The Reflective Teacher: Parents Are Teachers Too by Monica Breaux

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Parental involvement is a major issue in education today. Many parents work and don't have a lot of time to spend with their children. Other parents have the time, but don't know how to work with their children. I feel strongly that parental involvement is critical to a child's success in school, and that children must come to school with some awareness of letters, of sounds, and of the way sounds are put together to form words. I believe that, as teachers, we can help parents help their children develop those skills.

Recently, I was required to write a professional article for one of my graduate courses. After discussing a variety of ideas with my professor, I decided to write a how-to article, describing ways in which parents can help young children develop phonemic awareness. I hope that some of the ideas in that article will benefit you too -- by providing a resource for the parents of your young students, and by demonstrating how easily parents can participate in their children's education.

HOW PARENTS CAN HELP CHILDREN DEVELOP PHONEMIC AWARENESS

Monica Breaux

Phonemic awareness -- the ability to perceive sounds in words -- plays an important role in reading achievement in first and second grade; in fact, it is identified as one of the most important predictors of reading success. Children who are immersed in a rich language environment and have many opportunities to play with language often naturally perceive and manipulate the sounds in words.

The type of language experiences a child encounters at home contributes to the acquisition of skills needed during early literacy development, and can greatly enhance the early learning experiences at school. Homes that provide a "rich language environment" are filled with print materials, and engage children in phonemic awareness activities every day. The verbal interactions that phonemic awareness activities provide allow children to learn the functions of written language and the processes and skills used in reading.

The parental role in the development of phonemic awareness is crucial, in fact. During the kindergarten and first grade years, parents can help their children build vocabulary, create interest in a variety of topics, and build the background knowledge necessary for them to become successful readers. When parents give their children opportunities to experiment with language at home, they increase the probability that their children will develop the phonemic awareness they'll need at school. In addition, engaging in phonemic awareness activities at home creates positive attitudes toward reading in children, allows parents to participate in their children's early learning, and strengthens the parent-child bond.

Three types of phonemic awareness activities can be incorporated into everyday family activities. Those are: rhyming activities, activities involving syllable manipulation, and activities involving phoneme manipulation.

RHYMING ACTIVITIES

Parents can incorporate rhyming activities by reading aloud books that play with language. The books they read can contain nonsense rhymes, nursery rhymes, familiar jingles, or just lots of words that sound alike. Repetitive words and phrases, as well as patterns in the text, work best. Dr. Seuss books are excellent resources to help children develop phonemic awareness. Some of the best are Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Parents can buy those books or borrow them from the library. In fact, a weekly visit to the library is a must in order to emerge children in literature.

When a parent reads to a child, finding a comfortable and pleasant place to sit is important. Then, the parent should introduce the book's title to the child, ask the child to look at the picture on the cover, and talk about how the picture relates to the title. The name of the author also should be mentioned, along with where on the book the author's name appears.

Next, parent and child can take a picture walk through the book. In a picture walk, the parent flips the pages of the book, one at a time, and the child makes predictions about what will happen in the story by looking at the illustrations. Then, the parent starts reading the story, with the child joining in if she or he knows the words.

After each page is read, parent and child discuss whether or not the predictions they made reflect what is being read. Predictions must be confirmed or rejected throughout the reading of the story. The parent also should ask questions about each page and about what the child thinks is going to happen next, encouraging responses and giving positive and meaningful feedback. After the book is read, the parent can go back through the story and ask more questions. The parent might ask, for example, "Can you find a word that rhymes with hop?" And the child might respond, "I see top."

Books and nursery rhymes are not the only choices parents have for rhyming activities, of course. They simply can change the beginning sounds of some or all of the words in a poem, a familiar song, or any of the nursery rhymes children have been exposed to. The following is an example of a cheer I do with my class:

I said a boom chicka boom. I said a boom chicka boom I said a boom chicka rocka chicka rocka boom.

I change the word boom to zoom, room, loom, doom, and any other rhyming word the children suggest. This type of rhyming activity can be done with almost group of rhyming words.

SYLLABLE MANIPULATION

Activities that encourage children to manipulate syllables also are very easy for most parents and children to engage in. A syllable is a word part. Manipulating a syllable means working with syllables in a concrete way. The most common methods of manipulating syllables include clapping, tapping fingers, snapping fingers, nodding heads, and placing tokens on a chart.

One simple activity parents and children can do together is clap hands to illustrate each syllable in song lyrics heard on the radio or television, or to the child's favorite songs. In this activity, the parent says each word slowly, segmenting it into syllables.

Again, nursery rhymes and favorite jingles work best. Manipulating syllables in "Old MacDonald Had a Farm," for example, is an easy activity. Clapping the syllables of names of people in the family, places the family has visited, food in the pantry, toys in the toy box, or friends at school also is effective.

For example, as the family passes in front of a Wal-Mart, the parent might say, "There is Wal-Mart. Let's clap to see how many syllables are in Wal-Mart." The parent and child then would clap their hands to each syllable in the word Wal-Mart. This is a fun and sociable activity, that's also engaging and educational.

An example of a nursery rhyme I use in my classroom is:

Pat (1) a (2) cake (3), pat (4) a (5) cake (6), Ba (1) ker's (2) man (3) Bake (1) me (2) a (3) cake (4) as (5) fast (6) as (7) you (8) can (9), Pat (1) it (2), roll (3) it (4), and (5) mark (6) it (7) with (8) a (9) B (10), And (1) put (2) it (3) in (4) the (5)ov (6) en (7)for (8) Miss (9) Breaux (10) and (11) me (12).

This is a nursery rhyme most children have been exposed to before, so the activity is focused on hearing the syllables, not on getting to know the words. Parents also can do this activity at home.

PHONEME MANIPULATION

Activities that involve phoneme manipulation deal with the individual sounds of words. A phoneme is a sound made by an individual letter. Manipulating the phoneme means working with the sounds in words in a concrete way. Again, the most common ways to manipulate individual sounds include clapping, tapping, or snapping fingers, nodding heads, or placing tokens on a chart. The activity may be focused on a beginning, ending, or middle sound of a word.

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An excellent activity parents can engage in with their children is a scavenger hunt. The parent and child can hunt -- around the house, at the store, in the yard, at the park, in the car, or any place at all -- for things that begin with the same sound as the child's name, or some other sound.

Another good practice activity for phonemes is for the parent to segment little words with the child. For example: cat /k/-/a/-/t/. The parent says each sound slowly, so the child can distinguish each sound individually. These activities can be done anywhere; parents can make a game out of segmenting such three letter words as dog, egg, fly, got, and hill, while on the way to the grocery store or to grandmother's house.

Parents and children also can sing a little jingle together, using objects familiar to the child. An example of a jingle I use in my classroom is:

What's the sound that starts these words: mom, McDonald's, meat? What's the sound that starts these words: mom, McDonald's, meat? M is the sound that starts the words mom, McDonald's, and meat.

The jingle can also be changed to find the sound that ends a set of words.

WHAT'S THE POINT?

The point of all these activities, of course, is that parents can participate in the development of their children's phonemic awareness by turning everyday occurrences into teachable moments. Research has shown that children need a solid foundation in phonemic awareness; it is vital to their later reading success. That foundation can be reinforced at home if parents engage their children in enjoyable reinforcement activities.

Previous Teacher Diaries Be sure to see Education World's previous teacher diary features, The First 180 Days: First-Year Teacher Diaries and A First-Year Teacher and Her Mentor.

Article by Monica Breaux
Education World®
Copyright &copy 2003 Education World

03/25/2003