PHONICS

Objective

The purpose of these activities is to provide guidelines for the parents to scaffold children's language learning of phonics with educational apps. The phonics learning activities are divided into 4 sessions according to Cope and Kalantzis' (2015) Learning by Design framework.

Materials/Resources

Session 1 - Experiencing/Situated Practice

Duration - 30 mins (Variable)

During the first session. parents can choose educational apps such as Trainertext, ABRACADABRA, Graphogame and so on to teach children the orthographic code of the language and the relationships of spelling patterns to sound patterns.
Parents can point to the letters in the alphabets using picture cards with letters and pronounce the letters for the child after the app has done so to reinforce the child's association of the orthographic form of the word to its sound.
For instance, parents can point to the letter F on a picture card and pronounce it for the child.
Parents can then ask the child to pronounce the letter.

Session 2 - Conceptualising/Overt Instruction

Duration - 30 mins (Variable)

During the second session, as children internalise the relationship between orthographic form and sound correspondence of individual letters, parents can proceed to teach children how to combine individual letters to form words.
Parents can use the same set of cards with letters of the alphabet and use gestures to direct children to look at the letters and then show them how to pronounce whole words by combining the phonemes of each letters of the words.
For instance, parents can first show children picture cards containing the letters "c", "a", and "t" and pronounce each of the phonemes by pointing to the letters.
Then parents can line up the letters together sequentially to form the word "cat" and pronounce the whole word to the child.
Finally, parents can ask children to try to pronounce the word "cat" by combining the individual phonemes or letters "c", "a", and "t" themselves.

Session 3 - Analysing/Critical Framing

Duration - 30 mins (Variable)

During the third session, to develop children's critical thinking or their ability to see patterns, parents can consider switching the onset or first letter of each word and then pronounce the two words with the same rime (string of letters that follow the onset) to the child.
For instance, the parents can first combine the letters "p", "a", "t" on three letter cards and then pronounce the word "pat" to the child.
Then the parents can switch the first letter "p" with "h" and then pronounce the word "hat" to the child.
Finally, the parents can ask the child to pronounce the words themselves.

Session 4 - Applying/Transformed Practice

Duration - 30 mins (Variable)

During the fourth session, to enable children to apply the concepts they have learnt, parents can ask children to perform a nursery rhyme such as Baa Baa Black Sheep or sing a phonics song together.
Parents can choose to first perform for the child and then ask the child to sing the nursery rhyme or phonics song along with them.

Contributor: TWM

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