One of the first lessons I did during my guided lead teaching involved me teaching my learners about ending sounds in words. The lesson I did required learners to sort pictures based upon their end sound. The two sounds my learners worked with were /t/ and /n/. The day before, my learners engaged in this activity as a whole group, in which they all worked together to identify end sounds in words. However, the sounds and the pictures were different. Thus, on the second day, the task was the same, but the objective was for them to independently engage in sorting pictures. I retouched upon what we had done the previous day, modeled how we sorted them (engaging the learners as I did it), and showed them what they were to do when they went back to their seats. I made sure to identify all of the various pictures with them, and I had them say the words with me, so that they could emphasize and hear the end sound in the words. Four of my learners in my class are still struggling with beginning sounds, and so I had them do the same sorting activity but based upon the beginning sound of a word instead of the ending sound.
From the lesson, I learned that a high portion of my learners were able to independently do this task. They quickly started cutting out the pictures and were able to identify which pictures went with which ones, in a timely matter. My learners’ ability to sort the objects based upon the end sounds, independently, told me a lot about what they knew. It showed me what they had learned, along with what they knew beyond ending sounds. I learned that my learners are able to hear end sounds in words, are able to know those end sounds are associated with a specific letter in the alphabet, understand specific letter/sound combinations, understand that words are made up of multiple different sounds, and are able to hear the various sounds in a word. Beyond the information I gained regarding my learners knowledge with ending sounds, I also learned that my learners are able to independently say words and can hear the different sounds in words. This tells me that they are able to segment words in their heads and pick out the ending sound, discriminating between various sounds. My learners, who engaged with the beginning sounds task, also did quite well. In doing the task correctly, with limited support from me, they showed me that they understood the same types of things my friends who worked on ending sounds did, except in light of beginning sounds. They understand that words are made up of different sounds, that some sounds are at the beginning of a word, that they can distinguish between the various sounds in a word and isolate the one that we are working on, and that they can listen and distinguish between sounds.
Three of my learners struggled with the task. They were able to get at least 5 out of the 8 pictures sorted, but struggled with a few. I noticed that my learners, who struggled with a few pictures, were struggling with the segmenting of the word to hear the individual sounds. For example, one of my learners started to sort the pictures based upon the beginning sound, instead of the end sound. He had sorted his other four pictures by their end sound, but than started to sort the rest of his pictures based upon their beginning sound. When I pointed this out to him, he still had trouble figuring out the end sound. He kept telling me the beginning sound in each word. However, when I sat down with these three learners and had them say what each picture showed, they were able to tell me which column the picture should be in. Thus, with scaffolding, they were able to complete the task. My friends who worked on beginning sounds were all successful with the task. They completed the task independently, and sorted all of the pictures correctly.
Though my lesson seemed really successful and it seemed as though my learners really understood the concept, I know it might be a false perception. Since learners were doing the work at their tables, I know that they may have looked at each other’s papers and may have copied what the person next to them did. Thus, I am not sure if all my learners independently sorted the pictures correctly, or if they looked at other friends and moved their pictures based upon what their friends had. All in all, I am thus unsure as to how independent my learners worked and how much of the product was a reflection of their own knowledge, or of the knowledge of another student. I will be able to paint a more accurate picture of my learners’ understandings when I do more ending sound activities with them and they are separated from those around them.
In order to support my learners who seemed challenged by the task of sorting pictures, based upon either the ending sound or the beginning sound, I will provide extra opportunities for them to get exposure to the concepts. The first thing I will do is, I will put activities that require my learners to work on ending sounds and beginning sounds on the word study shelves to choose from during the daily 5, activities such as ending sound bingo, ending sound concentration, sorting activities, etc. I will also provide multiple more lessons on the concepts of ending and beginning sounds. Some of the lessons I will do will require my learners to play ending sound and beginning sound concentration games, supply the ending sound of a word orally, write the letter needed at the end of a word, based upon the ending sound, etc. These other lessons will help strengthen their understanding of ending and beginning sounds and will help me to better assess how secure their understanding of ending and beginning sounds are, and where to go next with them. Lastly, if it seems that the majority of my learners understand the concepts, I will move on in my unit of word study and than pull a small group, of those learners that seemed to be challenged by beginning or ending sounds, to work with them. I would pull the two groups, those who needed work with beginning sounds and those who needed help with ending sounds, at different times.
If I were to do this lesson again, I would definitely do a little bit more modeling on how my learners were to sort based upon the end sound in a word. I would provide a few more words and ask for the end sound. A lot of my learners were telling me the letter, not the sound, and so I feel that more examples might have helped all of my learners understand what I was asking. Furthermore, I would have sorted a few of the pictures based upon the beginning sound, after showing them the correct way to sort the pictures, and ask the learners what was wrong with how I sorted. I would have them point out the error so that they could see what I did not want them to do. I told the learners that I wanted them to sort by end sounds, but a lot of time, my learners need to see what not to do so that they have a concrete example of what is not their task. Thus, if I had done that, I feel as though my three learners, who seemed challenged by the task, might have been more cognizant of what they were doing, and may not have made their errors.
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