ABC Words and Actions

Review of initial voting and comments from colleagues

(over 80 responded!)

Reminder

• We are NOT creating a curriculum or required lessons or a mandatory literacy program

• We ARE creating a visual chart that will be displayed in every PreK-2nd grade classroom in ICSD

• We ARE creating a set of actions that CAN be used to convey the letters

Criteria to Consider

• Easily conveyed with image (and action)• Image instantly recognizable• Letter sound and 1st sound of image match

• Culturally acceptable• Ease of reproduction• Single word association• Disabilities represented• Clear actions*

• ESOL perspective: try to make use of words that are more likely to be loan-words (words borrowed from English.)"taxi" is widely used in other languages. However, that word may not meet other criteria.

• Choose words based on CVC structure, ease of recognition and labeling. Based on phonemic awareness principles,choosing CVC words makes the most sense. These can be the basis of teaching rhyme, beginning sounds, changing initial, medial and final sounds, sound blending

Points to ponder…

• Ensure that consideration of disability does not lead to stereotyping

• Communication between Pre-K and K is very important in building, but also across the district.

• The importance of exposure to the alphabet chart before kindergarten.

• vowel sound at beginning or the middle, elephant vs. bed, umbrella vs. bug?

• Words- as short as possible and easily decodable

• no beginning blends• x needs another option• X-ray does not make the x sound that box

does, but it is important to have the letter sound in the beginning.

• For e, how about a word that begins with the letters "ec, ek, et, ep". These letters after the "e" sound bring out the short e sound.

• Represent long and short vowel soundsa-acorn,apee-eagle,eati -ice creamo- oak, ocean,openu- unicorn

• Represent hard and soft g and cG- giraffe, goat,goC- cat,celery, cow, cereal

• Include /sh/ /th/ /ph/ /ch/ /ing/ /oo/

• Noun (object) vs. verb (action)?• Nouns are easier to convey with a picture.• avoid action words needing to be represented

by signs. Unless the signs matched ASL signs they would be too confusing.

• Symbols and actions need to match. 1st grade writers still struggling with symbolic representation of letters need to be able to match the motion with the letter formation. Need to see a picture that matches the motion attached to the correct letter formation.

Image -Action

• apple echo itch ahhhhh (for o) and up all have actions which help children hold the vowel sound

• Should the movement help convey the sound production?

• "action" representations are consistent with ASL.

• noun and action together (e.g. dog digging).

• Unambiguous pictures that can only be one thing

• Artwork carefully chosen so images are very clear and recognizable.

• Important to color code for vowel, consonant, duel sound words.

• Yikes! This is harder than it looks.

I propose:

• We choose words that have clear images of objects and choose a set of actions separately

• Actions for all 26 letters are very hard to convey in clear images

• We will hold additional meetings outside of the Literacy Academy to continue this work.

• If you are interested, please sign up today or email me at eallee@icsd.k12.ny.us