Transcript of Minishant phonics video
Teacher: Obviously time is a big factor when you’re teaching phonics, you want to make sure that the children have a really good basis of phonics, because that’s … the whole reading skills are based on good phonics knowledge. So I find sometimes that it is difficult and I’ve got to have my time management down to a fine art.
We have lots of different games in the classroom which are phonics based, rhyme lotto, we’ve got a game where they can self-check where they need words, and then actually to a picture, and they turn over the card, another word is given to them. And so they progress through the game in that method, and at the end if they’ve got it all correct they get a tick so they know they’ve done it correctly. There’s lots of little games that are interactive for the children to use in the classroom.
Children love working together as a whole class, it really pulls them together for their reading activities, and we do this a lot with big books. Often we put it up on the white board so that everyone can see every page as it flips over, and we do lots of highlighting of certain areas, perhaps for the Primary 1s they could look for initial sounds in words, perhaps they could look for the common words that they’ve already learnt.
It can be differentiated obviously on to the 2s and 3s for looking for perhaps compound words if they’re dealing with that in the language, or any particular aspect of language you really want to focus on.
There’s a couple of children in Primary 2 who often are eavesdropping into what’s happening in Primary 3, even the formal lessons, and you can see they’re taking an active part by turning round. So often in invite them if they would like to come over and join in, which they frequently do, and it is very surprising. So we’re able to accelerate their learning for the able learner in the multi composite class very, very easily.
We often have a listening morning, talking and listening morning, where the children are sometimes invited to bring in something to talk about, and we always make it our sort of multi composite group. So there’s always maybe a couple from Primary 1, some from Primary 2, some from Primary 3, so that the Primary 1s can get a role model and maybe gain some confidence with their peer group at an older age and interact with them, and I find that this is very successful.
They take turns at speaking about the object that they’ve brought in, and the others will then ask them questions. If they’re not satisfied that they’ve received information, because often we use this as a basis for writing as well, that they perhaps go back and write something else about somebody else’s object. So they have to listen very carefully to what’s being said by the person who’s brought the object in and is talking about it.
I think that it’s wonderful to see how quick the children progress, and because they’ve got older children in the class it’s amazing how much the peer group accelerate the learning. [End of Recording]