M3L3_3students

Sadiya is a newcomer from Afghanistan. She knows a couple hundred words in English. She feels like everyone speaks so fast, and all English words sound very long. More importantly, she doesn't understand more than half of the words her kindergarten teacher uses in the phonics lesson.The sounds and letters are just not sticking because she doesn’t know what the words mean.

Anahi is from Mexico. She can read and write in Spanish. During her phonics lesson today, she was confused when she saw the words 'base' and 'vase'. To Anahi, /b/ and /v/ are the same; you put your lips together to make the sound! But her teacher is doing something else with her mouth to sound out /v/, and Anahi can’t quite catch it because it goes too fast for her.

Rachel just started kindergarten. Rachel can perceive most sounds of English and knows that changes in sound mean changes in the meaning. For example, she knows that adding the /s/ sound to the word 'pen' alters its meaning. She also understands that /s/ can be a morpheme which, when added to the end of certain words, signals that there are more than one. Rachel has several thousand words in her vocabulary.

RACHEL

SADIYA

ANAHI