Who Wouldn’t Want to Practice Spelling in Pudding!

Who Wouldn’t Want to Practice Spelling in Pudding!

I received a fun, fun email from Wendy, a homeschool educator, after she read the blog post entitled “Ten Fun Spelling Activities”. (link here)

“We had a fun time practicing our spelling in pudding. Even Xander who is only 2 and a half years old was able to join in the fun. Thanks for the great ideas.

They all licked their fingers! Each ended up liking a different flavor. We had chocolate, vanilla and butterscotch.

We were practicing the words from the end of Part 4 (Silent Elephant “e”®.) First, they copied the spelling words from the board where I had written them. Then they worked as partners reading a word and sounding it out for the other to write.

The last 2 words were challenging for them, but I think the pudding partnering will help them remember “phone” and “phonics.”

Even Xander learned how to draw a circle in his pudding. 
It was great fun for all!”

Isn’t that a fun, lovely story—extremely educational, too! The children were learning using all their senses: seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and listening to Mom and their partner—their whole body involved!

I loved how Wendy included her young son in the activity! What a wonderful idea to have him draw shapes in the pudding.

Young children can draw lines that curve; lines that squiggle; lines that go up, down, or across; lines that are straight; lines that zigzag, etc.

I included “phonics” and “phone” in that relatively early phonics lesson on consonant digraphs because children need to be able to read those words early on in first grade. I know they are challenging, but I agree with Wendy that writing in pudding, or another medium will aid in their retention of meaning and spelling of their words.

These pictures of Zoya, Audrey and Xander giggling and laughing while having so much fun learning together, brings joy to my heart!

I hope you try it with your kiddos and send me pictures!

Any questions, contact us here: silentelephante@gmail.com       nina.silentelephante@gmail.com

Sentence Dictation - a POWERFUL Tool in Spelling, Here's How to Use It :)

I Love Learning to Spell using Sentence Dictation!

Spelling can be fun! And when we connect their spelling with their phonics, ALL students, struggling and non-struggling, connect both sides of the sound/symbol relationship coin! Reading and spelling makes sense. (In my last post shared the connection between spelling success and their phonics. Here’s the link.)

Connecting spelling to their phonics applies to ALL learners:

• struggling learners,

• non-struggling learners, and

• gifted learners.

  ALL children deserve to understand how reading and spelling are connected.

As mentioned in my last post, it is essential that their spelling instruction correlate with phonics instruction. They need to understand the connection of decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling the words they’ve learned to read as they use them in their writing).

One of the most important spelling components I included in Phonetic Reading with Silent Elephant “e”® is sentence dictation.

In Silent Elephant “e”®, sentence dictation connects decoding and encoding with comprehension in one meaningful activity that they enjoy and that is consistent throughout Parts 3-14.

As I have mentioned before, this consistency in instruction of connecting phonics, spelling and comprehension is vital for dyslexic learners but truly important for ALL learners.

To make sure your kids connect the relationship of decoding and encoding, sentence dictation does not occur in Silent Elephant “e”®  until children are fluently reading the sentences on their Partner Practice pages and have discussed what the sentences are about with you or their partners.

This ensures that they are not trying to learn to spell/write a word that doesn’t have meaning for them. This is so important, because if they are trying to spell/write a word they don’t know the meaning of, it will only cause them confusion and frustration, and they will find spelling difficult if not impossible.
 
When your kids fluently read and comprehend the sentences on their Partner Pages in each phonics lesson, they are ready to move into the encoding (spelling) part of the lesson—sentence dictation.

Here are a few steps that will ensure your child’s success in sentence dictation when working with their partners or you. Teach these skills before jumping into sentence dictation:
 

• Take turns reading a sentence to their partner. You may be their partner. This necessary step works on decoding and promotes active listening. If you are their “partner”, have them read the sentence to you and then you read the sentence to them having them actively listen as you read.

• Discuss the meaning of the sentence by sharing what they are picturing/imagining in their brain—comprehension. They could even draw the sentence, as drawing will activate more parts of their brain thus promoting greater comprehension.

• Take turns reading the sentence one more time.

• Have them turn their Partner Practice page over.

• Take turns repeating the sentence from memory, first together, then separately. Have them think about what the sentence and words look like when they say the sentence and listen to you say it. This works on both auditory and visual memory. If they need to review the sentence again, they can turn their Partner Practice page over.

• Only now do they begin writing. This, of course, is encoding as they are thinking, “What sound am I hearing and what letter(s) do I use for that sound when I’m writing?”

• If you are their partner, have them dictate the sentence to you and you write it. You are modeling for them.

• When you’ve finished writing a sentence, have them first proofread their own work and then proofread their partners/yours. They proofread by:

• Checking for space between words

• Checking for a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence

• Checking for an end mark—a period, question or exclamation mark

• Checking for capitalized names

• Checking for spelling accuracy

• Last, have them proof their work for accuracy by looking at their Partner Practice page. Celebrate with a high-five for their good work. Smiles all around!

  As you can see, decoding and encoding skills utilized in sentence dictation engage numerous parts of the brain:

• Visual processing, visual sequencing, and visual memory

• Auditory processing, auditory sequencing, and auditory memory

• Tactile handwriting skills

• Comprehension of text

• Analytical thinking--comparison of decoding and encoding

 Sentence dictation is a fun activity that children enjoy doing together without being completely aware of all the elements enhancing their learning—they just have fun and learn to share and support each other as they read and write.

I encourage doing sentence dictation several times a week. You and they will see the difference in reading, spelling and comprehension very quickly.

If you have further questions about spelling the Silent Elephant “e”® way, contact us at silentelephante@gmail.com or nina.silentelephante@gmail.com.

Have You Ever Had This Experience? I Bet You Have! :)

Have you ever had this experience? I bet you have!

For a couple minutes, think about when you were in school--whether your school was a public school, or you were homeschooled.

Think about a subject, concept or skill you were taught that just did not connect with you. It was something you learned, but it never had any real meaning for you or to you.

You learned it because you were taught it, and so it became an isolated fact for you that sort of floated around in a sea of other isolated facts or factoids. It had no real connection for you. You really didn’t care about it. It just floated around with all the other disconnected facts.

Then later, maybe a long time later, as you lived your life, you suddenly realized this floating subject, skill or concept was beginning to take on meaning for you. It began to “come alive” for you because of something you had or were living through that began to connect it with other subjects, other skills, or other concepts you knew about, understood fully, and had interest in.

Suddenly this isolated floating concept moved out of your sea of nebulous facts and became not just something you learned but knowledge that you could use and wanted to use.

What were some of those floating facts that became important for you?

I ask you to take this goofy little journey with me because we ALL have this sea of floating nebulous concepts and facts. Some of us have larger seas than others of us. 😊 It depends on how we were taught, how we connected what we were learning.

Another reason for our goofy journey is this:

It’s OK for some concepts to become floaters without real harm to our learning. You probably have the dates of wars floating around. 😊

BUT, it’s very detrimental for some concepts to become floaters! In fact, if some concepts become isolated facts with no connection, then other learning is halted!

Some concepts need to be taught to ALL children in ways that activate and integrate the learning immediately. Some concepts can’t wait for months or years to become a part of our children’s working knowledge.

Phonemic awareness and all phonics concepts are such concepts.

Phonics concepts can be vague and yet it is absolutely important that they are learned in a precise sequential order to ensure true learning at the time they are taught. They must be taught so the concept becomes useable knowledge immediately.

That can sound like a BIG job! 😊
It’s not as big a job as it is a process that needs to be well thought out to ensure their success.

It was one of my students who made me think of sharing this with you.  He was having a very difficult time writing words that contained new phonics concepts IF he was asked to write the word in isolation. To this day, words in isolation hold no meaning for him.

Yet, 😊, when he wrote these same words in sentences, the phonics rules he needed totally made sense to him, and he spelled the words correctly and wrote the entire sentence correctly. The words had meaning and made connections to his prior knowledge.

For ALL children, words must be connected to their prior knowledge for the words to have meaning so they can easily learn to read, write and spell.

Think about how important phonics concepts are and how ALL children need them to be taught in a systematic, sequential, progressive, sensory engaging format for them to be easily learned. Phonics concepts need to be connected to all their previous learning—RIGHT NOW, not later. They cannot join the “floating facts seas”. If one joins the sea of floaters, learning to read becomes instantly difficult.

This is why when you explore Phonetic Reading with Silent Elephant “e”™, you will find a progressive order that totally engages children in learning every concept. We just can’t have any “phonics floaters”.

Contact me to learn more about how I structured Silent Elephant “e” so every child can easily learn to read, write and spell.

An Exciting Discovery

  My sweet fifteen-year-old student kept looking at me with a patient, wondrous smile.

As usual our tutoring session began with us playing the caterpillar and train phonemic awareness games. We proceeded to her word cards from the Fry List -- the 700 most frequently used words for reading and writing. Then we were ready to begin the Partner Practice page that she was on in Part 4:  the suffix -es added to words ending with the consonant digraphs “sh” and “ch”.

When I asked her to take out her worksheet, ‘Carrie’ said, “We didn’t have time to copy the worksheets, so I just put them on my Apple I-Pad.”

“Oh,” I said with a concerned voice. How was she going to mark the digraphs, root words, suffixes and vowels with our colors and our diacritical markings? So, I continued, “Maybe you could write the words on a piece of paper, so you can do all of our colors and markings.”

“I don’t need to do that,” Carrie patiently explained. “I can do all the colors and markings on my I-Pad.”

”How can you do that?” I worriedly questioned.

“I just use my Apple pen,” she replied.

“You mean it will write in colors and make different shapes and lines?”

“Yes.”

Carrie’s eyebrows raised higher and higher with each of my questions. I could see in her eyes and smile that she was delighted at my lack of knowledge of I-Pad’s and Apple pen’s capabilities. She was also proud to be teaching me!

“This is amazing!” I exclaimed. “My other students’ parents would not have to copy the Partner Practice pages if they didn’t want to or if they didn’t have a printer. This is awesome!”

Carrie’s bright, happy smile charmed me! Giggles!

I told her that I would have to share my new knowledge with everyone I knew that was teaching or learning reading, writing and spelling with Phonetic Reading with Silent Elephant “e”™.

I can imagine many of you are thinking, “Really, Linda didn’t know the capabilities of an Apple I-Pad or an Apple pen?”

Yes, it’s true – I didn’t know! Giggles!

But now that I know, I wanted to share with you that your child may enjoy doing some or all their Partner Practice pages on an I-Pad.

Now, you may be wondering, “Why doesn’t Linda put all “Silent Elephant “e”™ on a computer program with learning games?”

The answer is simple. For children to truly learn to read, write and spell while retaining and applying what they’ve learned for years to come, they need to be able to interact with the concept, to be engaged with their teacher/parent educator and if possible other children. They need to both mentally and verbally process and share what they’ve learned with someone. They need to hear and respond to questions like these:

• Why are you using an orange wiggly line under those two letters?

• I know that ‘trip’ can mean going on a vacation. Can you think of another meaning of trip?

• How many sounds can you hear in the nonsense word “fash”? Are any of the sounds a blend? A digraph? Why did you think that?

• What do you think about when adding a suffix that begins with a vowel to a word ending with Silent Elephant “e”? How is your thinking different when adding a vowel suffix to a CVC word?

Children need to be able to share their learning and listen to a teacher/parent educator and if possible, another child share their thoughts.

Children need to be totally immersed in their learning and engaged with another human being using active listening to totally integrate their new concepts into what they’ve already learned.

They need to be actively involved in their learning.

Carrie easily used her I-Pad and Apple Pen to mark all her words and she easily shared her work with me during our Zoom tutoring session, at the same time, she was reading to me, answering questions, asking questions, explaining why she marked the words as she did, and sharing how she knew what a word meant and much more.

She was using her technology to support her active engagement in her learning process.

I was so excited to learn from Carrie that an Apple I-pad and an Apple pen can be used to engage in active learning with their Partner Practice pages. What fun!

Maybe you would like to have your kiddos try it!

Contact me here :).

Partner Work, an Important Part of Silent Elephant “e”

Partner Work, an Important Part of Silent Elephant “e” 

Let’s talk about partner work!  

Partner work is a vital, integral part of Silent Elephant “e” and every concept taught in every lesson throughout the program incorporates this essential learning strategy.  

In Phonetic Reading with Silent Elephant “e”, partner work is taken seriously. Students are specifically taught the responsibilities of a good partner and why it is so important to be a caring, dependable partner. 

Each partner plays two roles: they EXPRESS and they RECEIVE. Each role takes the concept they are learning into a different part of their brain ensuring that they truly KNOW the concept and can connect that knowledge to new concepts as they continue learning. 

When a student (young or old) can EXPRESS the concept being learned in their own words or drawings, they solidify that concept—it becomes “their own”.  

The flip side of expressing what they know is RECEIVING, or actively listening to, the concept being expressed by their partner. This active listening shifts them into another part of their brain where they analyze their partner’s words and drawings for correctness and clarity. This analysis deepens their own comprehension of the concept. 

When working with partners, children share their work and explain it by verbalizing their thought processes around that concept as they apply previously taught phonemic awareness skills and phonics skills and the particular phonics skill emphasized in the day’s lesson.  

Further, when they actively listen, each child mentally reviews and checks for accuracy as they listen to themselves and their partner.  

This total procedure, expressing and receiving (listening), strengthens their personal understanding of the day’s objective(s).  

There is also a social element to partner work. Students love becoming the “teacher” for their partner and visa versa. This essential partnership builds positive social bonds, as it ensures that each partner truly understands and is able to apply the concept(s) being learned in their personal reading, writing and spelling. They are a positive support for each other’s learning.  

In the end, each partner is empowered with their own personal success that is built upon their previous successes plus empowered by being a strong advocate for the success of their partner! 

After reading this and the last posts in this series, you now know the basis of how phonics is taught in Silent Elephant “e” and how I designed the worksheets to ensure success of ALL students. 

Now, you are ready to begin teaching the phonics lessons in Parts 3-14. 

Trust me, you will be astounded at the progress and confidence your children will achieve in phonics as they learn the way in which they learn best with Silent Elephant “e”! 

It’s exciting to watch children and adults blossom into successful, confident readers, writers and spellers! 

If you have further questions about partner work and the home-school connection in Silent Elephant “e”, feel free to contact us.

Linda Katherine Smith-Jones                            Nina Henson

"I Like Princesses!" - Partner Work in Part 1 Phonemic Awareness

Partner Work in Part 1 Phonemic Awareness 

“I like books about fairies!” exclaimed Shelly. 

“No. Princess books are better!” shouted Grace.

This exchange burst out one Friday afternoon after Silent Elephant “e” instruction. It still makes me smile remembering how invested these sweet little girls were in their choices.  

This made me reflect again on the power of Silent Elephant “e”.  

One of the powerhouse components in Silent Elephant “e” is the Partner Work and the Partner Practice pages. As with every element in Silent Elephant “e”, Partner Work is not just a “pretty face” or “busy work”.  

Instead, it’s an essential cognitively enhancing time for children to interact and solidify their learning with their partner. 

In Partner Work, the student must pull the content to the front of their minds. They must use the content correctly and be able verbalize and explain what they know and how they know they know it.

 They must listen to and interact with their partner with a discerning ear to make sure they and their partner actually know and can express the learned content. 

Silent Elephant “e”‘s multisensory Partner Work activates learning in all parts of the brain. 

As part of my volunteering at school, I teach two sweet, nine-year-old girls with Down syndrome. ‘Shelly’ and ‘Grace’ burst with happiness and interest in learning. Their cheerfulness is contagious.

They love Partner Work! Actually, they enjoy challenging each other to see who can get the correct answer first. This bit of friendly competition is good! 

This is the consistent predictable Silent Elephant “e” Part 1 partner lesson format I use with my students, including Grace and Shelly. They have relaxed into knowing our lesson format and are learning more quickly as we proceed through Part 1. After I have introduced the new concept, they:

·                 Turn to each other.

·                 Say the word.

·                 Stretch their rubber bands as they listen for individual sounds within the word.

·                 Look in their hand-held mirrors at their mouth’s movements and look at each other’s mouth’s movements while saying the word or sound.

·                 Discuss how many sounds they hear.

·                 Tell each other what sounds they hear.

·                 Move the colored squares to the line(s) to demonstrate the number of sounds they hear, the sequence of the sounds, and if the sounds are the same or different.

·                 Explain their choices to each other.

·                 Check that their boards match using “share/compare”.

·                 Tell each other why their game boards are the same and, if they are different, together explore the reason for the difference to come up with the correct board. 

They particularly love looking at their mouths in their hand-held mirrors to understand how they form sounds and words. 

As with all students of Silent Elephant “e”, we take our time—I let them lead. Grace and Shelly need unhurried, yet deliberate, explicit, precise phonemic awareness instruction.  We practice each word until I am confident they truly hear each individual sound within that word. I want to solidify the lesson’s content in their memory and build their self-confidence in their ability. I want them to “own” the content and to feel their freedom to read. 

When we began together seven months ago, neither of these nine-year-old girls had any phonemic awareness skills! We moved very slowly as they were challenged by every lesson until we got to Lesson 4D-Three Sounds—CVC—Mixed Practice Phoneme Substitution. 

At the end of Lesson 4D, it all clicked! 

Grace exclaimed, “I just knew I had to use two blue squares in ‘non’, because ‘non’ has two /n/ sounds! 

They got it! They truly understood the concept that a single-colored square in the game represents a single sound they are hering, two or three squares represent two or three separate sounds blended smoothly and quickly together, and words are made up of these individual sounds that are quickly and smoothly blended together. 

I could literally see the ‘light bulb turn on’ in the twinkle of their eyes and the smiles on their faces! Their self-confidence, self-pride, happiness and joy poured from them as they began to fluently read individual CVC words (such as: fun, mid, fad, hen, and rod) and to fluently read sentences (such as: The cat hid the red mat.) 

AND OMG!!!! They actually wanted me to time them to see who could read a paragraph faster. I now had to build sportsmanship skills! “Grace, let’s tell Shelly how proud we are of her. She read every word correctly and smoothly!” “Shelly, did you hear how Grace read the story with expression? What feelings did you hear in her voice? Let’s give her a high-five!” 

This is part of the power of Silent Elephant “e” that excites me. After only about twenty-four half-hour periods (12 hours), and beginning with no phonemic awareness at all, Grace and Shelly, two students with the Down learning difference, now have the beginnings of a strong, solid foundation in phonemic awareness skills: the important first steps of their journey on their road to becoming successful, independent readers. 

“It’s so fun to read now!” exclaimed Shelly as she skipped away at the end of our session together.  

They have brought so much joy into my life!  

If you have further questions about partner work the home-school connection in Silent Elephant “e”, feel free to contact us.

Linda Katherine Smith-Jones                            Nina Henson