My students are on spring break for the next two weeks and because of that I thought I would talk a little bit about my new job that also pertains to literacy! I hope that is acceptable! If not I will surely write another post. Anyways...
I was just recently hired at Buffalo Hearing and Speech as a clinic aide. I aid two speech pathologists in running the Language to Literacy program at a charter school in Buffalo. The children that we work with are children who need some touching up on their literacy skills. I thought that I would talk about this because I find it very neat how they go about teaching the children. I have only had one day of work so far so I don't have a lot to talk about, but it was definitely interesting!
I am not sure how much literacy these children lack because I was not around for any pre-assessments or when they chose which students got to be in the program -- but we began our first class discussing proper classroom rules, and also introduced the initial [p] sound as well as some vocabulary. We didn't go into depth about the [p] sound much, but their homework was to find five items around their house that started with 'p'. Although this seems simple, it allows the children the opportunity to not only think of the labels of objects but also how they are spelled. It is actually more cognitively complex than it seems! The introduction of vocabulary correlates with our class discussion of vocabulary, which is neat! The speech pathologist introduced approximatly seven new words and had each word on its one piece of paper along with a picture posted on the wall. She discussed these words in short and then we stepped away from them for awhile. Later on we started reading the story "Duck in the Truck" in which all of the new vocabulary words were found. When we came across some of the words she would ask students if they remembered the word or definition. These vocabulary words will stay posted on the wall and we will continue to add to the list while we read the story repeatedly for the next few days.
All of the things that we did in this program correlate to things that we have discussed in Reading First from phonics to comprehension, and I find it very interesting to see all of it being used first hand!
Sorry this was so long! (...and I hope it's acceptable for my weekly post!)
That's awesome that you had the opportunity to see all of these topics we have discussed in class being used. I like how the vocabulary words are posted on the wall for reference; it will really help the children remember the words and think about their definition every time they look at that wall (once they remember what they mean, of course)! I also like the idea of the homework activity you mentioned, involving finding items starting with the letter "p." I never realized how much children would need to think in order to decipher something that seems so simple; really interesting!
ReplyDeleteIt is deinitely an awesome and interesting experience! These children are lacking literacy skills for their age and professionals who have had schooling in these areas are combining what they've learned into the perfect learning experience for these children!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds awesome! It's cool hearing things from this perspective because my brother was in speech pathology classes growing up. I always used to have to help him speak and be understood, so it's cool to know that there is a rhyme and reason to everything that you guys do! It's so much more complicated than any of us realize, I think, so it's great to hear it from you!
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