PHS Friday Letter

Phonological games are presented to the class in spurts throughout the week to help children to hear letter sounds throughout given words, as well as letters blended together and segmented. A regular game I play is “ABC and vegetable goop, what will you find in your alphabet soup.” I vary this game to include having children name the beginning, middle or ending letters of a given word, or to think of words that begin with certain letters. Initial letter substitution activities are used to help the kids to manipulate letters and their sounds within word families—take the ‘b’ off of ‘bat’ and put an ‘m’ to make ‘mat.’ Hours of fun can be had with this kind of game, but I usually limit it to between five and ten minutes. “Old man lazy, drives me crazy, up the ladder, down the ladder, ‘t’ ‘o’ ‘p’ spells…” is another easy to play fill up the transition moments activity. “Hanghouse” (a sort of more humane version of “hangman”) is a fun game where children guess letters of a mystery word, and we sound out the letters as they are written.

Shared reading of “Big Books” (with enlarged text) provides another way to practice recognizing sounds and words, as I may point to the onset (beginning sound) of a word and have the class make the sound, and then work, when appropriate, on middle and ending sounds, too. This is done with the books that have already been shared with the class a number of times, as I do not want to interrupt the fluidity and pure enjoyment of reading a new book by breaking down the text. The familiarity of the text lends a non-threatening invitation to read along. We have a number of short, predictable kinds of readers available in the room that we read together, either as a whole class or in small group or one-one settings. These readers use high frequency sight words that children are beginning to recognize and also provide clues to the context through the illustrations. Guiding children through the reading may involve pointing to the words and prompting them with the initial sound, checking for words that make sense, helping them to recognize words that repeat throughout the short story, and noticing how they use the book (do they turn the pages from left to right, etc.).

One of my favorite parts of kindergarten, and I hope for the students, is reading a variety of folktales from around the world. I enjoy seeking out engaging stories in the library or bookstores, and bringing them into the class to share. As I read, I promote audience participation, such as through sound effects or body movements, as much as possible—I do need to monitor the energy level, as a room full of out-of-control kindergarteners is not a pretty sight! I can tell if a story is a “hit” when kids ask to have it read again or if they incorporate parts or characters of a story in their play. Now, time to read before I go to bed.

Steve