I am falling seriously behind on my blogging!! I figured I'd better blog about last week before THIS week is over!We started our final full block, a Language Arts block, last week. We read the Enki 1st Grade LA story, "Vowel Secrets", which introduces the short vowel sounds as disguises that the vowels wear. (I can't possibly do justice to the magic and wonder this story inspired for my kids, so I won't bother trying! But trust me, the kids embraced the idea enthusiastically!) This first drawing is mine (and is now posted in the hallway with our other work from this spring -- my words are slightly more legible than the kids'), and depicts the conclusion of our short vowel work -- I'll go through the steps below.
It's been months since we introduced the vowels, so we started with a short summary (mostly told by the kids) of "The True Name of the King". Then, as I read the "Vowel Secrets" story to them, as each of the characters (vowels) appeared in the story, I simply laid out J's paintings from the previous story, as a way of tying the two together. It was VERY successful and made the transition to the new story absolutely seamless for them. After the story, I posted the paintings in the hallway again, as shown.
The next day, we recalled the story, and did this drawing (this is J's), of the fire fairy's fire and the vowels in disguise (depicted by lower case letters). As I wrote the letters on my own drawing, I simply said their short vowel sounds, and the kids followed suit.
The following day, we took turns coming up with words that used the short vowel sounds, and wrote them on our drawings. (Again, this is J's work.)
Here's Zoo Boy's. He found all that writing quite taxing, so I suggested just writing down ONE word for each vowel sound, so he wrote down the words he came up with.There is a third 1st grade vowel story that goes along with the two we've already worked with, but after observing my kids working with this story, I've decided to save that one for the fall to reawaken their vowel work then, rather than drawing them more into the academic realm now. Right now they are in need of working with a regular 1st grade fairy tale.
2 comments:
OK, I'm desperate to know. You've got a e i o u . . . what's the aw one?
By the way, love your blog, read it regularly.
LOL! I'll give you the official answer, but it's going to creat more questions rather than clarify anything. It's the "Golden A".
It has something to do with all the differents sound that A makes in our language. So whereas "A" is "long" and sounds like "A", the "Golden A" sounds like "Ah". So in disguise, "A"'s sound is "a" (as in cat) and "Ah"'s sound is "aw" (as in ball). My materials actually present it as "aw-al" but that was too confusing even for me.
The confusion gets deeper when you realize that "I" is not a pure sound, but a dipthong, yet "i" (short "I" sound) IS a pure sound.
VERY VERY confusing, I agree. Which is why this stuff is done with a very light touch with the kids. Seriously, English is about the worst language to be teaching young children....
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