Sunday, October 16, 2011

Phoneme Jump

Reading students practiced their listening skills this week with a phonemic awareness activity which took us outside. What is a phoneme, you ask? A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound- and as parents or teachers you are already familiar with the alphabet sounds, most of which have their own phonemes (an example of an exception is C which "steals" sounds from other letters like K and S). Phonemic awareness activities increase a child's understanding of phonemes and can be particularly helpful as they segwey into blending words and completing writing activities.

Students first chose a picture card from a large stack, then as a group we isolated each sound before jumping it out with a jumprope. For example, in the word CAT, there are three phonemes: /C/, /A/, and /T/. In RING, there are three as well (one is a digraph): /R/, /I/, /NG/. Students enjoyed being so active in reading- and of course, the fact that is was raining (on and off) was a bonus!

Below are pictures of two students with their picture cards before jumproping.

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