphthong related to that word. Each participant had a unique combination of diphthongs on their playing card. The first to get 5 in a row ... BINGO!

Review was made of the differing sounds between long vowels and short vowels.  This is a delicate point that phonics smooths over with the code. We had a chance to introduce r-controlled vowels. 'R' is a total control freak when placed in an 'er', 'ir' or 'ur' combination. Thankfully, that bossy 'r' did not dominate us, we left his activity till the next day. Phonemic Awareness was permeating throughout room by the close of Day 2.