Phonics - the basic elements

Which letters of our alphabet are voiced? Which are unvoiced?

 

Phonics is about the basic elements of written words. Connecting letters to sounds and vice versa can be challenging for adults who are learning to read. So, as new people join us, we review what we know about written language.


Sadly, our learners often don't know the answers to these simple, basic questions.

Do you? 

As a tutor, these answers should 

just be part of who you are. 

Let's find out.

Here are 5 questions I ask to get us talking. See how well you do. (The answers are at the end of the questions.)

Question 1. How many letters are in our alphabet? 

Hint: I get a range of answers even when the alphabet is staring them in the face and I suggest that they count them.



Question 2. How many vowels are in our alphabet? 

Hint: Even people who think they know the alphabet often get this answer wrong. If you said 5, then you missed the other two vowels that are often overlooked. You'll remember them when you repeat the oft used expression "- a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w."



Question 3. How many consonants in our alphabet? 

Hint: This answer is more straight forward - count all the letters except a, e, i, o, and u. Y and w get counted both as vowels and consonants. Note that y and w are consonants whenever they are the first letter of the word. (Yes, I know there are exceptions, like Ypsilanti - a town in Michigan. These exceptions are few and typically associated with proper nouns.)



Question 4. Which single letters share sounds with other letters? 

Hint: Answering this question is a challenge. Here's where you've got to think about all the letters and how they are used.

Question 5. Which letters of our alphabet are voiced and which are unvoiced?

Hint: Before you answer, let me explain. Each letter in English has a sound (even if the sound is not unique to itself, such as "c"). When the letter sounds are made, a vibration will or will not occur in your throat. 

• Voiced. If you feel the vibration (by gently placing the palm of your hand around your throat as you say the sound), then the letter is considered "voiced." For example, press your lips together and say /m/. Feel your throat as you say /m/. Do you feel the vibration? Of course you do, meaning the sound of "m" is voiced. 
• Unvoiced. If the letter sound doesn't give off a vibration, then that letter is "unvoiced." For example, blow air through your teeth for the /s/ sound. Feel your throat as you say /s/. Do you feel a vibration? Of course not, meaning the sound of "s" is unvoiced. 

Your turn. Which letters fit into each category?  

Answers. Compare your answers here: 

(1) 26     

(2) 7     

(3) 21     

(4) 5 - The letters are c, g, q, x, and y.

• The two most common sounds of c are: /k/ in cat and /s/ in city. Less common is when c sounds like /sh/ in ocean, /ch/ in cello, or /ts/ in currency. 
• The two most common sounds of g are: /j/ as in age and a unique "hard" sound as heard in get. G can also sound like /zh/ as in genre /zhon - ruh/. 
• While q most often sounds like /kw/ in quit, q can sound like /k/, as in antique. 
• Here are a few of x's sounds: most common is /ks/ as in extra, /gz/ as in exact, and /kz/ as in exam. When x is the first letter of a word, x usually sounds like /z/, as in xanthan (/zӑn' - thӑn/). X can also be silent, as in faux (pronounced /fō/).
• Y has 4 sounds: At the beginning of a word, y is a consonant and sounds like the /y/ in yellow. Most often y is not at the beginning of words and acts like a vowel. For example, y can sound like the long "i" in try, long "e" in baby, or short "i" in bicycle.

(5) Voiced (a, b, d, e, g, i, j, l, m, n, o, r, u, v, x, y, z); 

Unvoiced (c, f, h, k, p, q, s, t, w, x) 

How did you do? 

If you aren't 100% there, keep working at it. 

Want to learn more? Follow us.   

  

Journaling: 4 Journal Categories

Examples of 4 different journaling types:
processing, tracking, planning, and sharing. 

 As you may recall, our Tuesday morning group started September with a two-month unit on journaling. 

  

Prep work (for Lesson 2)

My homework between Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 became clear during Lesson 1. Learners needed their horizons widened. 

A brief Google search quickly identified several bloggers willing to introduce me to different types of journals. Notice how many journaling types I discovered just from these four blog entries: 

• 10 Different Types of Journaling...
• 20 Types of Journals to Keep
• 7 Types of Journals with Examples
• 6 Types of Journals You Should Keep 

Are there really this many types of journals? If so, how was I ever going to introduce them to learners without boring them to death?

My Discoveries

For the next step in my exploration, I recorded the name of every type of journal presented in these blogs plus several more blogs. 

Discovery 1. With time, I realized that many of the blogs were just repeating each other. The list narrowed itself to 25 types. How was I going to engage everyone in all 25 types? In only 20 minutes?  

Discovery 2. Perhaps more importantly, I discovered that these 25 "journal types" organized themselves into four distinct categories. Thank goodness. Four is much more manageable than 25.

4 Categories

I've since named the categories as processing, tracking, planning, and experiencing. Keep reading and find out what I put in each category. See if you agree. Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below.   

Sample processing journal entry

Processing is about committing thoughts to paper, followed by thought-provoking explorations. These thoughts toy with and explore ideas. Here are some of the specific names given to this type of journal writing.

• Brain dump journal 
• Stream-of-consciousness journal
• Morning Pages journal
• Prompted writing journal
• Gratitude journal 
• Prayer/bible journal 
• Idea journal 
• Therapy journal 
• 1-line-a-day journal
• 5-minute journal

 

Sample tracking journal entry

Tracking is about making lists of repetitive actions that are key to forward movement on our goals, then checking the actions off each time we perform them. Here are some of the specific names given to this type of journal writing.

• Goal action steps tracker
• Bucket list tracker
• Diet tracker
• Exercise or fitness tracker
• Mood or energy level tracker
• Water tracker

 

Sample planning journal entry

Planning is about productivity. Productivity planners are about scheduling actions with time, organizing lists of tasks by due dates. Thus, this type of journal often pairs itself with a calendar. Here are some of the specific names given to this type of journal writing.

• Bullet journal 
• Planner 
• Daily schedule 
• To Do lists
• Project planner

 

Sample experience journal entry

Experiencing is about combining pictures, images, or even video with explanatory texts. That's just a sentence or two or a few key words to highlight the context and importance of this "experience." These journal entries may integrate sketches with handwritten text in a notebook, photos with typed text in a word processing file, or even postings on social media (e.g., Facebook, blog, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok). These journal entries tell a specific story. Here are some of the specific names given to this type of journal writing. 

• Dream journal
• Creative design doodling journal 
• Art journal
• Memory journal 
• Scrapbook  journal
• Meal planner journal
• Food journal 
• Flower-of-the-Day journal 
• Learning journal 
• Travel journal 
• Gardening journal 
• Nature journal 
• Junk journal 
• Pregnancy journal 
• Poetry journal

Lesson 2

I shared images and explanations for each of the four journal types described above. My purpose? 

• First, increase learners' knowledge of what journal writing encompasses. 
• Second, engage learners in identifying which three of the four journal types they'd want to try for themselves. 
• And lastly, help learners work out the details of this unit's final outcome product.

Their decisions? The three journal types we'll be exploring over the next six weeks will be experiencing, tracking, and processing. We'll also create a rating sheet for identifying the pros and cons of each type and proclaiming our individual choices.   

Want to see how this works out? Follow us.

Journaling: What do we know?

What's the cover of your journal look like?
This unique collage cover inspires.

Have you ever kept a journal? 

If so, what kind? I don't mean - bullet journal, Midori, Hobonichi, or spiral notebook. I mean, regardless of the paper stock and binding preferences, what was your purpose for journaling? What did you record? Pretty art work? To do lists? Deepest thoughts?

Our new unit

Why am I asking? Because our Tuesday morning group decided this month to narrow their topic choice from practical spelling, herbs & spices, and sugar in our bodies to journal writing. That's right - for the next two months they'll be devoted to journal writing.

Where to start

So, what knowledge and skills should they take away from this instruction? What essential questions will get learners most engaged? What do they need to know about journal writing that will sustain them into the future?  All important questions.

Our first questions however were: "What do we already know?" and "What do we want to learn?" We quickly determined that our knowledge was tied pretty much to diaries. In fact, learners who are currently reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl were quite certain that that's what journals were all about. However, when questioned, learners were not interested in listing what they did all day. Unlike Anne Frank's life, they assured me their lives were too dull to write about. 

What would you do?

What would you include in this unit if you were teaching it? What would you want to learn from this unit?

My next step appeared very clear at this point. I had to introduce them to journals that weren't merely about describing their day-to-day activities. 

Want to see how this works out? Follow us.   

Three math problems per session?

How do you deliver math instruction to learners with a range of skills within the same group? The range I'm speaking about goes from adding two digits with no regrouping to calculating long division to using order of operations to solve equations. 

More importantly, 

why do we limit our group math instruction 

to just three math problems?

The Past

For the past 9 years, we've been posting three math problems on the board twice daily. But, we didn't always do this.

In 2010, we used problems from One Minute Math. This book featured 100 pages with ten problems per page. The focus was on getting comfortable with numbers, exploring mathematical relationships, and picking up speed. The problems in this book covered the range of concepts necessary to pass the lower-level TABE tests (Test of Adult Basic Education) and CCRS (College Career Readiness Standards). And, this book touted that these ten problems could be completed within one (or two) minutes. What was not to love about the math problems in these books.

We started by putting just five problems on the board. You know, giving us a thirty-second math warm up. 

What happened, however, was our group took thirty minutes to do five problems. After weeks of spending so much time on only five problems, we cut back to three problems. We reminded learners that these problems could be done in less than twenty seconds (after recording them in their notebooks, of course). Regardless, we took twenty minutes to do just three problems. Twenty minutes seemed like a long enough time to build and refresh concepts. 

The Point

We had to rethink why we were doing the math work on the board. What was the point? We determined that the point was not for learners to copy the problems from the board and then corner tutors to tell them how to do the problems. 

Rather, the point was...for learners to talk with other learners to get input from each other. Learners' tasks were to ask questions. Offer ideas. Explain decisions. 

We wanted to increase this behavior. So, we put the learners "on the spot." Or, should I say, in the spotlight. Learners took on the teaching role. One learner would go up to the board, select one of the math problems listed on the board, and then explain how to do the problem. We would all see, hear, and question the presentation. Other learners would explain (or teach) the other problems. 

The Result - watching or interacting?

We were looking for engagement that got learners to be in charge and in control of their learning. In this way, learners could take on the role of teachers. Tutors were just there to guide learners as they thought and shared and offer alternative ways of thinking. 

This teaching method - spotlighting learners as teachers - gave birth to engagement that included learners asking and exploring, "What parts don't make sense?" Group note pages were also outcomes from these teaching moments by these learners. 

The result? Learners of all levels were engaged - actively interacting, rather than just watching.

This instructional model was akin to the one-room schoolhouse. Lower-level mathematicians were exposed to higher levels of math. Higher-level mathematicians grew their understandings by explaining and interpreting questions. Win-win situation. 

How are you engaging learners

in your math program?

Reading-Writing: Free Scholarship Opportunity for the Mind

"Learning about what you don't know and then writing about it is akin to continuing your education on a scholarship." Marshall Krantz (1996)

Read-Write Connection

This line from Krantz's book Ideas and Research reminds me that reading and writing go hand-in-hand. I'm quite aware that reading and writing are cognitively diverse operations. Reading is about decoding symbols and connecting personal knowledge with the author's words to generate the author's intended message supported by the textual evidence. Writing is about composing ideas from personal, situational, and worldly contexts then transcribing them into words - articulating noises in our minds - that we must then conjure up appropriately-related symbols that eventually will convey the same thoughts as we intended them to mean. 

Mind Tools

My point is that reading and writing are tools of the mind - a way to process and share thoughts.

Often learners (and tutors) don't want to write because the process (especially spelling and grammar) seems cumbersome. And, writing always takes more time than talking. Writing, however, forces us to think and articulate our thoughts in ways that are very different than talking. 

Deep Thinking

My push is to get more people to think more deeply about what they are learning or want to learn and get them to record these thoughts on paper. 

Writing about what you've just read in your own words requires reflective thought. Time spent in reflection strengthens and deepens learning - creating and dedicating more synapses to the content and process of our intentional focus. 

What do you do to help you think 

deeply about what you are learning?

Motivation: Bookmarks

Keeping Agreements
Sometimes holding that agreement with ourselves is difficult. Don Miguel Ruiz reminds us in The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (1997) that our self-agreements are the most meaningful and crucial as well as the easiest to slough off.

Even when we make commitments in front of a group, we can easily not follow through. We all know that what we say and what we do may be two different things. When we set goals with ourselves, do we really want that to happen?

Setting Goals
In adult literacy programs, we set goals. Learners & tutors set goals. We help each other make goals that are meaningful, actionable, and time-bound. We set one month goals. These goals often include learning a new skill, exploring a topic, completing a task, or finishing a book. 

Most of us, especially when the goals are not written down, forget the goals we make. We all need reminders. But, who wants someone nagging us to focus on the goal we set for ourselves?

Bookmarks
This past summer, we turned our goals into bookmarks - skinny pieces of card stock to mark a page in a book. Some of us put these bookmarks in the books we were reading daily. Some of us slipped them into the front vinyl cover of our 3-ring binder. Some of us posted them on our fridges or mirrors at home. And, we posted a set of them on our classroom bulletin board under our calendar. You get the picture - we put them where we'd see them to remind us. 

The bookmarks became the nagging voice that reminded us to focus - what's one thing I can do right now to move this goal forward.

As you can see from the bookmark at the top of this screen, each one had three parts. The top listed the person's name, career goal, and target dates. The middle section described the goal - the specific, measurable actions to be completed. The bottom section listed the way the person would celebrate. 

Did this strategy work? 
It worked for us. We had our highest rate of completion yet.

What are some things you do to hold 

your feet to the fire to get things done?

Speaker Jitters?!?

Photo by Robert A. Young

Remember the first time you had to officially "speak" in front of others?

Most of us are not comfortable, at least not in the beginning. Yet, presenting ideas in a group setting where everyone's eyes are on you is very much a necessary skill for work, home, politics, and society at large. The more comfortable you become, then the more likely people will listen and hear your points.

How do you prepare?

Tell us how you prepare for speeches in the comment section below.

Reflection

A quiet place to think about your day.

Reflection is an activity often ignored in our busy world. The closest many of us come to reflecting on our lives is in the minutes before we fall asleep. You know, those moments when we review our day, pulling up all of the negative conversations, happenstances, and images of our immediate past. Not a good idea.

If we listen to Carmen Simon in Impossible to Ignore, reflection supports long-term memory. Do we really need to remember all the insignificant, but emotionally-charged,pains of the day? Just to kick ourselves again for our behavior. Absolutely not. Unless, perhaps, we are working on ways to re/act differently next time.

We'd be better off if we use reflection to encode strategies and processes into our long-term memory. For example, over the weekend I made a blueberry pie with a new recipe. The pie was flavorful but far too juicy. The cooked blueberries tumbled out of the pie along with all of the juice. As I reflected on the process of making the pie. I realized that the recipe didn't include any thickener. Rather than lament on how poorly the pie held together, I reflected on the process and what to do in the future. I made notes in the recipe for future reference.

This same reflective process can be used for any action that we want to make accessible in our long-term memory. How does this work? Reflection is abut elaboration - connecting to the past, adding features, and identifying examples. The point is to build bridges and links in the brain so that we have more hooks in our brain to more easily retrieve or get information out of our brain. 

Reflection--thinking deeply about things--allows us the opportunity to build these synapses and strengthen retrieval. So, we need to take the time to think about the things we really want to remember, those things that will truly impact our future, rather than the negative moments.

Just before you fall asleep tonight, celebrate your successes and enhance the processes and strategies you want saved into your long-term memory.

Questions Facilitate Learning

Exemplary learning tasks engage
curiosities and foster growth.

Learning tasks guided by open questions posed after extensive resource building do not have singular answers. Engaged learners are expected to reflect on the question and bring to bear a combination of their experiences, problem-solving and reasoning skills, and specific content knowledge, strategies, and tools. These learners must sort through the language of the open question to find the essence of the question from which to explore their available resources and build their responses.

Exemplary learning tasks or open questions do just that - allow learners to explore, experiment, and explain their decisions based on their newly acquired as well as long-term knowledge, skills, and abilities.

What learning tasks stimulated and nurtured

 your knowledge, skills, and abilities? 

Consumption is not enough

"You go outside without clothes, you get arrested," Karl stated emphatically. To clarify Karl's point, Jesse added, "Arrested for not following social norms."

These summary comments were delivered after a brief discussion about three key ideas posed in Douglas Rushkoff's book Present Shock (2013): restlessness with anything that isn't "right now," balancing between virtual and physical worlds simultaneously, and skimming surfaces to make inaccurate connections.

Our conversation continued with the idea that society has many expectations. Most recently, this expectation seems to include that all of us must be effective and efficient users of technology. 

The question: "Can you use a computer?" takes on a completely new meaning these days. Being a passive consumer, like checking email or reading online news, is no longer enough.

We are expected to be producers. On the one end, we must pull together other people's ideas and share it with our "social set." On the other end, we must actively seek out information, share it with others, and add new and original thought that, even if for only a moment, grabs and engages the attention of other people. 

What have you produced today that will engage my attention?

"Milkshake" Theory of Literacy

What role does adult literacy
education play in learners' lives?

Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus (2010) states that we shouldn't set up a media campaign to promote "milkshake" purchases by just focusing on the qualities of the milkshake - sweetness, coldness, etc. If we do, he says we will be misled.

Why? We'd be looking at the milkshake in isolation. Instead, we need to look at the bigger picture. What role does the milkshake fill for the people buying the milkshakes - alone at 8 AM, never consuming them in the store, or buying anything else.

Shirky suggests that these milkshakes are purchased as sources of sustenance and amusement for morning commutes. This insight produces an extremely different basis for any potential media campaign.

How does this idea of consumption of milkshakes play out in the delivery - or consumption - of adult literacy instruction? What role does literacy instruction play in our learners' lives? Is the role different depending on the time of day? What's the impact of the person's perceived support system (inside and outside of our center)?

What other questions should we be exploring to get a more complete picture?

What we do is what we learn?!?

If learners spend their time sounding out words, then learners learn how to sound out specific sets of words. If learners spend their time answering questions to specific stories, then learners learn the answers to the specific questions asked. But if learners spend their time learning a process for understanding text and then apply this process to examine other texts, learners gain a valuable skill for interpreting texts. This learning then sparks the beginning of developing a lifelong skill that can become a part of them and be used at any appropriate time.

This scenario strongly suggests that what learners do is what learners learn. Therefore, as teachers (and tutors), we are responsible for creating authentic communities in which learning is shared, supported, and cognitively challenged. In these communities, learners engage in activities that build knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Learners are invited to use creativity, analyses, syntheses, reflection, and argumentative discovery to construct meaning. Participation engrosses their cognitive, emotional, and physical beings. In other words, the learners are doing the "work" - the thinking, the talking, the manipulating of the ideas, both tangible and intangible.

In this learning environment, our role then is as guides. We watch, encourage, and sometimes prod as learners make inquiries. Learners explore, experiment, and even make mistakes. We help them sort out ways to learn from and re-direct their energies. And, we question and challenge learners' decisions and responses while seeking evidence of appropriate reasoning and conviction.

How do you weigh in on this view of learning?

Name Calling: Which one are you?

Our state government’s terms for learners are attendees, enrollees, and, more recently, performers. I contend that these terms are inappropriate for adults accessing our educational program.

Why? These terms are passive. They imply that any learning that might happen is purely because these adults happen to “drop in” or “show up” one day. As Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus (2010) puts it, attendees and enrollees are “looky-loos” who pop in to consume, but not necessarily digest, our offerings. “Performers” is certainly a more active term, but, come on, we are not circus acts.

Better terms are learners and participants. These terms imply that interactions are occurring. Participants engage in making thoughtful decisions, exploring options, communicating solutions, questioning results, and adjusting to feedback. Oh, in other words, they are learning or participating in the building and exploration of their personal knowledge, skills, and abilities.

What terms would you use to describe these individuals?