Decoding and Spelling Patterns

     Ever since I was a little kid, spelling has always been an issue for me.  When I was in elementary school we would always have a spelling test every week, and my parents would have to work with me on those words throughout the entire week for me to do well on my test.  I remember my parents constantly quizzing me on my spelling words, and I can even remember having issues with some of the words.  The word that I had the hardest time with was "picnic."  Now it seems silly, but at the time it was a big challenge for me.                                                               

     With this entire experience in mind, I really like the idea of teaching kids spelling through word games and showing them how some words have similar patterns or rhyming sounds.  It allows the kids to get a better understanding of how different words are related to each other, and that can help them with their spelling when they come across a word they don't know but see that it is similar to a word that they do know.  I think that I might have benefited from this kind of spelling instruction more than just having a list of words that I had to memorize for a test at the end of the week.                                                              

     Is spelling just memorization, or is it also using previous knowledge of sounds, letter groups, and words?  

    What are some other ways to help kids who struggle with spelling?

Here is a link that contains a list of some spelling words that can serve as basic words for students to learn in order to broaden their spelling knowledge.
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/rtrieger/490i/niftyfifty.htm

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Moving on from letter of the week

     Having a letter of the week is a practice that I remember from when I was in school.  I remember having a certain letter that we were learning and we did many different activities with that letter until the end of the week when we were suppose to be able to identify that letter out of mere memorization.  Until reading this week, I just assumed that this was the best way to get kids to learn their letters.  That it was something that they would just have to memorize in order to learn all of them.  However, this weeks reading has changed my mind.
     The idea of having kids learn their letter through names and objects that are familiar to them makes a lot of sense to me.  I can see how just memorizing letters every week would be boring or uninteresting for students, because I would find that boring and uninteresting.  However, incorporating the letters into their everyday lives helps to keep them interested in what they are learning, and helps them make connections in their brain between the letters and things they see everyday.  For example, when I was in kindergarten I had to make this alphabet book using pictures and objects from my house, and I can still remember that book and making it because I was able to use things that I saw everyday and tie them into learning my letters.
     What would be some other good ways to help students draw connections between their everyday lives and reading?  
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Building the Literacy Foundation

     This week, our reading was mostly about how to help students build their foundation for reading and writing.  As soon as I started reading about how it is important for children to pretend read and pretend write, I immediately thought about my own childhood.  I use to ask my parents to re-read the same books so many times that I had the entire thing memorized, and then I would go and "read" them to other people, but I was really just reciting the story that I knew by heart.  I would even memorize road signs so that whenever I would see those certain ones I could say, "Look Dad that says Stop, S-T-O-P, Stop."I also use to always try to write before I knew how to make the actual letters.  I would draw this line of scribbles and say something like, "Look Mom I wrote my name," when in fact it was just a bunch of random lines.
     Also during the reading, I really liked the idea of teaching children about letters and their sounds by using the different names of the students in the class.  Their names are important to them, so I think that doing activities such as asking all of the students whose names start with the letter s to stand up and the the letter r and so on.
     This website has some fun ideas for ways to help children learn their letters: http://blog.maketaketeach.com/10-activities-for-teaching-and-practicing-letters-and-sounds/

Effective Reading Instruction

     After reading the readings for this week, it just really makes me realize how important reading is for education.  Both of the readings discussed how the highest ranking schools, students, and teachers focused on the importance of reading and writing, so that makes me realize that in my own classroom I should focus on reading and writing.  I also really liked some of the ideas that the articles talked about for encouraging conversations between the teacher and students, and encouraging reading at the same time.  For example, I really liked the idea of the teacher meeting with each student once a week to talk about what that student is reading, why they like it, and the teacher can give the student some ideas of other good books to read.

     However, I do think that it is sad that many teachers are not able to have good books for their students to read because they do not have the funding for it.  Or, the teachers have to spend their own money in order to buy the books that their students should and would enjoy reading.

     What are some ways that teachers can get the materials they need?

     What are some ways that teachers can incorporate reading and writing into other subject areas?

     If these studies show how important reading and writing is for students and they show what teachers have to do in order to have better students, then why do more schools not promote these teaching practices?
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