1. Seminar Two Self Reflection Phonemic Awareness/Phonics Seminar Two Self Reflection Phonemic Awareness/Phonics Ep220 Reading and Writing Methods

2.  What do you recall about your earliest memory of reading?  Was there a favorite book or author you enjoyed as a child?  Did you seek out books as a child and create opportunities to read?  Did reading come easily to you in school or was it a skill you struggled with?

3.  How might reflecting on your own experiences as a reader help you to reach students?  If you teach the strategies, you must understand how those strategies work.  Reflect on what you do as a reader and ask yourself why you do it.  You will gain valuable insights to pass on to your students.

4. What is the difference between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics?  Phonemic awareness is the ability - to hear sounds that make up words - to see relationships between sounds - to alter and rearrange sounds to create new words.  Sound segmentation c-a-t

5.  Some of the most appropriate ways to do this with young children is through songs, rhymes and books.  There is a difference between phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonemic awareness focuses on sound units (phonemes) while phonics focuses on the association to the written symbol. Phonemic awareness must come before phonics.  PA and knowledge of phonics develop gradually and simultaneously

6. What is whole language and how is it different form phonics?  Whole language focuses primarily on recognizing the whole word and its meaning within the context of the sentence.  Whole Language approach believed that phonics’ emphasis on repetition and memorization of rules was detached from the goal of reading, which is extracting meaning from text. It was also believed that it was so boring for children that many lost any motivation to learn and enjoy reading.

7.  Whole language programs believed that if schools created ‘print-rich’ classrooms, students would discover literacy for themselves. But as reading scores appeared to decline over the last decade, researchers returned to phonics as a way to improve reading scores.  The National Reading Panel in the United States did a thorough review of research into phonics as part of a scientific assessment of reading in 2000. They came to some interesting conclusions. Phonics, when taught systematically and explicitly, produces better reading results than whole language programs (Chaban,n.d.).

8. What can you tell parents they can do to prepare their children for school?  Immerse them in print and language  games, puzzles, books, magazines, magnetic letters, tactile activities, sandpaper letters, shaving cream, sponges, stamps  Role model, show how exciting reading can be 

9.  Prior experiences important  Must develop background knowledge  Provide as many real life experiences as possible.  Give some examples of how you could do that?  If you can’t provide real life experiences, then do it through books, technology or role playing  ADHD students will need short periods of high interest activities that involve motion.

10. What are the different types of classroom settings that paraprofessionals may be placed in?  Regular classroom  Mainstreamed class  SPED room  One on one  How are these settings different?

11. Sum it Up!  Self reflection is important so that you are able to understand and pass on what you know about reading strategies.  Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds of spoken words and phonics focuses on the letter sound relationship in written words.  A systematic direct approach to teaching phonics has proven to get better test results than the Whole Language approach.  Must expose children early to as many different types of language experiences as possible to ensure success in school when learning to read.  Para professional placements can include many different settings.