the logic of English 6

A solution to the problem of English Now that you´ve completed your phonogram practice I´d like you to explore another difficulty with learning English The fact is that there are multiple spellings to the sound of English On page 95 of your teacher training menu you´ll see a chart representing the sounds and how they are spelled in English and many teachers don´t even realize that this is where one of the hang-ups are for students students hear a sound and then they are not sure which spelling to choose Well, let´s look at this problem a little bit more closely Out of the 45 sounds in English only 15 of them are represented by only one spelling. So if you hear the sound "a", you absolutely know how to spell it If you hear the sound "ah", there´s only one spelling Now, 22 of the sounds, can be figured out logically there´s a spelling rule or something that will help us to determine which phonogram to use or they have a very rare spelling so some of the sounds are represented in multiple ways but one of these ways may be used in only 8 or 9 words on the whole language, so that can be very helpful in helping us to determine which spelling to use and you can see a list of the 22 that can be figured out logically or have rare spellings on page 96 of the Teacher Training Manual now 10 of the sounds which is quite a lot, it’s a four almost a four quarter have multiple spellings that are very common and so when we are teaching English we need to come up with a strategy to help students to understand the phonogram or the sounds that have multiple spellings and so, um, we need first of all admit them that this is happening and that this is one of the areas that they may be struggling with when it comes to spelling and we need to create a system to help them master those words now, before we dig in to actually experiencing this as the students do I’d like I'd like to talk about some of the reasons that students struggle with reading and spelling, and how this relates to these multiple sounds. So first of all, one of the most common reasons students struggle with reading and then also with spelling is inadequate practice. Whenever there's something that has an area of memory to it, that we have to internalize, we need to practise it regularly. and I´d like to visualize it like this: in one student or one child is learning to ride a bike and they have mastered or are starting to ride a bike with training wheels we don´t go out the reality is that, learning happens with repetition over time and if we don´t have that repetition over time we tend to forget One of the examples that I sometimes give is when I was at the university doing my bachelors' work I was actually a chemistry major and one of my favourite classes.. amm... in all of my under gradual work was organic chemistry. However, today I can't even really tell you what organic chemistry was about and the reason is because I haven't used it. Now if for using something again and again and again, then we will be able to recall it.. am.. and so with reading which is so foundational on the phonograms, this is something that we need to practise over time. It is also important we understand Chose the correct one It's multiple choice It's actually how most of our students's testing is done That is the easiest level of knowing The second most difficult thing would be to see a phonogram and be able to read it sounds or to see a word and be able to read it That is another level of knowing The deepest level of knowing in language would be to hear a word and then be able to spell it because if you can spell a word you absolutely know how to read it but if you can read a word you don't necessarily know how to spell it so when we are practising with our students it's important to practice all the depth of learning we need to practise in a multiple choice setting where they can choose the correct answer from I's also impregnance educators that we understand the elements of effective practice, now row practice is very boring for the students and they really struggle with it and that should be true I mean we don’t want to do anything with killing drowe to have the practice be boring. Instead practice should always be fun, should be engaging we should use games, we should use activities that engaged the students interests level We should practice that it’s meaningful to them. We also need to practice on a daily bases Sometimes we don’t understand and we think that if we tell the students information on one day that they should know the next day and the students show up to class, or you know with the tutor and they look like they never seen him before. Well that’s completely normal it's when we practice things daily over a period of time that we internalized them Another literacy instructure I know was actually on an airplane and she sat down next to a gentleman in his 50s or 60s they started a conversation and this gentlemen um asked her what she did and she said well I teach reading and I'm off to do a literacy training course and he said like oh oh oh ow f off now immediately she knew that he have some exposure to the orton phonograms because that whould be the ough phonogram in all six sounds and so she said wll sir how do you know this and he said oh well how could I not I learned it in elementary school and she said you learned it in elementary school And you still remember it, how can that be? and he said, well how could I not remember it. We practiced it every day for five or six years. And she said, every day. How on earth did you have time to practice the phonograms every day? And he said oh it didn't take long. We used to raise ourselves. We could read all 70 phonograms in less than 90 seconds. And what she learnt at that point and what I've really taken away from it is that reading in the phonogram spelling These are the foundations to everything else we do The practice does not need to take a long time but we should include 5 min of practice or shorts amounts of practice over many years so the students internalized this information Now we need to remember: don’t assume that if you do a long 2h lesson on phonograms and spelling on Monday, that you know they will retain that info on Friday if you dont practice sistematically. It´s important to remember the principle that what we do not use, we lose Practice should it be short, it´s important not to bored our students with long, long lessons in this And it should be meaninful we also need to respect the age and learning styles of the students and we need to prioritize I think one of the biggest issues that we face in our schools, in our home schools, in our tutoring sessions is that students are asked to complete everything, all the subjects. and if they are in 4th or 5th grade and they are struggling with reading and now they have science and history and literature and all this things powered on topping them many times we don't place the priority we should be on reading instruction. I highly recommend that we just set aside some of the other subjects for a very short period of time and teach the students intensely how to read and then everything they do will be much more efficient. The same is true with spelling if the students are too struggling with spelling to the point that they're struggling to write words as they are doing composition. If we take a short period of time and make spelling a high priority and teach them the rules on phonograms it would save them countless hours in the future. So now I would like to go ahead and give you some ideas for how to mastering spelling that have multiple options. One of the best things you can do actually is to create a spelling journal sounds a spelling journal but this is not something you need to buy Rather you can create this very simple notebook I've an example here up on the screen Where you can see that the way we organize the spelling journal is by sound So this page shows the long A sound and some of the options for spelling it In spelling journal, students then can write down words that they are struggling with because of the sounds but categorize them by the sound they are struggling with, and by their spelling And this is very helpful, because It creates a systematic tool and also creates a reference tool for students They can put their spelling word in here but they can aslo put words that they're misspelling in other subjects We should also practice those words in meaningful ways Use them in sentences, learn the grammar of the word Learn the rithm of the word So practice (am) spelling not by just sending the student to copy the word thirty or fourty times but by using the word in meaningful context We also should be using multi-sensory games The logic of english phonogram and spelling game book has lot of ideas and in your teacher training manual you are going to see many ideas in this section for games that you can use with your students that are a lot of fun And in this way they can engage with the material and not just memorise it in a boring way. An other idea for you is to leverage the fact that English is morpho-phonemic Now, we talked earlier in this session about how English is a morpho-phonemic language which means that language is based on both sound and meaning So let’s say that the students has a word like night Where we are using the three letter I Many students will misspell this word using a single letter I and a silent final e So let's think we wanna help them remember that this is the three letter i So one of the ways we can do this is we can say to them Well, what are some of their evidence What are some other words that inlcude the word night. Why don't you take a minute just now and think what words can you think of that use night, maybe nightingale, nightly, tonight. But you'll see, here is a whole list of words and that use the word night in them. You can find this list on page 100 of your teacher training manual. As students learn these words which incorporate the word night, they'll be practicing the spelling and they'll be expanding their vocabularies. Another idea that I like to do when a student is having a difficulty spelling a word is to give them what I call word sums. Here you'll see, there's a word and then a suffix and this way the student has to add the suffix to the word, they can practice the suffix in roles and they begin to learn new, uh, deliveries, new meanings, new vocabulary words.