Fun with Phonics and Spelling Patterns

    This quote stuck out to me from the book, "English is the most morphologically complex language. Linguists estimate that for every word you know, you can figure out how to decode, spell, and build meanings for six or seven other words, if you recognize and use the morphemic patterns in words. This should make our jobs easier as teachers, because many English language words, already have words inside of them. For example, discovery, has the word discover in it. When I read this, it struck me how little I see phonemic awareness activities in classrooms. I am currently in a fourth grade class, and I doubt that these students would be able to define a word by the previous skill I mentioned. As the article, "Supporting phonemic awareness development in the classroom" said, phonemic awareness activities should only be ten to thirty minutes. It is our responsibility as teachers to show them rhyming schemes, counting syllables, and to separate the beginning of a word from its ending, and lastly to help them identify each phoneme inside a word. These skills should be used to help children figure out meanings and relatedness of words in every subject, not just writing. An activity that I really liked involved cuing. It helps if student clap out the different syllables in a word. This oral and physical representation of different syllables helps with rhyming and the flow of the word. Also, telling stories that have a lot of rhyming patterns would be beneficial. Integrating the clapping of the hands would also help and make phonemic awareness more concrete.