Reading aloud to children is one of the most important activities that you can do to help a child learn to read. There are several aspects of reading that young children learn through the process of learning how to read. One of those aspects is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the awareness that spoken language consists of a sequence of phonemes. There are several ways to help children to learn phonemic awareness. The article, "Supporting Phonemic Awareness Development in the Classroom by Yopp & Yopp states that, "...songs, chants, and word-song games are ideally suited toward developing young children's sensitivity to the sound structure of language"(3).
Dr. Seuss rhymes are also highly recommend to teach kids phonemic awareness for his use of rhyming words, as well as his use of made up words! Dr. Seuss as well as other rhymes also help develop children's linguistic awareness.
Learning the alphabet, and understanding the relationship between letters and sounds is very important to learning how to read as well. This "feed the alphabet monster" is a great activity for kids to practice recognizing letters and producing their sounds.
Using something like this in the classroom is great for children! Kids love to recognize their names and use it as an example. This is a great way for students to see letters of the alphabet in their name, and their classmate's names. Such a great idea when learning the alphabet and learning how to read!
Something to Consider:
- Why is it so important for children to be read to in order to be successful in reading?
Kelly, I love all of the images on you blog post! To answer your question, I think it is extremely important to emphasize the order in which we read to children because that is a foundational block for literacy. Something that we could do as adults is when reading to children, use our fingers to scan the text from left to right. This way the children are hearing us read, and also watching the order in which our finger is moving.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of feed the alphabet monster. I feel like it is very intriguing to kids especially to where they will really engage in it and learn something.
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