Phonemic awarness

       We have been learning about how to record a running record and were told that is wasn't a very exciting thing to do. However, I was talking to a few of my classmates and we all loved and were excited to learn how to record a running record. We are aspiring to be future teachers so whenever we are learning things that we are going to directly use in our new future, we enjoy it. I know for a fact that I am going to use running records in my class in the future. I hadn't even heard of running records until we learned about them in this class but I am looking forward to conducting one on an actual student instead of practicing from a video.
       We have also been learning about phonemic awareness. A few weeks ago I was helping a kindergartener at work do her homework, she was given two different pictures and then had to tell if the pictures had the same middle sound. So there would be a picture of a bat and a picture of a cat and she would color in the picture because those words had the same middle sound. She was struggling with this assignment and would often guess if the answer was yes or no. Even when I sounded out C-A-T and B-A-T she would struggle. Finally when I wrote down the words and underlined the letter as I was sounding it out, she understood a lot better. It was just crazy to me because this stuff comes naturally to me now, sometimes it's hard to wrap your head around that these things have to be taught and they aren't just common knowledge. I love how fun teaching phonics can be, we can incorporate poetry, music and so many different games.
      I love to read younger children's writing and how they form words at that young of an age. They spell a lot of the words incorrectly but the way they spell them makes perfect sense. The English language is tricky that way, it doesn't always follow the rules which is why we can't rely on telling the kids to simply sound out the word. Phonemic awareness is so important because it directly correlates with spelling and reading success which makes a lot of sense. You won't be able to spell words or read fluently if you don't understand that words are made up of sounds.