Veronica's Week 5 Post

As I completed the digital natives quiz, I felt so lost! There were words on the quiz that I have never heard of and some words that I was familiar with such as blog and IM. After taking the digital natives quiz, I feel that I am a digital immigrant since I had a prior knowledge of only a few words and the rest seemed very foreign to me. I am able to use the computer for surfing the Internet, email and using Microsoft word features. I feel that my digital literacy is emergent since I will have opportunities through MSU or proffesional developments that will expose me to have a greater digital awareness.

While I read Chapter 4 in the book Literacy for the 21st Century, I learned how important phonemic awareness is for students to use sound-symbol correspondence to read and spell words. This chapter mentions the components of phonemic awareness that children learn to hear and manipulate words; they are: identify sounds in words, categorize sounds in words, substitute sounds to make new words, blend sounds to form words and segment a word into sounds. I was able to see students learn the components of phonemic awareness during my TE 301 placement. I was placed in a first grade classroom, here, I was able to see the students participate in Literacy centers that allowed them to make words using magnetic letters or "write the room", in this center students wrote words that labeled in their classroom. I liked that this book also listed great ideas, I could use in my own classroom to help promote phonemic awareness. A suggestion that I found interesting was to tell students to "think it out" when they asked questions about spelling a word, this encourages them to think about spelling patterns, root words and affixes rather than just sounding it out. The students in my field placement struggle with spelling,at times, I think it is because they are not willing to put effort in trying and would rather ask me. I was glad to see a method that was mentioned in the book is being used in my field placement. Everyday, the second grade students will be a given word to make other words with letters from the original word. This helps students to pratice spelling words and to review spelling patterns and rules (141).

Jamis Comment:
I agree with the first part of your blog about the digital natives quiz. I was very familar with some of the words but the first couple I have never in my life heard of. It's really amazing to me the way that technology is emerging and how illiterate we actually are and don't even realize it. I look at my parents who have no clue how to even copy and paste something-but it is because they didnt grow up around the computer like we did. It is interesting to me as I wonder are we going to be like that if we do not keep up on these new technologies. I feel like I know quite a bit about technology, but I think I am wrong after looking through the website and taking the quiz.

I really like the "think it out" idea as well. I have never really thought to tell a student that, but its so true. So many words are part of other words and if students would take the time to think it out they would get it. I think it is hard for students to just simply sound out a word, because not all words are spelled like they sound. There are words that have an "e" on the end, but you don't hear it. I was playing a game with the children I babysit for and I asked them to spell the word "comb". They obviously said c-o-m and I said there was one more letter and they guess "e", but then I explained that spelled come. When I told them there was a "b" at the end of the word they could not believe it! This was just an example of how not all words are how they sound. So using prefixes and root words is a great way to get the students thinking differently and in my opinion much more helpful.