November 1, 2012

First Grade

Field Experience

I spent an hour with several first graders, working one on one.  I started with letter recognition with two students.  They each had made improvement over the past three months.  In addition to letter recognition, we also worked on phonics.  It was exciting to see their progress, as I had worked with both of them before.

The rest of the time was spent working on creating three letter words with six of the students in the class.  The teacher had sheets with the first and last letter already on the board.  It looked like a game board and most of the kids were excited to try this activity.  I gave them choices of a, e, i, o, or u to place between the two constants.  They then needed to sound out the word and tell me if it was a real word or a make believe word.  I found it interesting to see which vowel they would choose and watch as they worked through the sounds each letter.  At times, one child in particular, became frustrated as he was trying so hard to sound out the word, but I encouraged him to not give up.  He persisted and was pleased when he was able to sound out the word.