Yesterday I finally was able to do a lesson with the letter tiles. Prior to yesterday, the group was able to explore with them so when we did the actual lessons, they would (hopefully) be able to stay focused instead of play with the tiles.
The first lesson was horrible! I don't know what I was thinking. Part of it was the fact that I didn't get fully prepared for the lesson due to meetings and family schedules. I gave each student their baggies with ALL the letter tiles rather than just the tiles they would need. Students couldn't find letters, tiles were everywhere, and they maybe made 1-2 words each during the activity.
Today I made sure the students only had the letters they needed to use to make their words. Our phonics skill this week is -ew, -ue, -ui. While looking at their spelling lists, students were asked to make their spelling words using the letter tiles. When they made a word, they had to read it out loud to me.
EP began the lesson not looking at the list of spelling words and made "trew" as the word "true". After the making words activity, students read from their bookbags as I went around and listened to their reading. EP got stuck on a word (chew). She was not able to read the word. When asked what sound -ew makes she said /o/(long o sound) That was a little discouraging because Monday we used bumpy writing the practice the -ew, -ui, and -ue words. It showed me that EP still isn't able to apply her knowledge to read unknown words. Hopefully by the end of the week the group will be able to read words other than their spelling words correctly.
I have also decided that since I am using bumpy writing and letter tiles to practice phonics skills which match our weekly spelling words, I might be able to use spelling tests scores as data. Or would that not really fall under my research questions "How does multisensory activities impact struggling ESL readers?" because it is spelling not reading.
