ESL G3-6 Update

 An investigative approach and critical thinking were central to the focus of this week's theme as the students had extensive tasks dealing with spelling and phonics. In addition to these tasks central to our work, students also had a variety of other tasks to undertake based on their needs. Among these were writing tasks building on singular and plural noun distinction and writing tasks with a focus on tense interaction between past, present, and future. Furthermore, there were still opportunities for some students to work through a better mastery of irregular past tense verbs if that still posed a challenge.

With respect to the central task of phonics and spelling this week, students focused on long vowels and were pressed to find missing letters locked within groups of similarly spelled and sounded words such as "okay", "essay", and "away". Students would have to practice sounding the words out by their phonetic components and consider how to spell the word appropriately. They were able to use the knowledge of words they already understood how to spell to ensure they could spell words that were unfamiliar in the same group. 

In addition to this, students were later given a guide of possible orthographic combinations they could use to represent the main long vowels /eɪ/ - (a), /iː/ - (e), /aɪ/ - (i), /oʊ/ (o), and /juː/ - (u).  For example, students were made aware that /eɪ/ - (a) could be represented as (ai, ay, a, ae, a_e, ey, eigh, aigh, ea, and ei). 

Upon completing these tasks, students also chose words words to represent the sounds and wrote them out to ensure a full visualization of the proper spelling in the appropriate groups. Moving forward, the students will continue to be tested and challenged on these groups with games as well as writing and listening tasks. So far, it seems there has already been considerable progress in their deeper understanding of how to represent the sounds and an appreciation for they can remember the spelling. As always, I look forward to their continued progress and effort.

Yours truly,

Mr. Wolef