• ENV
• before 7
• Finnish

 

 

Pre-school children look for words

Aim: to develop awareness of mother language (Finnish), to make visible meta-cognitiv awareness of written words, connection between spoken and written words

for : pre-school children age 6 (4-6 pupils in group)

Beginning: Teachers usually start pre-school sessions by teaching letters. At school it is sometimes difficult for younger learners to separate words from each other (space between words) when they are writing sentences. That is a problem especially with the children who have difficulties in the mother tongue. That´s why I wanted to try to awake the awareness of whole words. Most of the pre-school pupils couldn`t read yet. We operated in three groups, 20 minutes per group and totally about 4-5 times. First we began with a fairy tale of a character who loves words and needed them to play with…where we could find them?

1. Examining magazines:

- What do we have in magazines? Pupils: "Pictures, letters, words…."

- How do we find words in magazines - could you show me? Pupils: "Easier to find if the words are written in big letters or they are in titles…THERE ARE LETTERS IN WORDS." 

- How do you know it´s a word? Pupils: "WORDS don´t go on forever. "

- How do you know the word is ending? Pupils: "Tthere is nothing, a hole, space after the word..."

2. Cutting off sentences or words in magazines

Pupils have limited time to cut words from magazines by cutting them with scissors.

They cut words and word-pairs (it wasn´t so easy to find single words). At the same time I found out their level to find written words.

3. Now we have words for each group.

We cut again them off the paper (where I have glued them). We discussed already a little what we could find from words and then pupils sorted them in two groups when finding parameters and again when someone suggested a new parameter. I made ENV-model of the parameters what pupils found. ENV-model presented with pictures and signs and was quite simple because learners were so young.

-> Why do you sort them like that? Pupils: "Similar letters, colors, length..."

- > ENV-model                

E: words

                            N: length of words                           V: short, long

                                space between words                 V: finger or pencil can be

                                                                                                                              

                                different letters                            V: alphabets

                                style of letters                              V: capitals, small letters

                                punctuation                                  V: full stop,

 (last parameter we found afterwards when we return to written sentences)

 

4. We studed and found letters in text by circling them

5. Afterwards we took one parameter and examined words by using it .

Here I could individualize the tasks by giving different text or different kinds of words.

This whole project was worth doing and easier than I thought before. Pupils were keen and we had opportunities to return to study words and to use word tasks. Then I had chance to remind pupils of ENV-model.