Vowels are a vital part of English grammar. Vowels allow early learners to spell and pronounce words correctly. Teaching the young children about Vowels is the most basic form of grammatical knowledge that you can impart to them. This will allow them to read and write some of the most basic words accurately.Junior Kindergarten normally gets into teaching vowels following the learning of letters. The following are some things that you can do to teach those young minds how Vowels .
To begin with, you need to teach them the phonetic rule. They should understand the difference between short and long vowels. Having them pronounce the correct sound for each vowel can be tricky. Make sure that you constantly revise all the tricky sounds. This would not only help them in remembering the difference between the long and short sounds but would also allow you to understand how many sessions per day to spend on instructions. Also, ensure that the parents or caregivers are working with the students if they also pronounce the same sound as you have taught them, this would further reinforce what they are learning at school.
Denoting hand signals to sounds works. Using hand signals for teaching vowels is the most efficient method and is also advised by a number of teachers. Hand signals are said to be highly effective for a reason. Children are more likely to remember hand signals and gestures. Hence if you associate vowels with hand signals it will be easy for children to remember. Memory operates based on links and relevant information, if they can recall a gesture, they are most likely to recall the vowel associated with it. Another approach towards this can be using pictorial or symbols for the sound. This can also help as oftentimes children are fascinated by bright colours and pictures.
Allow children to participate in class instructions. Instead of telling them, every sound let them figure some sounds on their own. You can teach them a word and allow them to identify other words with similar sounds e.g., cat, bat, and rat. This would enable them to retain information a lot longer and would also build the habit of self-learning. They would then try to pronounce other words on their own and you can correct them if they are wrong.
Children love activities. Use as many activities as possible, such as rhymes, songs, poems and vides. This would ensure that every child in the class participates and that you are reading different types of learners. Some fun activities include Vowel puppets/sticks, sand writing, and picture sorts. You can start with sand writing, where they write the vowel in the sand. Once perfected, you can start with vowel puppets where kids lift the puppet with the right vowel. After that, you can move to picture sorts where sort pictures with the same vowels. You can also make vowel strips where you can write the same sounding words (Homophones) for e.g hat mat bat. Hen pen men, as well let them make up their own vowel songs and poems.
Learning Vowels can be an interesting and fun learning activities for young minds as it unlocks a whole exciting world to early readers in knowing how to read words
If you have any other methods in teaching vowels I would like to hear from you
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