Phonics Dance & Friday Find

I'm linking up with Elizabeth at Fun in Room 4B for her Fabulous Friday Find!

 The first is of course Target and their WONDERFUL dresses.

I bought this one and have already been complimented on it a couple of times while I was out the other day! And it's on sale for 19.99!!!!!!

Next up is my school book find. Get ready for my new resource I don't know if I could live without!

Phonics. This word has always scared the pants right off me. Having most of my teaching experience be in upper elementary, I knew how to get students to understand what they've read and delve deeper into the meaning of text. Comprehension? No problem! I can do that!

Teach them HOW to read though? *crickets*

As a child, reading was easy for me and I LOVED it. That's all I would do in my free time. My first year teaching, I taught 5th graders. I can still remember one student in particular who was at a 2nd grade reading level. Whenever she was struggled reading words my advice was "sound it out".

SAY WHAT?!?! Sound it out?!?! How does that help her if she doesn't KNOW the sounds!!!

More than 5 years later... I now understand the importance of having a grasp on vowel teams and all the funky stuff the English language does.

A LITTLE OFF TOPIC.......

Did you know that love, although it phonetically sounds like luv, is spelt with an o because it was easier to distinguish the word when writing? Look at 'luve' written below. See how u and v look the same?

Interesting right? One of the reading specialists at out school has all kinds of interesting tid bits on why weird sounds in English are the way they are! This site also has some insight into our language and goes into more detail about the origins and changing of love.


BACK ON TOPIC....

So phonics! Teaching it last year was new to me, and really really boring. My high readers were of course the ones working hard with me, and they really didn't need it! My developing ones weren't retaining it, and were zoned out half the time. We'd use manipulatives a lot but then it'd take awhile to get them out, there'd be issues of playing with them sometimes, and it was just a pain to me!!!

Bottom line- I just didn't like how I taught phonics. I needed something else. I'm really big on kinesthetic learning.. especially to make something like phonics more fun and engaging.

Sooooo, while perusing pinterest... I found this cute video called the Phonics Dance. I LOVED it.

I love how they are up moving and singing! That is definitely my teaching style and looked like fun.

I had no idea what it was all about, but I wanted to know more. I of course immediately searched Proteacher looking for any information on it. That led me to the actual Phonics Dance website where I recently just ordered the manual and CD.

And can I tell you how excited I am to teach phonics next year? I never thought I'd hear those words come out of my mouth! :)

In addition to dancing and chanting, a huge part of the program is 'hunking and chunking'. This is where students circle the sounds you are learning that week. The program suggested teaching 2 a week. With our basal program I think that will work out perfect!

This awesome example came from Simply 2nd Grade Resources. She has a ton of information on the phonics dance if you're interested in reading more!!

Ginny gives you resources from Kinder-3rd, and explains how to teach it in each grade. The great thing about the Phonics Dance is that its a resource! It's not a program, but can be used in conjunction with whatever phonics sequence you need to teach. We use Treasures, and the scope and sequence is something we have to abide by. I can use any of the hunks and chunks, in any order! What a great supplement to my phonics program- and talk about fun!!

HOW I WANT TO MAKE IT WORK

• Every day we will do the alphabet review. Basically its different chants and gestures for each letter of the alphabet. It also goes over the the long/short vowel sounds!
• For the first 2 weeks of school we will then practice rimes. It's also a great way to review vowels and their sounds here!
• Students will then practice rimes or hunks and chunks after the third week, with worksheets. Now these are not the "sit there and complete them independently" kind of worksheets. They're very interactive and involve many different tasks such as recognizing hunks and chunks (like the picture above), writing/spelling words, reading words, and listening for hunk and chunk words.
• Word wall games are suggested to be played during the second day of teaching a hunk and chunk. She gives a ton of different ideas (30 pages worth). There are even chants to go with the word wall to practice grammar and literary devices. For example "A synonym. A synonym. It means the same!" (pg. 136 The Phonics Dance) is chanted before using the word wall to find synonyms.
• Monster Words - she even gives chants for words that have tricky spelling! "goes- g-o-e-s there goes the e-s!" (pg 391 Phonics Dance) How cute is that? There's so many more!!
• Oh and this great hunking and chunking can be used for unknown words! Ginny gives a step by step process to help students look at all the elements of a word to decode it.
• Writing Chants- are you surprised? She gives some more capitals, periods, questions, etc! I think I am going to love chanting and singing this year!

These are some of the major ideas in the book that I thought sounded awesome. I'm still reading through it and gaining more ideas. Hopefully I'll be able to work out more of a definite schedule with it in the next week and can share that with you.

Has anyone ever done the Phonics Dance or heard of it? I'd love to talk to people who have done it before, or anyone who is interested! It looks like a fun program.. and like I said I'm excited for phonics this year!! :)