International School Magazine - Spring 2019

Page 36

Curriculum, learning and teaching

Teaching phonological awareness effectively Hester Hoette walks us through the vital teaching steps towards literacy

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morphological awareness, you would understand why so many teachers aren’t taught the science of reading; many of their lecturers don’t know the science themselves either. As a result, millions of children are being set up to fail. Here is my step by step advice to teachers to quickly and effectively teach young children to read, and international students to learn ESL. Step 1 – preparatory phonological awareness Phonological games, illustrating how words are made up of sounds, are ideal to start. Games involving rhyming, Spring |

Autumn

Research shows that children who are not taught to read confidently by the age of 8-9 are likely to remain poor readers for the rest of their lives. For international students the challenge is even more complex. Many people try to categorise poor readers by their socio-economic status, parental support and, of course, their gender. However, the problem lies with the fact that how we learn to read and spell is a science. Early readers and students with English as a second language (ESL) have to follow the correct steps to learn to read and spell effectively. If I told you that this starts with phonemes and corresponding graphemes, followed by

| 2019


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