See the first post with the introduction to the context here, and see the second post here.
Today, I had yet another experience.
We were looking at a new letter and I wrote big and small Gg on the board.
After practicing a sentence to review the letter name, I move to openly elicit the sound. A first answer put forward was the exact sound of soft g, as in “giraffe” for example.
This was unexpected, given that I would have expected students to feel more natural with the hard sound, as in “go”. Certainly I have exposed them more to this over our time together.
Yet this made way for enriching the experience. It is up for consideration whether students should directly be exposed to both Gg sounds at the same time. The answer will ultimately depend on the context of their situation and their progress and development level.
In our case, I hadn’t planned to do so, but I was following the students.
On the spur of thought, I quickly left the carpet and returned with the first two objects that could be used to introduce the point that I saw – a large brocolli soft toy – yes simply a soft toy in the shape of brocolli – and a hard back book.
I asked, “What is the difference between the brocolli and the book?” The first point we had was, “the brocolli is green and the book is not”. The same girl who had given the soft g sound added, “the top of the brocolli is dark green and that is light green (she indicated the stem). We acknowledged this point. Next, “the brocolli is big and the book is small”.
We were having the opportunity to practice logical and comparative thinking as well as second language expression.
I did now want to guide towards the point that was relevant for us here and so asked, “What about the way they feel?”, to which a student replied, “the brocolli is soft and the brocolli is ______”. Her friend helped her, “hard”. Initially, the first girl was a little sad at having not recalled the word herself, but with the gentle words that her friend was just helping her and she had identified a key difference, quickly relaxed and thanked her friend for herself. The opportunity to help one another and patience for social and emotional development.
In fact the girl who had first made the point about the brocolli being soft, then added, “real brocolli is hard though. This toy is soft.“ More thinking and practice of language expression.
Now that we elecited the words “soft” and “hard”, we were able to review these English words, and then use them to note the the sound in giraffe was a soft sound. More role-play as we used the word, “giraffe” to emphasize the sound and pretended to be giraffes.
Then we noted that hard Gg was different. I was able to elicit this sound through “girl” as a word offered and we could spend some time practicing it.
At the end of the short session, I was noting again for students as a conclusion that today we had gone further than we intended and actually een both sounds for Gg. A student then noted that we had actually also seen another new letter, “Ff” – she pointed to “f” in the word “giraffe”， still written on the board.
As I mentioned in the last post, the extent to which you can broaden the elements in the learning experience will depend on your situation and time constraints you might be under.
However, where their is the opportunity, remember the opportunity for free thinking, expression and language practice that can come from any open discussion that might be relevant to what you are studying, a lead or indeed guiding the way forward. Guide the discussion in a particular direction where necessary, while listening and acknowledging allowing the practice of free and open thinking and students to have a voice. Allow students the opportunity to help each other. Remember that there is nothing wrong with emotional reactions or minor disagreements, differences of intention or misunderstandings – they are the opportunity for deepening social and emotional understanding and growth. Class or even discussion conclusions do have the benefits of deepening awareness of what has been covered and reflection, but again also for student voice with additional ideas shared.