Partner Work in Part 1 Phonemic Awareness
“I like books about fairies!” exclaimed Shelly.
“No. Princess books are better!” shouted Grace.
This exchange burst out one Friday afternoon after Silent Elephant “e” instruction. It still makes me smile remembering how invested these sweet little girls were in their choices.
This made me reflect again on the power of Silent Elephant “e”.
One of the powerhouse components in Silent Elephant “e” is the Partner Work and the Partner Practice pages. As with every element in Silent Elephant “e”, Partner Work is not just a “pretty face” or “busy work”.
Instead, it’s an essential cognitively enhancing time for children to interact and solidify their learning with their partner.
In Partner Work, the student must pull the content to the front of their minds. They must use the content correctly and be able verbalize and explain what they know and how they know they know it.
They must listen to and interact with their partner with a discerning ear to make sure they and their partner actually know and can express the learned content.
Silent Elephant “e”‘s multisensory Partner Work activates learning in all parts of the brain.
As part of my volunteering at school, I teach two sweet, nine-year-old girls with Down syndrome. ‘Shelly’ and ‘Grace’ burst with happiness and interest in learning. Their cheerfulness is contagious.
They love Partner Work! Actually, they enjoy challenging each other to see who can get the correct answer first. This bit of friendly competition is good!
This is the consistent predictable Silent Elephant “e” Part 1 partner lesson format I use with my students, including Grace and Shelly. They have relaxed into knowing our lesson format and are learning more quickly as we proceed through Part 1. After I have introduced the new concept, they:
· Turn to each other.
· Say the word.
· Stretch their rubber bands as they listen for individual sounds within the word.
· Look in their hand-held mirrors at their mouth’s movements and look at each other’s mouth’s movements while saying the word or sound.
· Discuss how many sounds they hear.
· Tell each other what sounds they hear.
· Move the colored squares to the line(s) to demonstrate the number of sounds they hear, the sequence of the sounds, and if the sounds are the same or different.
· Explain their choices to each other.
· Check that their boards match using “share/compare”.
· Tell each other why their game boards are the same and, if they are different, together explore the reason for the difference to come up with the correct board.
They particularly love looking at their mouths in their hand-held mirrors to understand how they form sounds and words.
As with all students of Silent Elephant “e”, we take our time—I let them lead. Grace and Shelly need unhurried, yet deliberate, explicit, precise phonemic awareness instruction. We practice each word until I am confident they truly hear each individual sound within that word. I want to solidify the lesson’s content in their memory and build their self-confidence in their ability. I want them to “own” the content and to feel their freedom to read.
When we began together seven months ago, neither of these nine-year-old girls had any phonemic awareness skills! We moved very slowly as they were challenged by every lesson until we got to Lesson 4D-Three Sounds—CVC—Mixed Practice Phoneme Substitution.
At the end of Lesson 4D, it all clicked!
Grace exclaimed, “I just knew I had to use two blue squares in ‘non’, because ‘non’ has two /n/ sounds!
They got it! They truly understood the concept that a single-colored square in the game represents a single sound they are hering, two or three squares represent two or three separate sounds blended smoothly and quickly together, and words are made up of these individual sounds that are quickly and smoothly blended together.
I could literally see the ‘light bulb turn on’ in the twinkle of their eyes and the smiles on their faces! Their self-confidence, self-pride, happiness and joy poured from them as they began to fluently read individual CVC words (such as: fun, mid, fad, hen, and rod) and to fluently read sentences (such as: The cat hid the red mat.)
AND OMG!!!! They actually wanted me to time them to see who could read a paragraph faster. I now had to build sportsmanship skills! “Grace, let’s tell Shelly how proud we are of her. She read every word correctly and smoothly!” “Shelly, did you hear how Grace read the story with expression? What feelings did you hear in her voice? Let’s give her a high-five!”
This is part of the power of Silent Elephant “e” that excites me. After only about twenty-four half-hour periods (12 hours), and beginning with no phonemic awareness at all, Grace and Shelly, two students with the Down learning difference, now have the beginnings of a strong, solid foundation in phonemic awareness skills: the important first steps of their journey on their road to becoming successful, independent readers.
“It’s so fun to read now!” exclaimed Shelly as she skipped away at the end of our session together.
They have brought so much joy into my life!
If you have further questions about partner work the home-school connection in Silent Elephant “e”, feel free to contact us.