Literacy Week 3

Fox Chapter 2:
Fox identifies seven ways children demonstrate sound awareness. Choose one of these and then select two activities (also from chapter 2) that support the development of this sound-awareness skill. What is the focus of the activity? What are the directions? What would you be looking for to let you know the children are using the targeted skill (assessment)?

In reading Fox, Chapter 2, the author identifies phonemic awareness as a way that children demonstrate sound awareness. When children learn to identify single sounds, called phonemes, they begin an important step towards reading and writing. Children develop phonemic awareness by learning to isolate sounds, segmenting sounds, manipulating sounds and blending sounds. Two activities that support the development of blending sounds are Finger Puppet Talk and Arm Blending.

In Finger Puppet Talk the focus of the activity is for “children to listen to the finger puppet say words sound by sound and then blend sounds together to pronounce the word” (Fox, Ch 2, pg 53) The directions are that teacher uses a finger puppet and introduces this puppet as one who only talks in sounds. The finger puppet pronounces the word man as /m/-/a/-/n/. The children say the whole word. The teacher would be looking for the children to say the whole word after the finger puppet sounds the word out. Teacher might go over several words and then repeat three to four as an assessment to see if the targeted skill of blending is being used to say the whole word.

In Arm Blending the focus of the activity is for children to use their whole arm as “ a kinesthetic approach to blending that they can use whenever they are reading.” (Fox, Ch. 2, Pg. 53) The directions are that the teacher can have the children imagine that they use their arms to blend words. They use their shoulder, crook of their arm and wrist to blend words. They say the word as they slide their hand from their shoulder to their wrist. Then the children say the whole word again. By using their arms they can remember placing the sounds in the right order. The sweeping motion from shoulder to crook of the arm to the wrist is a tactile way to remember what their sound like as they blend the word.

Both of these activities can be powerful ways for children to develop phonemic awareness and to learn blending sounds.