AIIS, Fun with Phonics, Day 4

Going back to yesterday's analogy of a LRT system, Phonemic Awareness was the tracks and Phonics was the stations. We are almost complete with building the system. Day 4 was the session to add the trains. The trains and coaches are a indispensable part of the set-up. In this case, Sight Words are the trains and coaches. 

Choo Choo, all aboard! We started the morning with a laugh by watching a short Thai parody of an English classroom after our morning round of feedback. It relayed the importance of proper pronunciation. Please note, don't make fun a person who mispronounces words, it is usually an indicator they taught it to themselves via reading. That is a commendable feat and an easy fix. Consequently, the greater the understanding a person has of phonics, the less likely this will occur. 

As I climb down from my soapbox, the moment had finally arrived to introduce the amazing Sight Words. They are also known as high frequency words or Dolch words. Even though they number only about 220, the Dolch words comprise approximately 60-75% of what is printed in almost any piece of children’s literature. Many of the Sight Words do not follow the convention of phonics, they require explanation and demonstration. Sight Words are meant to be repeated and practiced for automatic recognition. Therefore, Sight Word acquisition is an essential building block in helping a student become a fluent reader. 

We jumped into the subject by exploring one of my favorite Sight Word teaching aids. It is a set of flashcards with succinct pictures conveying meaning to some abstract words. We discussed different methods to teach sight words in the classroom. We gave a couple examples on how to explain Sight Words who don't follow the rule of phonics. Let's take the word 'be' as a sample. 'Be' should be pronounced with a short vowel by the rule of phonics, not a long vowel. Let's break it down. The 'b' is behaving according to phonics, but the 'e' is not. The 'e' should be short, but it is acting long. Due to its irregularity and high frequency, we must use automatic sight recognition for this word.

Lists were distributed with all the Sight Words. The list of words were divided into groups by grade level. They are the benchmarks for student's mastery of Sight Words. Sight Words are meant to be practiced often. So we played 2 amusing rounds of Secret Sight Words. Teachers were shown a list of pictures. Each picture in the list represents a letter. They must identify the picture and use the first letter from the picture's word in making a new word. Guess correctly, you'll have gotten a Sight Word for an answer.  The teachers got a kick out of the task.

We explored a resource that doesn't just isolate the sight words, but puts them in a context. When you present sight words in short sentences rather than in isolation students are more likely to remember them because they develop an understanding of the word’s significance and meaning. This eye-catching resource is printed on multi-colored paper and is accompanied with recording sheets to track student progress.

We managed to squeeze in a little theory on Day 4 by discussing 5 Myths of English Language Learners (ELL). Our understanding of a second language acquisition has developed significantly over the years and it continues to be refined. Unfortunately, they are a few outdated ideas still floating around in the field and lingering in the literature. We had a healthy discussion on some of the facts of language development. It concluded another productive day with a dynamite bunch of teachers. 

I was fortunate to run into a former student Aziz at the end of the day. Man, time sure does fly when you are having fun with phonics.