Hope Sharps

Module 4 - CIRG 653

Describe at least two situations of children gaining awareness. Provide details that connect to /
relate to the ideas presented in this chapter. Finally, discuss what quality teaching interactions would
look like give the situations you have described. Please include the reference for our text and other
resources you use. No more than 4 pages.

I am currently working with my Kindergarten students on phonemic

awareness, specifically rhyming words and beginning sounds. Clay quotes
Yopp as defining phonemic awareness as awareness of phonemes, or
sounds in the speech stream (By Different Paths to Common Outcomes, pp.
52-53). Clay goes on to mention that phonemic awareness has nothing to do
with the letters that one sees; it has to do with the sounds that we hear. I
have one little girl in my group that seems to be acquiring this awareness
quicker than the other students in my group; however, she is confusing
sounds with letter-sound correspondence.
An activity may sound something like this:
Teacher: Tell me the beginning sound of the word cat.
Student: C
Teacher: Tell me just the sound that you hear at the beginning. I am not
ready for the letter yet.
Student: /c/
Teacher: Tell me the beginning sound of the word mom.

Students: M, wait /m/.

Teacher: Very good.
This particular student is beginning to show awareness of how to listen and
what to listen for in words. Not only is this student able to tell me the
beginning sounds; she is also starting to show me an awareness of ending
sounds in rhyming words. Once I explained to her that rhyming words have
the same ending sounds and gave her some examples, she was able to
provide me several words that rhymed with the word that I gave her. I plan
to continue to work on phonemic awareness with this group in hopes that it
will help with the students to have success in reading and writing.
Quality teaching interactions when teaching phonemic awareness include
the following activities:

rhymes, jingles, poems, songs, and choruses,

stories read aloud, some selected for their play with sounds,
rereading aloud what emphasizes rhyme, alliteration, phoneme

substitution, or segmentation,
games like What Im thinking of begins with ?
manipulative activities with buckets of letters, magnetic letters and
boards, and masking cards; and demonstrations and shared activities

that call attention to sounds as one kind of naming letters,

any message writing the children do in which a teacher asks What can
you hear? What else can you hear? At the beginning? At the end? In
the middle? (By Different Paths to Common Outcomes, pp. 53-54).

I imagine books that focus on alliteration and rhyming, such as those written
by Dr. Seuss; games that require students to make matches based upon
rhyming pictures or pictures that have objects that start with the same
sounds; and activities that focus on students identifying sounds in words as
part of a quality program that focuses on phonemic awareness. I currently
pull phonemic awareness activities from several different places, one of
which is the Florida Center for Reading Research.
I remember when my son first became aware of words in regards to both
reading and writing them. The first word that he learned to read was his
name. I have a video of him pointing at the blocks on his wall and saying
each of the letters followed by him saying his name. He was so proud of
himself. I can also remember him seeing his name and saying, Thats KKs
name. With the beginning of preschool, other words were added, such as
mom, dad, and his best friend Ryans name. Clay mentions that this learning
can go either of two ways, from reading to writing or from writing to
reading (By Different Paths to Common Outcomes, p. 49). My sons has
gone both ways, depending on the type of word and how he is presented
with it. In this same section of her book, Clay mentions that print in the
environment provides many examples of attention-getting words (By
Different Paths to Common Outcomes, p. 49). Kaden quickly learned
McDonalds, STOP, and Ford because he saw these words often. We passed
by McDonalds every day I took him to the babysitter, he saw STOP on signs

as we drove through our town, and his daddy worked at the local Ford
dealership.
Quality teaching interactions when working with first words would include
providing the student with many opportunities to see different words. The
more exposure a student has to something the more likely he or she will
learn it. Since environmental words provide so many examples of attentiongetting words, it would be beneficial to have these placed around the
classroom. Having these environmental words around the room will provide
students a connection to real-world situations, which should help them in
understanding and learning what is being presented.
Clay provides a section in her book, By Different Paths to Common
Outcomes, titled What Do Quality Teaching Interactions Look Like? In this
section, she summarizes some work from Yopp and Singer, which states that
there is a shift from teacher responsibility to student responsibility in regards
to awareness. It is mentioned that it is the teachers role to control this shift.
To go along with this shift, Clay mentions several times in the readings for
this module that it is important for teachers to find out what students already
know so that they do not spend time teaching students something that they
already grasp. In addition to finding out where students are, it is important
to check progress often to see if students understand what is being taught.
These are important in creating quality teaching interactions with students.

Reference
Clay, Marie. (2014). By Different Paths to Common Outcomes. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Florida Center for Reading Research. www.fcrr.org.