September 6

Tuesday, September 6th was an exciting and challenging day for me as a facilitator/instructor. It was the first day for me to conduct a drill with my students. A drill covers all the topics we have gone over in the lessons before hand.

I was teaching the drill for after lesson 8, which included everything from the previous lessons. When doing the drill, you do not have the video tape, and you teach with a small amount of notes. I tried to prepare the best I could before class and think it went pretty well.

In the drill we covered the three vowels a, i, and o. I instructed my students to echo the word I said, and then give the vowel sound. After this, my students had to give me the actual name of the vowel. We used the words : mon, sab, rog, tim, vik, lat, dis, fal, hin, bon, hak, pob.

After this short drill we worked on a reading worksheet and moved to spelling. With the spelling drill I instructed my students to echo and write each syllable after I said them. The approach we use always uses the technique look & listen, echo, name & write. The words we used were : fam, fim, fom, nop, nip, nap. Each of these words helps to sound out and name the three vowels we have learned so far in our lessons.

Next, I dictated sentences and instructed my students to echo and write them.
The three sentences were:
1) Hop to the mat.
2) The gam is in the bin.
3) Dan bid on the pot.
4) in the pot.

This exercise uses our learned words and syllables.

This drill also included a homework sheet to practice the short vowels a, i, and o.

After our drill, I facilitated lesson 10. In lesson 10 we went over letters in the Missing Letter Deck. For example, l, ,n. Which letter should go in the middle? -- m. We also covered accent, and accenting the missing letters.

An accent is the stress or emphasis given to a syllable.

A sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought.

We then covered multisyllable words, and practiced removing/dropping the last syllable. We used the words : ac(cept), gal(lop), Tenness(see), tele(scope), calen(dar).

In New Learning we covered new consonants x, y, and z, & their key words, box, yacht, and zipper. For the auditory discrimination section I read different words, and my students had to echo and identify the position of the different sounds as initial, medial, or final.

(x) = box, hex, fix, next
(y) = yak, yoke, yawl
(z) = zag, zeal, zest

For reading, we covered the daily reading deck, and my students named the letters, key words, and sounds. We focused on words with the new consonants x, y, and z. We used a student worksheet to code and read syllables together and learned next high frequency words and learned words.

high frequency : I
learned : to, do, of, you, put

We also covered the difference between telling and asking sentences.

A telling sentence gives information. It beings with a capital letter and ends with a period. An asking sentence asks for information. It begins with a capital letter and ends with a question mark.

I was in Salt Lake City, Utah and missed September 8th, which included drill for after lesson 10 and lesson 11. Walter, my co-instructor conducted that class. He will also be teaching tomorrow, on Tuesday, September 13th, and I will conduct class on Thursday, September 15.

I would like to take a moment to remember all of the innocent people lost in the September 11th terrorist attacks 10 years ago, and use this blog to spread positivity and inspiration to people going through hard times in life. 9/11 - never forgotten, always remembered.