Lesson Plan 2: The Letter “A” (includes a review of the letter “M”)

In this session, a review of the letter M was conducted to check if the students still remembered LP1. In addition to this, the familiarity with the letter A – its name, sound and the words beginning with it were tested.

Word Recognition: The students were asked to tell a story based on pictures without words. The students both scored lower relative to the last lesson. I guess this was because the story started with a game they are not familiar with – the tic tac toe. Although I taught them how to play it, the children refused to give it another try (after playing for 2 rounds and with them losing both rounds).

Phonological Awareness and Letter Knowledge: Both students remembered what the sound of the letter M is because of the book about Mario and the sound of his “Mmmm!”. The students were able to post the pictures of the words starting with the letters M and A in their proper columns simply by elimination. Pauline told me that she remembered what Mario ate and whatever he did not eat went to the column of letter A. Given this, they both scored 9/10 because they failed to recognize “Matsing” as a word starting with the letter M.

Listening Comprehension: I think this is their most favorite part of every lesson – story time! Both students committed only one mistake which was the first question – “Ano ang maliwanag?” (araw). The story started with “Isang umaga, matindi ang sikat ng araw” I think it is easier for them to answer a question using the same words in the story, a question like “Ano ang matindi ang sikat?”

Letter Knowledge: The sound of the letter A was illustrated in the story “Isang Mainit na Umaga”. Pauline was already familiar with the letter A but Jet Louie on the other hand calls the letter A as E. When I asked him to write the letter A he wrote the letter E. After teaching the students how to properly right the capital and small letter A, and teaching them the form of the mouth where the sound of A is created, the students were asked to post pictures of words starting with the letters M and A again in their proper columns. Pauline with her memory of the past story about Mario and what he ate and her additional knowledge about the sound of A scored a perfect 10 while leaving Jet Louie still confused and only got a score of 8/10

Lesson Plan 1: The Letter “M”

The first lesson that we taught the students was about the letter M. In LP1, the students’ familiarity with the letter M and its sound was tested. It also aimed to help them recognize words that start with the letter and associate them with pictures.

Oral Language and Phonological Awareness: Students were asked to sing along “Kumusta ka?” in the tune of “Where is thumbman?”. Jet Louie did not have a hard time following the tune and introducing himself but Pauline on the other hand was a bit shy and only sang when I sang with her. Although the song was good, I believe it is better if the song we sang was a bit more familiar to the kids. In that way, they will not have a hard time following the tune and the lyrics and will also allow them to grow more comfortable with us. On the other case, both students scored 3/4 (good enough) to the phonological awareness test. The students recognized the numbers of phonemes in a sentence and were able to count at the same time pronounce each syllable of the words in the sentences while stepping.

Word Recognition and Book Orientation: rating is from 1 to 5 (with 5 being the highest)
Pauline: with a rating of 3 had difficulty verbalizing her words. She still needs a bit of coaching and confirming so that she knows that she is on the right track
Jet Louie: with a rating of 4 had a better time constructing his story but was still stuck at some pages specifically in the part where Alon called his Tatay for help since he cannot read yet.

Listening Comprehension: both students showed interest in the story. They both correctly predicted what Mario will say after every food he eats (“Mmmm!”). The students answered the questions as best as they could leaving Pauline with a score of 7/13 and Jet Louie with 12/13.

Letter Knowledge (Name and Form): After telling the story of Mario and answering series of questions, pictures were shown to the students in order for them to determine which ones Mario ate. After selecting all the food Mario ate, the students were asked if they see any familiarity to the name of the food they selected. Both students answered “Hindi ko po alam”. After teaching them that every food starts with the letter M, the students were taught to write the letter M and to say its sound.

**Jet Louie was absent the day LP1 was taught, I had to go to San Vicente in the middle of the week to meet him. His teacher told me that he has problems at home and was not able to regularly go to class. It saddens me to know that despite every effort to push free education here in the Philippines, it is still not enough. And that there are students like Jet Louie that are into learning and studying but cannot do so because of their financial status. I believe that free education is not enough. There are other costs in educating a child such as the cost for uniforms, for everyday fares, for everyday pabaons and for projects. We should not stop at free education, we should also aim to help the families at the bottom of the social caste to earn enough so that their children can go to school and use that free education.