CELTA is highly acclaimed TESOL credential. It gives you a toolkit of skills for teaching. A CELTA course will touch on Phonemic Awareness with the Phonetic Chart, but they don't delve into phonics. My experience with phonics was developed in the field. I had great mentor, Niamh Dunne. With her help, I had ample chances to ply my phonic skills in multiple Year 1-3 classes and with numerous English proteges. The majority of textbooks today use a phonics approach, but the bulk of teachers have not been trained in phonics. The solution is simple, let's spend some time coaching in phonics.
I'll be the first tell you phonics is not a perfect system, but it's a complete and effective system. Using Phonemic Awareness, Phonics and Sight Words, you increase your students success rate in reading and fluency. It is a proven system for first and second language learners. UK and most of the US schools have adopted this methodology for instruction in their lower primary classrooms. The results have been improved literacy scores across the board. While reading, students who know phonics and sight words can spend more of their precious time on comprehension instead of pronunciation.
Dr Fauzi and Pn Suzana are the heads of AIIS. They have a long history of trying to give their students the competitive edge in education. It was an easy sell to arrange a 5 day training event called Fun with Phonics for their fine English teachers. We would meet daily for 4 hours over 5 consecutive days. The goal was to boost the teachers' skills in Phonemic Awareness and give them practical resources to apply the above mentioned skills.
As soon I as entered into AIIS, I ran into a few familiar faces like Khairy and Saiful. Plus there were a whole lot of new faces, I had the good pleasure to meet. The Year 5 classroom on the second floor was selected as the site. After a little setup, the show began.
We started with a quick survey of the teachers about their backgrounds in phonics. All the teachers present had a range of experiences with phonics. Some had formal training while others were using phonics in lessons. Next, we had a warmup activity that was well received. We came to the conclusion that English is a dynamic language that for the most part follows a code that might pose a challenge to our students. This set the stage for our journey into Phonemic Awareness. The positive bunch of teachers humoured me with learning first 26 of 44 sounds of phonics with their actions accompanied. There we were, a group of professionals making sounds and gestures like a roomful of eager youngsters.
It turned out to be fun. We practiced methods to distinguish sounds from letters. A quick couple of rounds of phonics charades drove the lesson home. We spent some time on the short vowel sounds. Afterwards, we added the art of segmenting and blending to our talents. We did a drill using short 'a'. It led way to the official introduction to CVC words, (Consonant Vowel Consonant). Subsequently, we applied blending and segmenting to a CVC words review.
Throughout Fun with Phonics, there was a constant thread of professional development woven into the program. I want to motivate teachers to achieve awesomeness in their craft. Not a tall order, especially with this talented lot. We listened to Ted Talks' Rita Pearson, "Everybody Needs a Champion." We put an end to the blame game and started to take off with the train game. By the time we reached 1pm, the teachers were so involved they didn't realize the session passed so rapidly. Like the saying goes,"Time flies when your having Fun with Phonics."
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