Phonemic Awareness packet for younger readers

The material itself looked pretty good— didn’t spend much time with it as I am not in a classroom, but I was bothered by the statement that you should devote just 15 minutes a day to it. I don’t know how many kids would be helped by just 15 minutes a day on something important like this, perhaps some who didn’t need it all that badly to begin with. Makes me think it came from 4 Block land.

I think the regular classrooms should spend substantial time on this stuff, maybe with Open Court. :-)

—des

Fifteen focused minutes can make a *huge* difference — especially as this is aimed at the general population, not the folks who struggle with sounds. Most kids need to be shown & taught a little, and then it naturally gets incorporated into the way they process language so they’re “reviewing” many times during the day. (THat’s one of the differences between dyslexic & normal kids — the same activities just don’t naturally get that part of the brain activiated.)

Glad you clarified the 15 *focused* minutes, as I am not sure that would always be done. See I have been a public school teacher too. And I know if someone were to say, “do 15 minutes of ___” what that usually meant.
5 min. get the materials out, open books, write some junk on the board.
5 min. transition. The kids are going from one thing to another. Then you get 5 min. In fact, used this with nice effect when I really didn’t want to teach something the district thought was important enough to be law. (Rebelious teacher here).

So I’ll buy the thing about 15 focused minutes as being valid for a normal learning kid, I just don’t think it would really happen that way.

—des

Yup, that’s why I tend not to recommend that parents fight to force a program on a teacher. I’d rather have a teacher trying really hard to prove her program *worked* with my kid (so I would say “oh, so your balanced literacy program really does teach phonics, so I can expect to see that he knows how to read silent e and short vowel words while he’s enjoying rich authentic reading experiences?”) than trying really hard not to gag on what I’m forcing her to do, as she “knows” it isn’t going to work and will doom my child to hating reading forever. (They must think little of the allure of reading if they think it’s so easy to make kids hate it…)

>trying really hard not to gag on what I’m forcing her to do, as she “knows” it isn’t going to work and will doom my child to hating reading forever. (They must think little of the allure of reading if they think it’s so easy to make kids hate it…)[/quote]

Yep, Sue :-) (aka guest), maybe you didn’t know this, but even as little as ten minutes a day of real phonics will make your child hate reading for life. I’m sure there is real research on this. OTOH, if you do “word families” somehow they will not.

tongue firmly in cheek,

—des