Building Words

Constructivism allows students to learn through hands on experience. Rasinski & Padak(2013) describe this hands-on experience to be anything where students are engaged in  a learning process outside just simple readings and writing tasks such as a science experiment or an interactive “making words” lesson(Rasinski & Padak,2013). Furthermore, constructivism holds many real-world implications for students by allowing them to physically experience what they are learning as its being applied to worldly examples. With reading, this is essential for students to physically see and under

According to the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project, constructivism is facilitated “through the design of classroom activities that guide students to work collaboratively with others, set their own sequences and pace of work, and actively engage in problem solving, critical thinking, and negotiation” (California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project, n.d.). As such, a great way to apply this level of engagement to students who are learning about phonics, is to practice making words and find creative ways for students to learn about spelling and other patterns associated with grammar, word codes, strategies for spelling. Furthermore, “making words” lessons according to the Teach-Hub, is a great way to help struggling readers as well as create inventive ways for students to construct words using a “tangible modality” ( Teach-Hub,2017).

Finally, activities such as puzzles helps students physically arrange letters by adding, removing, changing, and/or making new words out of the given letter. These activities are ideal learning activities which help embody the foundation of constructivism in the classroom. Another perfect example of making words lessons is having each student hold a letter card with vowels and consonants written on it and then having the class participate to create words based on the instruction of the teacher. Rasinski & Padak describe a lesson similar to this in which the teacher shows students how the words slid and slide can be made from the id and ide patterns and then has students writes words on cards and has students practice them with a partner by forming word families, by beginning sound, or by presence or absence of a consonant blend or digraph (Rasinski &Padak, 2013).

In short, applying constructivism in your classrooms is an essential component to any reading and vocabulary lesson but in particular to beginning readers. Beginning readers need a structure to allow them to place letters, sounds, and words into a senescence and in order to read. setting a physical setting for this to occure makes the lessons more easily memorable and in turn, students remember more!

References

California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project. (n.d.). What is constructivism? Retrieved from http://www.calpro-online.org/eric/docs/brown/brown01_02.pdf

Rasinski, T. & Padak, N.D. (2013). From phonics to fluency: Effective teaching of decoding and reading fluency in the elementary school. NJ: Pearson.

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