Blending of Short “a” Words: An Individual Reflection Education Essay

Running head: BLENDING OF SHORT “A” WORDS1
Blending of Short “a” Words: An Individual Reflection
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BLENDING OF SHORT “A” WORDS

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Blending of Short “a” Words: An Individual Reflection
The question of reading is as old as humanity. Today, reading is performed across conventional (e.g in-print) and digital (e.g. Kindle) platforms and devices. In class, reading is, as always, at front and center of understanding anything from simple stories to complex content. Teaching reading is, unsurprisingly, still as important as decades, if not centuries, ago. In “Blending of Short “a” Words,” students and instructors are engaged in an amusing reading experience whereby students master, each at a different pace, pronouncing short “a” vowel sound /æ/ separately and combined, or blended, with different consonant and vowel sounds. The underlying rationale in “Blending of Short “a” Words” is, moreover, to make students, kindergartners, aware of one fundamental sound system fact: words are made up of sounds, or phonemes, combinable into a diversity of meaningful words and, sometimes, not. To group credit, “Blending of Short “a” Words” is designed ingeniously collaboratively and has particular input from Brianna and Frank on using innovative slides showing pictures and including words students are expected to reproduce in writing and orally. In addition, Charlotte and Nina have contributed immensely to making much smoother dividing class into smaller groups and/or independent students to practice pronouncing blended words.
The practice of blending sounds, as in “Blending of Short “a” Words,” is implemented in a gradual, student-centered manner. If anything, students are shown pictures and list...