Chapter Three
Methodology
This study was designed to explore the use of songs and games in teaching letter knowledge and sounds to a group of grade two students. This chapter covered the research design, a description of the participants, the data collection techniques, the implementation process and data analysis.
Research Design
Tomal (2010) explained that during action research, is concerned with using a systematic process to address educational problems and make improvements. The researcher exploits suitable interventions to gather and analyze data and then implement actions to improve the issues. He also explained that action research is appropriate for educators as practical process because it is concerned with improvement within the context of the study.
I observed things that were happening in my classroom, students had problems identifying letters of the alphabet and were unable to produce appropriate sounds for each. Also, some students were unable to syllabicate words for spelling purpose and frequently sought assistance from peers or teacher. This issue became the focus of my research. I had to implement a strategy to focus on teaching letter knowledge and sound. Data was collected using diagnostic test, checklist, observation and teacher journal. The data will be analyzed and discussed in the following chapters.
The data collected was both qualitative and qualitative. The quantitative data was collected from the diagnostic test. The use of the diagnostic test helped to determine the participants' phonemic awareness before the intervention. Using the quantitative data collection method provided a means of conducting research that was objective and gathered solid data (Macky & Gass).
The data was triangulated using...
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...ces from the research activities. I also took into consideration my participants who were children. In conducting my research permission was requested from the institution as well as from the parents or guardians of the children in my care. Throughout the research process, I maintained integrity by keeping agreements that the identity of the institution and the children remained confidential. In managing privacy, the information gathered will not be linked to the participants. The information was used in the research, but was done in a way that ensured the individual’s anonymity.
Records of research activities such as data collection and research design were be done properly and stored in a safe place. I maintained respect for intellectual property by avoiding plagiarism. All the sources were acknowledged and credit given for the contribution to my research.
Phonemic Awareness and Alphabetic Principle in addition to Phonics and Decoding Skills provide students with early skills of understanding letters and words in order to build their reading and writing skills. Students will need to recognize how letters make a sound in order to form a word. While each word has a different meaning to be to format sentences. While reading strategies for Reading Assessment and Instruction, I was able to find three strategies for Phonemic Awareness and three strategies for Alphabetic Principles which will provide advantage for the student in my research and classroom settings.
These studies revealed that students with moderate to severe disabilities have the potential to benefit from phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. The ELSB curriculum supports these studies by providing phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. In addition, it provides an option for students who need to use augmentative communication, who do not have phonemic awareness skills and who may need more repetitions to learn. The ELSB can be used either with a small group of students or individually. Additionally, teacher scripts are provided so that teachers know how to word the introduction of each skill and to keep the lesson moving at a quick
...n of the research method or methods used to gather and interpret them are included. The method used to collect data is normally outlined in the article is appropriate to the topic, and allows the study to be duplicated for purposes of verification. The document relies on other sources that are listed in a bibliography or includes links to the documents themselves. The document names people and/or sources that provided non- published data used in the preparation of the topic of study.
The article “ Hands-on and Kinesthetic Activities for Teaching Phonological Awareness”, gives a very well detailed overview on the teaching study done between Phonological Awareness and Phonics instruction and how they take different forms from vocal and visual methods. These techniques emphasized schoolbooks and computer games to multi-sensory approaches that emphasize hands- on activities and manipulative. Teachers have a variety of methods supported by research to teach these important skills. This study was done by using 2 before school programs, one focusing on Kinesthetic Activities that r...
The FLaRE (Florida Literacy and Reading Excellence) Center has published a professional paper entitled “Phonemic Awareness” of which I will be presenting a critical review. Phonemic awareness is one of the five essential components of reading identified by the National reading Panel (Learning Point Associates, 2004). Phonemic awareness can be defined as a person’s understanding that each word we speak is comprised of individual sounds called phonemes and that these sounds can be blended to form different words (Learning Point Associates, 2004). The article was intended to give a synopsis of phonemic awareness and the vital role it plays in a literacy program. I found the article to be very clear and concise presenting valuable tactics that can be applied in the classroom.
Music evaluated as a subjects that is many times overlooked. If a school seems to have financial trouble, then music and art programs are the first to get cut. Essentially, students do not need them to succeed and they are just hobbies. This is the mindset that many school boards have towards music education.
Tankersley broke down the mechanics of phonemic awareness and discussed numerous relevant aspects of phonemic awareness which I can alter and implement within my classroom. For example, Tankersley discussed patterns in reading and teaching students that print carries meaning. I could implement this within my classroom by having books in my classroom library that have patterns or rhyme. I can also have books on tape and allow my students to listen to the book being read while following along with their finger in the book. This will allow students to learn that print carries meaning and assist in early reading. Tankersley also talked about reading at home and how students are influenced by their parents. Although this was directed towards students at the elementary level, this also applies to students at the high school level. If I have students who are working on reading, I will ask parents to engage with their students and read at home. I could also implement a library buddies program where I would pair my students with general education students and have them read together in the library once a week or more. The chapter also lists several letter identification and letter-sound identification skills which I can use within my classroom after making modifications. The activities presented were different from other activities I have read about and I believe they would be a great
As children, we are exposed to many new and intriguing elements. One of those new items of exploration is the element of music. When children are brought home from the hospital and are crying without end, mothers and fathers sing to them in order to calm them down. Before putting them down to sleep, a lullaby is a common practice of parents. Songs are also very evident in children’s television shows, movies, and even books that have buttons that make music while reading the book. At a young age music enters into the grasp of children and as they grow and mature music has an even bigger impact on their life. Three pieces of music that are examples of childhood music are “Brahms’ Lullaby,” “Tse Tse Kule,” and “Nobody’s Perfect.”
Developing children need to be engaged in musical education because it assists them with their emotional development in a safe and comfortable environment. Children are essentially blank slates at the start of their education. Therefore, they can be molded by their environment; music needs to be a part of that environment. As Aristotle once said, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." Aristotle, one of the most profound philosophers of Ancient Greece, stated that the true purpose of art is to focus on what is on the inside, or how it makes the individual feel on the inside emotionally. Aristotle wanted to make it known that the goal of music and the arts was not to boast about
Phonetic awareness has been proven to aid in our students written and reading acquisition. I would also try to incorporate reading instruction using my student’s primary language. I would like to implement activities such as writing in journals and drawing pictures to illustrate what the students are writing about. In doing this, I hope my students can write and also illustrate the story they are trying to communicate to me. I would also like to read stories with my students and ask them to make predictive statements about the stories. I would also like to incorporate centers into my classroom that will help my students play in literacy-enriched areas. Examples of these centers would be places like a school, an office, a grocery store or a restaurant. While the students are not in my classroom, I will send home activities that include parental involvement. I would encourage parents to communicate with their students using their journals. They can write entries back and forth to each other to communicate. The student could even draw a secret message to their parents and have their parent try and figure out sentences that correlates to the picture. I would also like to send home storybooks for the parents to read to their children. These storybooks would come with an activity sheet that the student would need to complete. On the activity sheet I would ask students to draw
According to Bursuck & Damer (2011) phonemes are “the smallest individual sounds in words spoken.” Phonemic awareness is the “ability to hear the phonemes and manipulate the sounds” (p. 41). Phonemic awareness is essential because without the ability students are not able to manipulate the sounds. According to the National Institute for Literacy (2007), “students with poor phonics skills prevent themselves from reading grade-level text and are unable to build their vocabulary” (p.5) Agreeing with the importance of phonemic awareness, Shapiro and Solity attempted to use whole class instruction to improve students’ phonological awareness. The intervention showed that whole class instruction assisted not only the students with poor phonemic awareness, but also on-level developing readers.
Five of the 26 alphabet letters are vowels. The objective of this lesson plan was to introduce the five vowels as an introduction to learning the alphabet. First of all, I chose this lesson plan, because it is developed in a comprehensive and systematic way. As well, the teacher introduces the topic in a simple manner in which students can get involved in the lesson. The teacher captures the attention of students by singing the vowels ' song. In my perspective, students retain the letter names easier by singing songs such as the alphabet and vowels songs. Moreover, the teacher clearly explains step by step what the students will do in class; what they are expected to learn; how to reinforce what they already learned and how assess them of
“Music education opens doors that help children pass from school into the world around them a world of work, culture, intellectual activity, and human involvement. The future of our nation depends on providing our children with a complete education that includes music.” Former US president Gerald Ford, said this in regards to musical education. He and many other people believe in having an education in music at some point in a student’s life. According to the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) says that Bill Clinton is a saxophone player (The Most Musical United States Presidents par 25)
... at this age level that are age appropriate and song that kids will enjoy. It will be my job to convince my students that music is cool, and when creating songs not include much movement.
Since the early studies and Ehri’s conclusions a great deal of research has demonstrated that letter knowledge is integrally involved in word recognition. The hypotheses and purpose of this later study was to examine anew the effects of letter-name knowledge associated with instruction on beginning phonetic word recognition with methodology correcting for the flaws of previous studies. After instruction the children’s ability to learn 3 types of word spellings was examined. An argument was then formulated that efforts to increase children’s attention to letter information are needed, given its clear importance in early reading.