Today's classroom is an intriguing mixture of abilities, learning preferences, sensory needs, and communication styles. At this time of the school year, it can be hard to get such a diversity of students continuously excited about isolating the beginning, middle and end sounds in words. How can I continue to meet all the unique needs of my students while teaching an often ho-hum (although vital) foundational skill?
In our class, we have taken turns, chorused together, shouted, whispered, and squawked our answers to phonemic isolation questions. We have written our answers on whiteboards as well as in the air with our finger. We have even answered by sliding our fingers through piles of shaving cream on our desks. But still, questions such as, "What is the beginning sound in jet?" or "What is the middle sound in sun?" have produced decreasing amounts of enthusiasm from my learners.
So, I was excited to discover (quite by accident) that my Kinders are once again eager to isolate phonemes when they can connect the sound with the corresponding letter from the American Sign Language alphabet. The kids think it is great fun to be able to communicate with their hands and no speech. Several of them seemed mystified by the idea that hands could convey so much in place of the spoken word. Thus, we are happily addressing various learning, sensory, and communication needs while simultaneously hitting key Kindergarten learning goals ~ including exploring the diverse populations around us. Woohoo! I am glad this learning train is picking up the speed it needs to make it to the end of this year.
Happy Monday!
P.S. When first introducing this skill, I would focus on isolating only 2 sounds at a time. For example, teach students how to make the c and d signs then sharing only words with that initial phoneme. My students have now built up such a repertoire of sign letters that I can generally present words with 4 or 5 different phonemes at a time.
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