Phonics

I really enjoyed working with my K-buddy last week.  He was a little shy in the beginning, but he opened up and spoke a lot when he gave me a picture of himself with his favorite animal.  I was amazed by his ability to spell out words.  He sounded the words out and sometimes drew a picture if he felt it was too difficult to write. 

I enjoyed this week's reading.  Reading Word Identification Strategies by Barbara J. Fox, really helped me to better understand my K-buddy.  Reading the chapters on phonics and phonemic awareness helped me better understand how phonics can help their vocabulary skills and their fluency skill as well.  It was really interesting to see how chilren recognize and decode unfamiliar words.  I remember by K-buddy having difficulty writing the word "chocolate" for his favorite food.  I helped him strech the word out and I asked him to do his best in sounding the word out.  I remember he wrote "chokolat" and thought it was very interesting.  Reading Word Identification Strategies helped me a lot to better understand where my K-buddy stands in the stages of word learning.  It's really fasinating to learn how phenomenon works for our youngsters.  I am looking forward in learning more about my K-buddy's reading and writing skills and to help him improve in his literacy learning.