Our Reunion

After the Culture Day, I suddenly decided to go back to Kaohsiung. First, it is because Huan told me he doesn’t know when our next reunion will be after his job hunting. Second, I feel it’s been a while since 6 weeks ago, I don’t have a chance to kiss Machi. Therefore, I went back to Kaohsiung last morning. We had a good time. Grace and I talked a lot. I was surprised that she even noticed it’s meaningful in my code-switching. Honestly, there’s no dominant language in my brain. Whichever comes first serves to be my discourse. Also, when there’s not precise enough in my expression, I tend to switch my language. It seems when I speak in English, I tend to be more open-minded, straightforward, and expressive. That’s why I learned to say thank you and I love you in English first. Besides, do I have high expectations about my boyfriend or Mr. White? I don’t think so, but Grace listed some conditions for me.

  • Someone must have good English without further translation. — If the population of the pool is people in Taiwan, yes. The average English level in Taiwan is mediocre.
  • Someone has his specialty. For instance, he must master a specific field. — Yes, I admire people who choose what they like, like what they do.
  • Someone must have a good attitude like working hard and perseverance. — Definitely.
  • Being rich is not necessary. — Yes, I prefer financially independent.

In addition, I realized that maybe because I become a teacher, Grace is proud of me. We had a lot to share with each other. I deeply feel that I was beloved. I did enjoy the time and that kind of feeling was beyond words.

This morning, I went to Grandma’s house. Grandma gets old and Grandpa didn’t say anything except called my name and showed a smiling face. My dad told me once Grandpa told him that he dreamed that I married a principal’s son. This was funny. it also showed that they are happy that I become a teacher and Grandpa concerns about my marriage.

Cultural Day Achieved & Kaohsiung

Recently I did not get along with Rebecca well. She started giving the kids corporal punishment. Although by definition, corporal punishment is defined as “more than 3 minimum of standing as a consequence”seems to be too rigid, as the only adult who stays in the classroom, I am really not comfortable hearing her explicitly saying, “If you do something again, you need to stand there as punishment.” For her, it is not even the concept of “timeout”. It is some method to thread the kids to listen to her.

However, with R’s help, I finally achieved Culture Day. We finished the display and the performance. What a big relief! I met some parents last night. They were all happy. That’s what I wanted to see. In this way, I am no longer threatened by Rebecca. At least, I can complete my duty as a kindergarten FT homeroom at the end of this July. I decided to rush back to Kaohsiung to meet Grace and Huan just for the reunion. Besides, I can kiss Machi and love him for these 1.5 days.

On the other hand, the good is Sally and Julia are accepted into the public school system. Also, a lot of people got accepted, so my teacher friends almost left there. However, Sally said that no matter what, the DNA belonging to I-Shou will stay alive all the time!

Phonemic Awareness Lesson Plans for Kindergarten and First Grade

While reading this post, I thought of an interesting moment. One day in class, my kid, Ted, raised his hand and asked, ” Tr. Pei, how to spell head?” My intuition was “H-e-a-d
” My kid started questioning me, “Tr. Pei, “-ea- pronounced /i/”! Head is h [i] d, not h[ε]d! Hahahahahaha😂… kid, your sweet reaction impressed me. Theank you for arguing with me. I am glad that my teaching content stays alive in your brain and became part of your own knowledge. Then, the other day, he came to me and said Tr. Pei, T-E-D is going home!

What is Phonemic Awareness? 

Phonemic awareness is the knowledge that spoken language is made up of sound units, called phonemes. This includes the ability to blend sounds, as well as isolate, segment, delete, add, and substitute phonemes within words.  When students have phonemic awareness they can do these things with both spoken and written words.

Examples of phonemic awareness include:

  • recognizing words that begin with the same sound
    (“Run, Rake, and Risk all have /r/ at the beginning.”)
  • isolating and saying the first or last sound in a word
    (“The beginning sound of bat is /b/.” “The ending sound of cat is /t/.”)
  • combining, or blending the separate sounds in a word to say the word
    (“/t/, /a/, /g/ – tag.”)
  • breaking, or segmenting a word into its separate sounds
    (“up – /u/, /p/.”)

Phonics vs. Phonemic Awareness

Phonics and Phonemic Awareness are two terms that are often confused or used interchangeably.  While both components are essential for learning to read, they are not the same thing.  

Phonemic awareness is oral and auditory. It focuses on the sounds in words.  Phonics instruction is visual AND auditory. The focus of phonics instruction is letter-sound relationships, also known as phoneme-grapheme correspondence.  

When you add graphemes to phonemic awareness lessons, it becomes a phonemic awareness lesson AND a phonics lesson at the same time. Studies have found that lessons like this, ones that integrate letters (graphemes) into phoneme instruction have a greater effect on phonemic awareness, decoding, and spelling than lessons that did not include graphemes.

When Should I Teach Phonemic Awareness? 

Teaching phonemic awareness in small groups is most effective. It allows you to closely monitor student responses, provide positive, corrective feedback, and scaffold instruction as necessary.  Whole group or one-on-one instruction was also found to be effective, just not as effective as small group instruction.  

Phonemic Awareness Lesson Plans for Kindergarten and 1st Grade

Today I’m thrilled to share with you my Science of Reading-aligned Phonemic Lesson Plans for Kindergarten and First Grade students.  These research-based lesson plans have EVERYTHING you need to bring effective phonemic awareness instruction to your small groups!  

Let’s take a closer look at all that is included in these resources…

Phonemic Awareness Lesson Plans Aligned to a Scope and Sequence

With this resource, you’ll get lesson plans laid out in a weekly format.

Each lesson plan includes a warm-up for the target skill and three activities. 

  1. Phoneme Segmenting: students practice breaking apart each word and identifying each phoneme
  2. Phoneme Blending: students hear a sequence of phonemes and put them together to identify the word
  3. Connecting Graphemes to Phonemes: students practice connecting the phonemes in a spoken word to the letters (graphemes) that represent those sounds.

Note that the kindergarten lessons do start a little differently. For the first couple of weeks, the lessons focus on letters. Students work on isolating beginning and ending sounds, as well as the visual skills using the grapheme cards.

Screener Assessments

We know assessment is a KEY component to providing effective, targeted small group instruction.  With this resource, you’ll get a two-part screener for each unit that will identify whether each student can segment and blend phonemes, as well as a spelling inventory assessment that would be given whole-group. The assessments help you identify where in the scope and sequence you should begin your instruction and ensures your small group instruction is meeting the true needs of your students. 

Class Data Tracker

The class data tracker is a place to record the skills your students have mastered in the scope and sequence. You will be able to see your entire class data at a glance. Use this information to create your small groups and ensure you are providing targeted instruction.  It is also a helpful tool for discussing students’ progress at parent-teacher conferences, data meetings, and more!  Simply enter the date as students become proficient with each skill to track the growth of your class.

Reference: https://mrswintersbliss.com/phonemic-awareness-lesson-plans-for-kindergarten-and-first-grade-students/?fbclid=IwAR1atGuk8xPOHQTHIDZUUQcXT_dx1E6uMos-UBRlVneyWxsw5F10C8CkmC0

Our Conversation

After a while, Xuan-Xuan called me this afternoon before I went to the church. We talked about my recent situation. She said yes, you are excellent when you are a student and at work as a teacher. However, you are extremely weak at taking caking of yourself. Well, I think I am an independent young adult.

In addition, we talked about the fact that I got COVID. I was so sick and am recovering. We also talked about my life is better than the days I worked with B. The only thing I feel a bit not smoothy is that I can’t help with Grace’s Taichung trip. However, Xuan-Xuan thinks that Grace’s coming to stay with me is normal because we have a special teacher-student relationship. It’s been 16 years now. Grace must think that we are friends, so she asked my permission to stay. This was the very first time when people heard about this and felt normal. Nice! Finally, I have someone who really knows me.

By the way, the doctor checked my blood test results for COVID. He said that although some of the indexes are too high, they are not terribly high. It seemed the situations were acceptable, but the recovering process really takes time.