Fine Tuning Phonics
How can my own journey in leaning a new skill help inform my own practice of teaching explicit skills to diverse learners?
My Journey
Eight weeks ago, I started taking my very first class in violin. To clarify, I am not teaching this class, I am taking this class. My entire life, I have never played a musical instrument nor understood how some people can easily pick out different notes and read music. With no prior experience in music, learning to play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on the violin has been a difficult journey for me.
My motivation for learning the basics is my five-year-old daughter. At her school, students can participate in the music program if their parents take the classes with their child for the first year of the program. During the first few classes, the instructor gave quick short explanations of what we needed to know to get started. He would vary his instruction by demonstrating, giving examples of what he was teaching, chunking information into easy steps, and providing feedback to us individually.
As the class would play, I wondered how our instructor could hear when one of us was playing the wrong string. I wondered what sound he could hear as he would tune each of our violins by hand. I wondered how some of the others in the class could hear what variation to play based on piano cues played by our instructor. Up to this point we were merely doing what our instructor told us to do. I could easily follow his instructions, that is, until he started to write music on the board for us to play. With a new foreign code that I was supposed to translate into coordinated movements with my hands and fingers to make sounds on the violin, my head felt like it was going to explode.
As a new student of Violin, I am experiencing having to decode symbols, translate those symbols into an action, which in turn produces a sound to make up parts of a song. For me, this has not been an easy task. In class, I experience a roller-coaster ride of emotions. Sometimes I am confident that I can follow along, and other times I feel frustrated that I am not able to play as well or grasp the techniques as quickly as my classmates. That is when it hit me! The challenging experience that I am facing in my violin lessons are being experienced by my learners who are just beginning to read in English.
My Practice
For the past twelve weeks, I have been teaching a series of Phonics concepts to Adult Learners at the Chula Vista Literacy Center. My class meets once a week for 45 minutes and has seven regular learners. Each learner is attending my class and working with a personal volunteer tutor for an additional 1.5 hours a week to meet their personal learning goals. The majority of my students speak and are literate in Spanish, but they range in their abilities to speak and read English. For each of these students, this is their first course in explicit phonics practice.
For the first few classes, we spent a considerable amount of time learning and practicing the sounds of consonants and short vowel sounds. We practiced reading quick consonant/vowel/consonant ( i.e. cat, bet, hip, mob, fun) combination words.
As our lessons have progressed and the lessons have become more complex (i.e. the rule of silent e, digraphs-two letters that make one sound, vowel teams). I have noticed that my students are often saying a different vowel sound. They will pronounce the short i sound (ĭ) as the long e sound (ē) as it is pronounced in Spanish. For the short a sound (ă), I am hearing the short u sound (ŭ) as in the sound for “a” in the Spanish word “amiga.”
Tuning In
Just as my violin instructor can hear when a student is playing the wrong string or chord, I can hear the difference in the sounds that the learners are saying. On the other hand, my students are having difficulty hearing and pronouncing some of the sounds (sometimes making up a sound). As I think about my experience in violin class, there are a few things that have been helpful in my attempts to hear what my instructor hears, and to improve my playing technique.
One of the greatest pieces of advice that the instructor gave me was to listen to the CD that was included in my music book. The repetition has made me more aware and familiar with the sounds of the different notes. When my instructor hears a sound that is not played correctly, he will play the correct note and then have us practice. This instant feedback helps me to quickly fix an error so I am less likely to repeat to. Finally, at the beginning of each class we practice the variations of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star as a warm-up for playing the violin (especially because most of us hadn’t touched the violin since the prior class). The warm up has been particularly helpful in helping me to focus from the onset on the class. I can find myself becoming more aware of what he can hear. Now I can hear when I make a mistake and correct it. My technique is also beginning to improve from watching my instructor and those around me. So how can my violin class help my learners in my Phonics class?
Improving My Practice
As most of the parents in my violin class were not practicing violin much outside of class, my students have not been practicing the use or hearing English vowels sounds. To help my students focus I have started using some phonemic awareness practice. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds in spoken words. For example, I would ask a student to say the word “cup”. “What would cup sound like if I change the /ŭ/ sound to the /ă/ sound?” From student answers, I can easily gauge if they are able to hear and manipulate the sounds. From this, I can give immediate feedback. This exercise also allows my students to practice using new muscles to pronounce the various sounds. For the first few examples, I can see my students hesitate and struggle a bit. After a few examples, I can see and hear them start to “tune” in.
After our phonemic awareness warm-up, we quickly review the short vowel sounds. We have started with our own vowel orchestra. As I point to a vowel on the white board, students say, hold and exaggerate the sound until I point to a new vowel sound. Since the sounds become connected, they are beginning to identify the difference in sounds (i.e. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-eeeeeeeeee-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-aaaaaaaaaaaaa-uuuuuuuuuu-oooooooooo). Students now volunteer to lead the “orchestra” by pointing at the different sounds. It has been fun to watch them catch when another student is a bit “off.”
Since I began incorporating warm-ups and phonemic awareness in my class, my students have had a much easier time in reading and pronouncing practice words and concepts. One student told me, “ It helps me when we review the sounds each class because my mind is still thinking in Spanish once I get to class.” Another student let me know “how fascinating it is that one tiny sound can change the whole word and meaning.” We joke in class that is very different to call a person “fit” than to call them “fat,” so you better be able to hear the difference in your vowel sounds.
From my experience in violin class, I have been struck by how the instructor has been able to take a group of parents who have a diverse background knowledge and get us to reach our ultimate goal of learning enough of the violin to be able to help our children learn to play. My journey as a beginning violin student has reminded me that each student has a unique perspective, background and learning style that will drive and push me to figure out new approaches to help each individual to accomplish their personal goals while taking Literacy Center classes. As I move forward with my learners in Phonics Progression, I will stayed “tuned in” to their needs so that when they read aloud in class-it will be “music to my ears.”
My Journey
Eight weeks ago, I started taking my very first class in violin. To clarify, I am not teaching this class, I am taking this class. My entire life, I have never played a musical instrument nor understood how some people can easily pick out different notes and read music. With no prior experience in music, learning to play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on the violin has been a difficult journey for me.
My motivation for learning the basics is my five-year-old daughter. At her school, students can participate in the music program if their parents take the classes with their child for the first year of the program. During the first few classes, the instructor gave quick short explanations of what we needed to know to get started. He would vary his instruction by demonstrating, giving examples of what he was teaching, chunking information into easy steps, and providing feedback to us individually.
As the class would play, I wondered how our instructor could hear when one of us was playing the wrong string. I wondered what sound he could hear as he would tune each of our violins by hand. I wondered how some of the others in the class could hear what variation to play based on piano cues played by our instructor. Up to this point we were merely doing what our instructor told us to do. I could easily follow his instructions, that is, until he started to write music on the board for us to play. With a new foreign code that I was supposed to translate into coordinated movements with my hands and fingers to make sounds on the violin, my head felt like it was going to explode.
As a new student of Violin, I am experiencing having to decode symbols, translate those symbols into an action, which in turn produces a sound to make up parts of a song. For me, this has not been an easy task. In class, I experience a roller-coaster ride of emotions. Sometimes I am confident that I can follow along, and other times I feel frustrated that I am not able to play as well or grasp the techniques as quickly as my classmates. That is when it hit me! The challenging experience that I am facing in my violin lessons are being experienced by my learners who are just beginning to read in English.
My Practice
For the past twelve weeks, I have been teaching a series of Phonics concepts to Adult Learners at the Chula Vista Literacy Center. My class meets once a week for 45 minutes and has seven regular learners. Each learner is attending my class and working with a personal volunteer tutor for an additional 1.5 hours a week to meet their personal learning goals. The majority of my students speak and are literate in Spanish, but they range in their abilities to speak and read English. For each of these students, this is their first course in explicit phonics practice.
For the first few classes, we spent a considerable amount of time learning and practicing the sounds of consonants and short vowel sounds. We practiced reading quick consonant/vowel/consonant ( i.e. cat, bet, hip, mob, fun) combination words.
As our lessons have progressed and the lessons have become more complex (i.e. the rule of silent e, digraphs-two letters that make one sound, vowel teams). I have noticed that my students are often saying a different vowel sound. They will pronounce the short i sound (ĭ) as the long e sound (ē) as it is pronounced in Spanish. For the short a sound (ă), I am hearing the short u sound (ŭ) as in the sound for “a” in the Spanish word “amiga.”
Tuning In
Just as my violin instructor can hear when a student is playing the wrong string or chord, I can hear the difference in the sounds that the learners are saying. On the other hand, my students are having difficulty hearing and pronouncing some of the sounds (sometimes making up a sound). As I think about my experience in violin class, there are a few things that have been helpful in my attempts to hear what my instructor hears, and to improve my playing technique.
One of the greatest pieces of advice that the instructor gave me was to listen to the CD that was included in my music book. The repetition has made me more aware and familiar with the sounds of the different notes. When my instructor hears a sound that is not played correctly, he will play the correct note and then have us practice. This instant feedback helps me to quickly fix an error so I am less likely to repeat to. Finally, at the beginning of each class we practice the variations of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star as a warm-up for playing the violin (especially because most of us hadn’t touched the violin since the prior class). The warm up has been particularly helpful in helping me to focus from the onset on the class. I can find myself becoming more aware of what he can hear. Now I can hear when I make a mistake and correct it. My technique is also beginning to improve from watching my instructor and those around me. So how can my violin class help my learners in my Phonics class?
Improving My Practice
As most of the parents in my violin class were not practicing violin much outside of class, my students have not been practicing the use or hearing English vowels sounds. To help my students focus I have started using some phonemic awareness practice. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds in spoken words. For example, I would ask a student to say the word “cup”. “What would cup sound like if I change the /ŭ/ sound to the /ă/ sound?” From student answers, I can easily gauge if they are able to hear and manipulate the sounds. From this, I can give immediate feedback. This exercise also allows my students to practice using new muscles to pronounce the various sounds. For the first few examples, I can see my students hesitate and struggle a bit. After a few examples, I can see and hear them start to “tune” in.
After our phonemic awareness warm-up, we quickly review the short vowel sounds. We have started with our own vowel orchestra. As I point to a vowel on the white board, students say, hold and exaggerate the sound until I point to a new vowel sound. Since the sounds become connected, they are beginning to identify the difference in sounds (i.e. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-eeeeeeeeee-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-aaaaaaaaaaaaa-uuuuuuuuuu-oooooooooo). Students now volunteer to lead the “orchestra” by pointing at the different sounds. It has been fun to watch them catch when another student is a bit “off.”
Since I began incorporating warm-ups and phonemic awareness in my class, my students have had a much easier time in reading and pronouncing practice words and concepts. One student told me, “ It helps me when we review the sounds each class because my mind is still thinking in Spanish once I get to class.” Another student let me know “how fascinating it is that one tiny sound can change the whole word and meaning.” We joke in class that is very different to call a person “fit” than to call them “fat,” so you better be able to hear the difference in your vowel sounds.
From my experience in violin class, I have been struck by how the instructor has been able to take a group of parents who have a diverse background knowledge and get us to reach our ultimate goal of learning enough of the violin to be able to help our children learn to play. My journey as a beginning violin student has reminded me that each student has a unique perspective, background and learning style that will drive and push me to figure out new approaches to help each individual to accomplish their personal goals while taking Literacy Center classes. As I move forward with my learners in Phonics Progression, I will stayed “tuned in” to their needs so that when they read aloud in class-it will be “music to my ears.”