Comprehension

During our Focus Instruction Group (FIG) started in October I have been reading with a group of mostly girls that speak Spanish at home that have been asked to read and comprehend in English all day long for the last couple of years. I decided that I'd read stories that they already read in English, in Spanish, talk through what I am thinking, how I am relating it to my own prior knowledge, having to suspend my disbelief, wondering about author's purpose, looking for metaphor and simile, personification, alliteration and other literary elements. I can do this fairly quickly and bilingually because most of the literary elements are cognates that they have to learn anyway.

Some global connections

rockourworld.org
www.oxfam.org.uk/education/gc
isb21.wikispaces.com
www.ascasociety.org/education-learning
teacherswithoutborders.org
usiearn.org

Arts in Education Personal symbols

In August 2009 I went to an Arts in Education workshop. The first day we studied with a story teller, the second day we worked with dance and creative movement. The last day we did visual arts and created our own personal symbols that we then connected three different times to others' symbols. It was a lot of fun.

Gathering sites

I have been gathering sites that I run across and adding them to a Google document that is a work in progress, for sure. It all started before I heard about any online sites that gather bookmarks like deci.ous.com that I haven't visited more than once. I just got tired of switching computers and losing the link to sites that I might share.

I have had some issues with collaborating using Google, like the people couldn't get to the document that were invited. If you stumble on this blog and want to check out my doc so far, see you can access it by going here http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddp4xrwh_85frrkgtgv&hl=en
I don't know that you can, but if you sent me an email at etickner at gmail.com I'll invite you to collaborate.

Since I teach English, Spanish and ukulele at an Elementary school, most of what I have gathered are websites to help younger students, time wasters that could be used for mousing skills, links to safe photo or video sites since YouTube and Google video are blocked, sites that have some interesting music interactiveness or even lessons, math, social studies and science links are there and some art, too. I like having kids draw so when I find a site that helps them learn about that, it is added, too.

I have strayed away from linking to sites that have tons of links like Schrock's guide http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/ because I figure everyone knows about it and uses it if they want to. There are a couple of those sites, though, because when I started gathering, I saw value in not reinventing the wheel. I guess I could have a whole bold heading for that kind of site. That way I don't have to Google search when I want to use them.

I have been taking classes for a reading endorsement. This term we are studying more about Professional Learning Communities. I was in a mock up group of K-1 teachers.

In researching phonemic awareness in teaching young students Spanish, I found one author, José Antonio Herrera Lara whose article titled V Jornadas de Lectoescritura y Matemáticas (Journeys in reading, writing and math) was posted online in October 5,6 and 7 of 2004. Herrera Lara has other articles in Spanish that are about students with disabilities learning to read.

Here are some strategies for early phonemic awareness en español:

Actividades de manipulación de letras

1) A buscar el modelo

Materials: letter cards

Directions: one letter is the goal "model" and the students find that letter as many times as they can from a spread of similar shaped letters. This is a visual-spacial activity, do not say the name or the sound of the letter.

Variation: students find the letter in words in the classroom

2) Letra a letra

Materials: Cards with student names. Technique stretch out the sounds from the letters in names that will be introduced and create a bit of a scenario of what makes that sound, rrrr could be a cat purring, j j j j j could be something stuck in your throat

3) Afina tu oído: Directions: Do #1 but this time give the sound or the letter name, what ever you are going to be working on.

4. El cerdito come letras

The hungry pig likes color words, or names, or nouns. Whatever pig puppet you have eats whatever word type you are studying at the time.

5) Pintamos el Camino:

Materials: big letters, chalk (or yard), large area where it is ok to write on the ground with chalk

directions: student in pairs

Spread out the big letters on the ground

A vocalizes to B where to begin using sounds or letter names

A verbalizes to B the route to take and B draws it or connects it with yarn, then the students "read" the route taken

6) Utiliza tu memoria

Materials: letter cards, (or syllable, word or sentence cards)

Directions: student in pairs

A puts out 3 letters for B to "memorize"

A removes one letter and B guesses which letter is missing (or syllable, word or sentence is missing)

7) A sumar
Materials: a chart similar to the following, at first leaving off the last column. Show the students how the graph can be used to form different open syllables (later add an ending consonant to form closed syllables)

	o	a	i	m
f			fi	fim
p		pa
j

8) Dómino silábica:

Materials: a set of "dominoes" with syllables on each side with lots of repetitions.

Students play dominoes and make a train vocalizing the syllables on each side of the card as they go.

I made a template for this in a Google doc. The idea is that you just use words that are common, syllables or letters. This is an experiment at this point, but do a search and replace for seven words that you want the kids to practice using the numbers as the search and the words as the replace.
Then copy and paste it into another document and enlarge the font to 72. Cut every two columns and every row and it makes a standard set of dominoes with repeats. Print on to card stock and away you play. Similar rules as dominoes. Each person takes between 4 and 7 pieces (depending on how big the group is.) A double (of your choice) starts. Each person matches either end of the playing area. If you don't have a match, you take one from the bank. Play continues until one person runs out of dominoes and they get a point for every domino everyone else has left. Player with the most points at the end, wins.

9) Sopa de letras

Materials: a grid of letters

activity: students count all the letters that make a given sound. Include different letters that make the same sound.

All of these ideas were from José Antonio Herrera Lara's article written in Spanish. I can't take credit for any of them. Although I did add "words and sentences" since his work was predominately on letter sounds and syllables.