Have you ever had this experience? I bet you have!
For a couple minutes, think about when you were in school--whether your school was a public school, or you were homeschooled.
Think about a subject, concept or skill you were taught that just did not connect with you. It was something you learned, but it never had any real meaning for you or to you.
You learned it because you were taught it, and so it became an isolated fact for you that sort of floated around in a sea of other isolated facts or factoids. It had no real connection for you. You really didn’t care about it. It just floated around with all the other disconnected facts.
Then later, maybe a long time later, as you lived your life, you suddenly realized this floating subject, skill or concept was beginning to take on meaning for you. It began to “come alive” for you because of something you had or were living through that began to connect it with other subjects, other skills, or other concepts you knew about, understood fully, and had interest in.
Suddenly this isolated floating concept moved out of your sea of nebulous facts and became not just something you learned but knowledge that you could use and wanted to use.
What were some of those floating facts that became important for you?
I ask you to take this goofy little journey with me because we ALL have this sea of floating nebulous concepts and facts. Some of us have larger seas than others of us. 😊 It depends on how we were taught, how we connected what we were learning.
Another reason for our goofy journey is this:
It’s OK for some concepts to become floaters without real harm to our learning. You probably have the dates of wars floating around. 😊
BUT, it’s very detrimental for some concepts to become floaters! In fact, if some concepts become isolated facts with no connection, then other learning is halted!
Some concepts need to be taught to ALL children in ways that activate and integrate the learning immediately. Some concepts can’t wait for months or years to become a part of our children’s working knowledge.
Phonemic awareness and all phonics concepts are such concepts.
Phonics concepts can be vague and yet it is absolutely important that they are learned in a precise sequential order to ensure true learning at the time they are taught. They must be taught so the concept becomes useable knowledge immediately.
That can sound like a BIG job! 😊
It’s not as big a job as it is a process that needs to be well thought out to ensure their success.
It was one of my students who made me think of sharing this with you. He was having a very difficult time writing words that contained new phonics concepts IF he was asked to write the word in isolation. To this day, words in isolation hold no meaning for him.
Yet, 😊, when he wrote these same words in sentences, the phonics rules he needed totally made sense to him, and he spelled the words correctly and wrote the entire sentence correctly. The words had meaning and made connections to his prior knowledge.
For ALL children, words must be connected to their prior knowledge for the words to have meaning so they can easily learn to read, write and spell.
Think about how important phonics concepts are and how ALL children need them to be taught in a systematic, sequential, progressive, sensory engaging format for them to be easily learned. Phonics concepts need to be connected to all their previous learning—RIGHT NOW, not later. They cannot join the “floating facts seas”. If one joins the sea of floaters, learning to read becomes instantly difficult.
This is why when you explore Phonetic Reading with Silent Elephant “e”™, you will find a progressive order that totally engages children in learning every concept. We just can’t have any “phonics floaters”.
Contact me to learn more about how I structured Silent Elephant “e” so every child can easily learn to read, write and spell.