Lesson Plan 3

January 20's lesson plan was a review session for my student Arvin. We tackled the two letters we had already covered, 'M' and 'A'. More than a review session, however, this lesson introduced the concept of blending sounds together. The sound 'ma-' is very common in the Filipino language. It denotes a variety of adjectives such as "malungkot" ("ma-" + lungkot or sad), "masaya" ("ma-" + saya or cheerful), "matakaw" ("ma-" + "takaw" or gluttonous).

Maliit na Maya and the Wordless Picture Book

The stories I let Arvin read consisted of "Maliit na Maya" (The Small Eurasian Tree Swallow or Maya Bird) and a Wordless Picture Book entitled "Nang Sumakit ang Ngipin ni Mando". Maliit na Maya tells the story of a girl named Maan and a small tree swallow she encounters in a mango plantation.

Nang Sumakit ang Ngipin ni Mando illustrates the story of a boy named Mando who eats too much candy and suffers a tooth ache.

After the reading activity, I asked Arvin a series of reading comprehension questions, all of which began with the "ma-" prefix. Some of the words in the story used included 'Maan', 'maya', 'mangga' and 'manggahan' (mango and mango plantation, respectively), and 'maliit' (small).

Letter Hanger

One of the more fun activities I prepared for Arvin was the 'letter hanger'. Basically, pictures of words beginning with the letters 'M' and 'A' are strung and hung onto the hanger, allowing them to dangle, almost like a toy mobile.

Arvin's task was to take the pictures that started with the same letter and group them together. This activity is both a fun and effective educational experience for the child. They get to connect the sounds, letters and words together and understand the lesson; all without boring the child out and frustrating them to learn something.

Tachistoscope

A new teaching tool was introduced to us: the tachistoscope.

The tachistoscope is basically a piece of paper with windows and adjustable letter cards. Each letter card consists of at least two or more letters that can be adjusted upwards or downwards, forming a variety of combinations and helping the child learn blending letters to form different words.

Other Activities

Aside from the ones mentioned above, our professor also prepared three activities for the kids. One of them had a set of pictures with blanks, and the child had to correctly identify the word from a bunch of scattered letters (mostly 'M's and 'A's). The other activity was pretty much the same, but the child was made to write the word down on the worksheet. The last one was a variant of the memory game. Here, the child was given two piles: a pile of pictures and a pile of name cards, arranged randomly on the floor. I had Arvin play the game, to help him correctly match the words with the pictures.