Monday, January 30, 2012

The Importance of Phonemic Awareness

           All teachers know that teaching phonemic awareness to young children is one of the most important things for enhancing young children’s reading and writing skills. Then, how they can teach? It is easy but it is not so simple. If children follow rules and instruction well, it will be easy and fun for young children. However, as many children do, when they get stock or are not interested in it, they might have hard time to learn phonemic awareness.
           Knowing and understanding letters, sounds, and words are the basic things in developing phonemic awareness. When children are family with letters and sounds, they can make or read words and then sentences. Before teachers teach phonics to young children, they should assess what level they are and how much knowledge about phonics they have. Then, teachers can have systematical plans and instructions for each child. Because some children are good at phonics but some children are not. Therefore, even thought the time could be consuming, teachers need to assess individually. The important thing is that when children are wrong, teachers should think with reasonable guess and provide a lot of opportunities for practicing what they are learning. Finally, teachers can set up a shared reading and writing curriculum. For shared reading, teachers may use big books or overhead projections. For shared writing, children can learn some new rules from teachers and can develop to independent writing.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Community Literacy Dig: Kroger

           For my assignment, community literacy dig, our group went to Kroger, a grocery store. When I got there, I firstly could see Kroger sign. Our group thought Kroger would be good one for children to explore their literacy world and have unique experiences. In Kroger, children easily could see environmental prints or words with real things. For example, when children see a word “apple,” they also can see all kinds of real apples.

         
            Children also can learn how they can find things as they see categorized signs. The categorized signs will help people find things that they want to buy. For example, when children want to buy some candies or cracker, they should find where the “candy, cracker” sign is. For instance, children drink milk and milk can be found in “dairy” section. So this will help children develop association skills.
           Next, children can learn about price and it is one of the important things for children’s literacy. Children recognized numbers as prices.




           Finally, Kroger has a lot of advertise signs so it is a great way for children to read literacy there. Because those signs are made in very unique, interesting, attracting ways, children easily can focus about the signs.  

Monday, January 16, 2012

The Arrival by Tan

           When I watched the video, The Arrival, I did not fully understand what the story is. However, I watched it again; it was a story about immigrant. After I understood about the story, I had a different positive and negative opinion.
           Firstly, I really liked the illustration and it was beautiful. When children read the book or watch the video, they will be impressed about its illustration. Because the book’s background is the old, the brown ton of the color is very suitable with the story.
           I also liked the video’s background of music. It there is no music, it could give people to feel empty. When I watched the video, I felt the music also told me the story.
           However, in my opinion, it could be a bit hard to understand for young children. I think before teachers introduce the book, s/he should explain about immigrant and its history. Because a lot of young children do not know about what the immigrant is and why people immigrated in the old time. So they should have some knowledge about it before they have the book.