Wednesday, January 4, 2012

literacy and speech development

During school last year we begun the process of sight word learning, it brought on a few discoveries for me, one my son could actually and quite well it seemed, also that his phonics against the odds aren't bad at all. One day while helping him with his sight words I stumbled upon the possibility of using his sight words to increase his conversational ability and teach him to speak better. It was amazing that I could show him a sentence play around and that Josiah actually understood what I was teaching him, I wondered if my method of trying to speak with him wasn't so effective (needed) as I thought, we had spent six months trying to teach him one new sentence.

It would seem my focus is teaching Josiah new phrases so I have been thinking on how I could do this and use his new skill of reading to help me. This process of me thinking has taken some time newborn babies do take up your time a little. 

So the other day I was looking for sentences to use while doing this and what types of things I should be teaching him when I found a fantastic website that did all this but focused on the literacy side. The information from the Book For Results was great because it showed a long term process of teaching students how to write and understand sentence formation. This is just what I needed it also explained the words like nouns and verbs and so on in a kid friendly way I highly recommend it. 

From there I got the sight words Josiah's teacher gave us for the holidays and we are now going to use them to make sentences, learn the concepts and do drawing at the same time. Another activity I will be doing is using the ipad I will be using apps from Toca Boca the store and the tea party to teach turn taking, but also the sentences you would use in those situations so that he will be able to in the future know what to do in those situations from practising in a safe environment. I can see the tools from this website will be able to see me through most of this year:).