Silent Elephant “e” Posters are Not JUST for Their Good Looks!
I was recently asked, “Why should I buy Phonetic Reading with Silent Elephant “e”’s posters?”
My Silent Elephant “e” posters may seem like an “after thought” to make Silent Elephant “e” “prettier”, and although they do make Silent Elephant “e” “prettier”, there are solid educational reasons and research behind each and every one of the 44 posters I created.
One of the most powerful educational reasons is that ALL children, especially dyslexics, ELL/ESL or any student with a learning difference, need colorful, visual, kinesthetic, concrete methods using stories, plays, puppets, magic, games and tangible items such as food, clay, and personal drawings and personal writing in order to make concepts clearly conceptual and comprehensible. Further, concepts visually represented through drawings using bright, vibrant colors activate parts of the brain to develop automatic recall of the concepts represented.
Although this is true of any concept being presented, it’s especially true of vague, abstract, intangible concepts such as phonics rules. Without personal interaction with phonics rules, learners find them difficult to comprehend and remember, and as new rules are always being introduced, the concepts they are trying unsuccessfully to understand begin to stack up. The learner will begin to feel like the process is hopeless.
Children learning through Silent Elephant “e” draw upon their five senses and whole body to understand the relationship of a phonics rule to its application in reading words.
In Silent Elephant “e” the phonics rules are represented visually on large posters using bright, lively color. To further activate the brain, each poster is presented with written stories, skits and whole body, multi-sensory activities that involve the learner even more deeply with the concept. The vagueness slips away, and the learner is developing something “tangible” to hold in his/her memory.
With Silent Elephant “e” each phonics rule is introduced by a teacher led fun, exciting, multi-sensory, memorable learning experiences utilizing the posters.
Following this whole-body experience, children draw their own poster pulling into play their kinesthetic muscle memory furthering their automatic recall of the information contained on the poster. At this point the phonic rule is tangible and they have muscle, visual and story memory to fall back on as they read.
Continuing and reinforcing their clarity and understanding of the rule and how to utilize it in their reading, the children take their poster home to share with their parents as part of the home-school connection built into the Silent Elephant “e” program. They are always eager to share both their artwork and their knowledge.
As they continue to move through Silent Elephant “e”, it appears that my students have memorized the posters and they have. However, it is much more than memorization. They have internalized the concepts; they’ve learned them. They now own the phonics rule.
From this point on whenever they approach an unknown word, they can “fall back” on their knowledge of the concept story, activities and their personal visualization of the poster giving them self-confidence to fluently decode the words.
I watched Jamie demonstrate his knowledge of the hard and soft “c” and “g” phonics rule when decoding an unknown word. He paused a moment to draw in the air with his index finger the digital number 2 that he drew on his poster while visualizing where the vowels go on his imaginary 2. He then quickly and accurately decoded the word.
Ten-year-old Alex took his knowledge into his classroom. He drew from memory the content of Silent Elephant “e” posters to share with classmates to help them understand a phonetic rule they were struggling to remember.
I use these vibrant colored posters everyday while tutoring students from home. I have some posters displayed all of the time and pull out others when needed by an individual child to focus on his/her specific lesson.
How you display them depends on your particular needs TO DIFFERENTIATE INSTRUCTION. You can:
· Display all posters all of the time
· Display particular posters for as long as your students need them
· Display only the ones you are using for a particular lesson
However you choose to display the posters, I guarantee your children will not only enjoy them, but will frequently gaze at them to solidify their phonetic concepts becoming a part of them.
So, you see, my Silent Elephant “e” posters were not an “after thought” but instead are a vital part of my program that engages the whole learner to ensure success.
To check out 5 examples of my Silent Elephant “e” posters, click here https://www.silentelephante.com/program/.
For those of you curious about the content of each poster, I have included a detailed description below. The description shares the content of the posters and the part of Silent Elephant “e” they were created for.
Posters 1 & 2: Visual representation of Silent Elephant “e”’s content guiding children and adults to form a broad understanding of the program’s topics and how each skill will relate and connect to another
Posters 3-9: Use with Parts 3-14: Short vowels; Visual image of how the jaw moves when making the short vowel sounds; Illustrations of my spider plant story to use throughout the program for all suffix lessons
Posters 10-11: Use with Parts 5-14: Consonant blends; Three sounds of the suffix -ed
Posters 12-16: Use with Parts 6-14: Words ending with double consonants; ô sound; Long double “oo”; Short double “oo”
Posters 17-24: Use with Parts 7-14: Silent Elephant “e” words
Posters 25-28: Use with Parts 8-14: /oi/ sound; “C” and “G” Game boards
Poster 29: Use with Parts 9-14: The “Band-Aid” Sound of /ou/
Poster 30: Use with Parts 6-14: “y” at the end of words
Posters 31-33: Use with Parts 11-14: R-controlled vowels
Posters 34-37: Use with Parts 12-14: 6 Sounds of “ou”; “al” Words; 5 Ways to Make ô; 6 Sounds of “ie” and “ei”
Posters 38-44: Use with Parts 13-14: Dividing words into syllables
As always, we are happy to answer your questions through emails or on the phone! We’re always eager to visit with you.
If you have further questions about Silent Elephant “e”’s posters, feel free to contact us.