How to Teach Letter Sounds to Preschoolers

Article by Marlene Gundlach (17,454 pts ) Edited & published by ElizabethWistrom (12,542 pts ) on Mar 8, 2010 Related Guides: Sight WordsLetter RecognitionLetter Sounds Once a preschooler has learned to recognize letters, moving to letter sounds is the next step to reading readiness.

What do They Know?

Just as you would evaluate what letters students recognize, you should check and see which letter sounds they know. Make a chart of all the letters, in random order, and ask students to name each sound. When you check the vowels, be sure to ask for both sounds the letter makes. On your own copy of the letter chart, circle any letters that the students did not know the sound for. Then, as you move on through the year, you can check their progress.

Group Activities for Letter Sound Recogntion

As a Pre-K teacher, I provided my students with several fun activities to complete on a daily basis to help develop pre-reading skills. Once your class has mastered letter recognition, then you can move on and work on teaching letter sounds. We had a fun song that we would sing every morning and it taught letter sounds. We would add a letter every

day or so and would eventually get through the entire alphabet. This did focus on the short-vowel sounds, but those are often harder to grasp than the long-vowel sound. By including easy actions, you are reinforcing the sound. We also made a word wall and added to it daily. Using note cards, we went through the alphabet and added words beginning with each letter. Because the students helped to come up with the words, we were reinforcing the sound each time they chose a new word. By leaving the word wall up all year round, it was a constant visual reminder of what they had learned. Using the letter cards you made for the letter recognition circle activity, you can also put them out to help learn letter sounds. Place them in a circle, start the music, and when you stop the music, each student can name the letter sound and even give you one word that begins with that letter. Working with rhyming words and word families is a perfect activity for reinforcing letter sounds. You can either make your own set of words with note cards or purchase a set at a local teacher store. By introducing the patterns in rhyming words, you can quickly expand a child's list of sight words. For example, show students the - at family:

rat mat cat hat sat bat pat

Demonstrate how you sound out a word, and isolate the - at ending. Then, explain how changing just the first letter forms a new word. Once we reviewed this, I would then pass out the cards on subsequent days and ask for certain words. The students had to read their card and know when to bring it up. Using a pocket chart, the

students would bring their card up and place it in the chart. They loved this extremely simple activity. Continue to add other word families, and you will continue to expand their list of recognizable sight words.

Individual Activities for Sound Recognition

Once students have learned their letter sounds, you can begin to test that knowledge. My students each had their own notebooks, and we would combine their beginning sound practice with writing. We may ask them to write two or three - at words, and draw a picture of each. Using "nonsense" words is another great tool to test beginning letter sounds. Write a list of nonsense - at words in their notebook such as:

zat jat lat wat

Ask the student to read the words to you. When students truly know their letter sounds, they can sound out these nonsense words. This is the perfect test to see if they can apply what they have learned. If you only give recognizable sight words, you may only be testing their memorization skills.

Reading Readiness
Reading readiness is one of the most exciting things to teach as a preschool teacher. Teaching letter sounds and helping your students progress from pre-reading to becoming beginning readers is an amazing opportunity to help them get a strong start as they prepare for Kindergarten!

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Adaptive Behavior Techniques for Special Education Classrooms

Article by Jayant R Row (9,606 pts ) Edited & published by ElizabethWistrom (12,542 pts ) on Oct 9, 2010 Problems in acquiring the skills that are necessary for a particular age will determine whether adaptive behavior for children has been sufficiently developed. An adaptive behavior assessment system can be used to make diagnosis and treatment easy.

Adaptive Behaviors Are Learned Developmental Skills

Adaptive behaviors are those skills that a person learns while adapting to the environment in which he or she lives in. From childhood this can means such basic skills as walking, talking, and toilet training, going to school, dressing and playing with other children. As a person grows up, this can mean going to work, managing money, cleaning house or preparing a meal. It can also include social action and forming friendships. Most of these skills are developmental and would therefore be linked to the age of the person. Standards have therefore been formed by social scientists linking up adaptive behavior to age and these standards are used to measure adaptive behavior and for further diagnosis that may require corrective action. Persons with mental disabilities whether they are from neurological or other problems can have problems acquiring adaptive skills. This may be especially marked in children suffering from mental retardation and severely limit their functioning in day to day activities at home or in school. Adaptive behavior for children in

such cases is helped by direct instruction and simplified routines which are used to ensure that the child does acquire the adaptive behavior which will help him or her to lead a more normal life. Image Source: Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/familymwr/4919451795/

Assessing Adaptive Behavior and Taking Corrective Action

Adaptive behavior assessments are used while trying to determine the behavior strengths and weaknesses that afflict students who have learning disabilities. These assessments are then used to make Individual Education Plans (IEPs) through which the student can learn adaptive behavior that is closer to his or her age group. This assessment is made after questioning parents, social worker and teachers and possibly other students as well. The behavior of the child can also be assessed based on direct observation of the performance of the child of any specific skill which a child of that age is supposed to normally perform. The Adaptive Behavior Assessment System is a system that can rate skills and adaptive behavior of individual from birth to an age of 89. The system is referenced to norms that have been developed and are in place for various age groups. Other impairments like language, speech, attention disorders and other neuropsychological disorders can also be gauged through the tests in the system. Scoring can be done by hand or through software based on data from forms filled up by parents, teacher and other caregivers. The system then indicates the various scores and suggests interventions for various adaptive behaviors. With this assessment system it is possible to determine how the person is responding to demands made by daily routines, whether any learning difficulties or other impairments are noticed and whether the person is able to live independently or would require a care giver. Further development and other training can be determined that will enable the person to reach the adaptive behavior that is expected. Adaptive behavior can be taught to children by breaking down the needed skill into a number of component parts and teaching the skill while going through each step while highlighting the sequence necessary for the steps so that the entire skill is learned. This can be simple things like eating, dressing or even developing toilet training. Social skills can also be developed in the same way.

References
What is Adaptive Behavior http://learningdisabilities.about.com/od/medicalinterventions/g/adptbehvrdeffin.htm Adaptive Behavior Scales - http://www.assessmentpsychology.com/adaptivebehavior.htm Adaptive Behavior Assessment System http://www.mhs.com/product.aspx?gr=edu&prod=abas2&id=overview Adaptive Behaviors - http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10017&page=103 Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/education/special/articles/90377.aspx#ixzz11zYy1KiD

Gifted Curriculum
Article by kanaitsa (2,481 pts ) Edited & published by ElizabethWistrom (12,542 pts ) on Jul 14, 2010 Related Guides: IEPSpecial Education StudentsIep Team

Curriculum for gifted and talented education needs to be individualized and goal -oriented. It is therefore the teacher's responsibility to ensure they create lessons that require higher order thinking and higher order responses from gifted students.

What Is Entailed In A Gifted And Talented Curriculum

The curriculum for gifted and talented education should be individualized to meet the goals of gifted students. Gifted students can be placed in self-contained classrooms, regular education classrooms, magnet schools, resource rooms or a mix of these settings. Placement typically depends on the needs of the student. Regardless of where they are placed, their curriculum needs to be different from the regular students and their individual needs, abilities and interests should be considered. Just like other special education students, an IEP has to be created for a gifted student by the age of 14 showing the student's current level of performance, their annual goals and what the student has to do to meet their annual goals and transition into adulthood. Differentiating instruction for gifted students in regular classrooms has shown to be effective for gifted students. Developing An Effective Curriculum Curriculum for gifted and talented education needs to be modified to meet the students needs. The IEP team should look at the strengths and weaknesses of the gifted students and based from their finding, the curriculum should be modified with the findings in place. It is important that the IEP team make an IEP that is individualized and unique to a gifted student because gifted students tend to comprehend difficult ideas faster, learn faster and more deeply than their classmates, and have interests that are different from their peers. Gifted students tend to want to explore information more deeply, they like to draw conclusions and they tend to ask provocative questions. When a teacher is getting their lesson plan ready to cater to a gifted student, they should modify the content in such a way that the lesson is accelerated, compacted, has variety, is flexible, can be re-organized and should have room for complex concepts. The lesson plan the teacher plans should allow the gifted student to move through the content at their own pace and once they master a concept, the teacher should allow the student to proceed to the next assignment. The teacher should be ready to give the gifted student more advance learning activities rather than having the student repeat the same concept. The curriculum for gifted students needs to be intellectually demanding, these students need to be challenged by higher order questions that require a higher order of response. The curriculum should have open ended questions that will make the students more inquisitive and exploratory. Differentiating instruction for gifted students in regular classrooms has shown to be effective for gifted students. The gifted students curriculum should also cater for the students environment. Gifted students learn better in a receptive, non-judgmental , student centered environment. The environment should encourage the student to be inquisitive, independent , include a wide variety of materials, and provide freedom of movement. The teacher should allow gifted students freedom to question content and use their creativity to achieve their maximum potential. The strategies used to teach gifted students should also be taken into account because they are important in ensuring the student benefits from the content being taught. Finally, there are several ways to find curriculum for gifted students, some of the ways are teachers joining gifted students organizations and exchanging materials, teachers can also acquire advanced curriculum from higher grade levels to keep the gifted students engaged. Teachers should seek to have gifted students work with mentors who can help gifted student reach their maximum potential. Sources http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content/diff_curriculum.html

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