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[quote=Anonymous][quote]At the beginning of my career , I taught at a school that used a program with key words to attempt to teach this goal. However, with this program we weren't achieving the results we hoped for. Even towards the end of the year students were still mixing up letter names and letter sounds, or forgetting letter sounds, and they weren't carrying this problem over to their reading.

So, we investigated. The first question needed to be:

Is this a standards problem (meaning that we're expecting something that's either too hard and unrealistic, or unnecessary) OR is this a curriculum problem (meaning that goal is reasonable, but the curriculum isn't helping us reach that goal)?

We investigated and decided that it was the latter, that kids this age can absolutely learn letter sounds, but that our curriculum wasn't good. We decided that it didn't contain enough direct instruction in phonemic awareness, and that the key word idea was too abstract. We added in daily games and activities that targeted phonemic awareness, and changed our presentation of the information, so that kids learned hand motions to go along with the sounds. And we got the results that we wanted.

This was an implementation problem, not a standards problem.

On the other hand, I once toured a preschool where the director told me that her 2 year old students were all able to recognize the shapes of the Great Lakes when drawn on flashcards. She must have had great implementation, because that's certainly not an easy task, but her standards sucked. Identifying Great Lakes on flashcards is simultaneously hard and useless. [/quote]

That is so sad that you had to waste a year on a program that was not working.  I had the flexibility to teach my K kids in the most effective approach possible.  [/quote]

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