The important fact of reading

As all of us know to read is a very important part of our leraning process. Until we were only a kids, all adults in our life were always telling us the same thing..."read, read and read!" But maybe this is not the best way to encourage children to read, maybe now as adults we are, we have the responsability to do this in other way.In this post, I will show you the results of my research.

I do not know if you have heard about a website called Pinterest, in this website I have found my inspiration, because there you can find many ideas about what to do with your children in class, how to decorate your future classroom and many ideas about very important things in our future job. It is awesome!

Consequently, in this website I have found many information about how can we make children read in a different way. If we take a close look at any reading book, the structure is always the same, we have the text and then, we have the typical questions about the reading that we can find the answer perfectly composed in the text, child only have to come back to the text and look for the answer. In my opinion, this is not the perfect way to do it, because they do not have to involve themselves in the reading, they only have to reread.

First of all, it is very important to choose a reading according to the age of our children, because in this way is easier for them to understand the content of the book and  they can feel a connection with the characters.

We can show them some tricks to do a comprehensive reading. For example they can use thinkmarks to remarck important things, as you can see in the next picture.

Then, instead of answer the questions of the book we can establish with them a debate or a conversation about their feelings, their opinions or their doubts about the reading. This is a good way to make them thinking about the reading without the pressure of answer questions. We could use some of these questions to start.

Second, we can talk about our own connections with the book or with the characters, and they can make a mind map or a schema with drawings or sentences. Here you have an example. This is a perfect way to involve them with the story and make them speak in english about the reading.

Thirdly, we can propose them to write their own version of the reading, changing whatever they want. As a result we will work their understanding of the reading, because for create a new story from the first version they will have to understand it, and with the previous steps that we did, they will have a wide pack of opinions from their partners about the reading, and now, they could create their own story. At the same time, they will work on their writing, because they will have to use the same structures of the reading and reinforce their grammar.

Finally, I think is very important to create a nice reading time for children, because their parents and us are their examples, and if we construct an awesome reading time, when they will  be adults, they will be grateful for our work. 

To conclude I leave you this incredible sentence that I love i.

"The more that you read,

the more things you will know.

The more that you learn,

the more places you will go."

Dr. Seuss

We as storytellers

One day, Raquel came into the classroom and put her power point about Storytelling. When she asked us about "what  we thing about it", inmediately I thougth about the storytelling who came to our village in summer. In my opinion, it is very difficult to transmit a story to children, because you have to catch their attention during all the performance with your voice, your gesture, your experience.

Then, Raquel showed us an awesome storyteller, Michael Rosen. When I saw him, I thought that he was a little bit strange, but during the story I changed my opinion, he was amazing! He knows perfectly how to use the voices, the gestures, and also the entonation to catch our attention. It is incredible how he reaches his objective without any objects or context around him, he only uses stories in which children can feel reflected on them.

In this link you can find an awesome story called Chocolate Cake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BxQLITdOOc

After that, we had the oportunity to create our own story and told our classmates in class. This part of the activity was very funny because we had the opportunity to create the gestures, the topic and a wonderful power point. Our story was about the real History of the Trojans and the Greeks. We wanted to relate it with History because is a good way to remember the real events.

Here you have our story:

Once upon a time there was a beautiful Greek princess called Helena. One day, she decided to escape for love with the Trojan prince Paris. The news reached Greece. They became angry and they decided to invade Troy.

After 10 years of war, the Greeks built a huge wood horse with soldiers inside.

-          “Toc, toc” said the horse

-          “Who is there?” asked the Trojans

-          “I´m a Greek peace present” said the horse

-          “OK. Welcome to Troy” said the Trojans

When the night felt, while the Trojans were sleeping, the Greek soldiers fought and fought and fought and the Greeks beat the Trojans. The beautiful Greek princess with the Trojan prince come back home and they lived together happily ever after.

And here you can see our performance in class.

Thanks for your attention.

Isabel

An awesome methodology...Jolly Phonics!!!

Jolly Phonics is a fun and child centred approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics. With this method, children learn each of 42 letter sounds with actions and songs. It is a multi-sensory method because children work at the same time with sight, movement, listening and speaking.

At the beginning of the lesson children listen to the letter sound song and learn the movement. Then, they can repeat the song with the movement and learn the sound. Afterwards, teacher tells them the story created for this letter sound, and tries to improve the pronunciation with some examples. Finally, they have a worksheet-book in which children can consolidate the acquired knowledge.

In this link you can find several jolly phonics songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCjJYB07aSU

From my personal experience, I was fortunate because last year, in my practicum II, I had the  oportunity to work with this methodology in Infant Education. The first time I saw children making these sounds and pronounce them in a correct way, I was very impressed! It is awesome to see small children doing that. However and without any doubt, the best moment was when I saw them doing dictations only with sounds and gestures, It was amazing! In this moment, I told my tutor that I wanted to do it, and I started to do the dictations. I gave a small blackboard for a group of students and a piece of chalk, then, I started to do the sound with its gesture, and with some sounds and gesture I formed a word and they had to show me and their partners the written word. 

Along the days I could see that children learn the sounds perfectly, but also I could see that they had a problem because many times they related the English sound with the Spanish letter, and we had to correct them and repeat the sounds and its graphy.

Regrettably, in the school there was not a connection between the methodology used in Infant Education and the methodology used in Primary Education, because with Jolly phonics they worked in phonics and when they came to Primary, the classes were like Spanish lessons but in English. 

In my opinion, this method is tremendously effective if teachers and school have a coherent methodology to continue the work that they started in Infant Education.