It was great to see so many of you at your afternoon observations and at the Looking Ahead meeting. I hope you enjoyed observing and participating in some of our lessons. It was fun to see people excited and engaged in discovering what the children work with every day.

One of the lessons that we shared was the Function of Words. The exercises of the function of words are designed to give the child a visual and sensorial experience of the various parts of speech. Each lesson focusses on an individual part of speech, exploring its significance, its relationship to other words and its order in a phrase or sentence. Each part of speech is associated with a particular colored symbol. The colors and shapes of the symbols further help to emphasize the relationship between the words. By acting out the parts of speech either by themselves or by using various objects, the children develop a deeper understanding of the function of each of the parts of speech. Later, at the elementary level they encounter these exercises again, only this time they are given the proper names and grammar rules related to each of these experiences.

These exercises are followed closely by the exercises of Reading Analysis and Word Study which give the child an experience of the structure of sentences, parts of a sentence and how the different parts relate to each other. As the children act out the different parts of the sentence and study different words in relation to each other, it allows them to experience the correct structure of the sentence and enhance their vocabulary. All of this allows them more comprehension in their reading.  

These exercises are presented when the child can comfortably read more than one word at a time. They will have had experience reading phonetic words and some experience with phonograms or blended sounds. Some of this experience comes through reading classification where the child can practice matching words they read to picture cards they are familiar with. The magical experience of learning to read that starts with sounds games and sandpaper letters and progresses naturally into function of word, reading analysis and word study exercises steadily sets up the child to slide easily into reading with comprehension.

Happy Reading!

Archana