Literacy Blog 2- sizes, shapes and so much more!

Last Tuesday was great!   I absolutely love my Kindergarten buddy.  For the sake of confidentiality I am going to refer to my K-buddy as G-man. 

When I was working with G-man I got a sense that, according to Fox’s five word learning stages, he is past the pre-alphabetic stage and somewhere in the partial alphabetic stage.  I am hoping that after tomorrow I will have a better sense of exactly where G-man is.  Before my partner and I started working with G-man, his teacher informed us that the students in her class are currently “stretching” out words to better hear the letter sounds.  That was the first time I had heard of such a technique; so when I came upon the technique in Fox I was rather happy.  It was nice to see actual techniques from text material being used in the classroom.  For the last few quarters I feel as though I have been reading a lot of material, mostly theory, but not getting to see it actually happen in a classroom.  Putting the text to practice allows for better comprehension as to what works and what may not work.  I look forward to seeing more of Fox’s techniques each time I work with G-man.

I have always known that learning how to read is a big process, but I never realized exactly how many steps children go through.  I especially had no idea children see words as shapes.  It is amazing how children see words differently based on shape and length.  I found Fox to be rather informative with the details of each aspect of learning how to read.  I also found it extremely useful that chapter 2 has so many useful activities; I plan on using them in my classroom and with my 4-year-old niece who is currently at the pre-alphabetic stage and is eager to learn how to read.