Teaching SEEL Mini-Units or Activities

SEEL lessons are designed to enable teachers to deliver explicit instruction in a playful and engaging way that is interesting and memorable for the childen. Each element of the lesson format contributes to the goal of having every student succeed.

Basic Pattern

Procedures for teaching SEEL literacy skills follow a pattern:

Select a SEEL mini-unit or additional activity from the database or plan your own instructional activity around a literacy target.
Identify and focus on goals for the lesson or activity.
Assemble the necessary materials and props.
Introduce and preteach.
State and model the literacy target.
Provide playful practice.
Read and write about the experience.
Provide extensions.

Discussion of Steps and Components

1. Select a Lesson. The SEEL curriculum follows an optimal sequence for introducing literacy skills to young children--a squence that makes skills easy to learn and retain in long-term memory. According to individual preferences and circumstances, teachers may opt to follow the SEEL sequence or adapt it to the local curriculum.

2. Identify and Focus on Goals. The goals section of the sample activity below specifies skills in alliteration, letter-sound association, and initial sound identification for /f/. To see the position of these skills in the SEEL curriculum, go to the SEEL Curriculum Chart and look under the September/October column to find the rows for letter sounds, alliteration, and sound association skills. You'll find /f/ among the letters specified, which are M, T, B, S, F and A. The lesson Fran's Funny Frame was created specifically for these goals.

3. Assemble Materials. The materials for Fran's Funny Frame are commonly available and can be easily assembled before introducing the lesson. A template that can be used for the frame is located at the end of the lesson. A large frame is specified for the teacher to use in instruction; small frames are included for the students. The die cuts can be created in the school's work room if a die cutting tool is available. Otherwise, die cuts of the letter /f/ in both lower case and capital can be purchased at a school supply or craft store. Objects that start with Ff, such as face, fairy, foot, fruit etc., can be represented by cut outs or pictures.

4. Introduce and Preteach. In preteaching you prepare children for the lesson--possibly by previewing what frames look like and what they are for, familiarizing children with new vocabulary, and introducing Fran. This is a good time to activate the children's prior knowledge about frames (frames they have in their homes, frames they have seen in stores or galleries etc.). In preteaching you can learn children's relevant interests and previous experience (art, photography, needlework), allowing you to individualize the instructional conversation.

5. State and Model the Target. By previewing the skills and clearly stating the objective for learning a specific target, you launch the Fran's Funny Frame activity. You can see from the simple statement of the objective and the script or dialog in the lesson that instruction begins with an interactive conversation about Fran, a frame, and the letter Ff. This conversation continues into the playful practice phase of the instruction, during which children practice and receive feedback from the teacher while playfully using the materials.

6. Provide Playful Practice. A playful activity is described. Children learn and remember the targets when teachers involve all of their senses in an engaging activity in a memorable context. One reason they learn is that they associate the target with a context and activity they have enjoyed. Another reason is that the playfulness enables them to remain engaged for a longer period of time, which increases both exposure and number of responses. More practice means more learning. During the extended instructional conversation, the teacher can incorporate students' interests and previous experience: "Would Kim put her sister's wedding picture in THIS kind of frame?" Making connections increases and solidifies learning as well.

7. Read and Write About the Lesson Experience. Even though the children are not reading and writing as they will later on in their schooling, they can and should experience the nature of both reading and writing as the teacher leads them in finding the /f/ sound in words, writing the Ff letters, and contributing to a story line using the words that begin with Ff, etc.

8. Provide Extensions. This lesson can be extended by continued working with frames. Children could draw a frame on a piece of paper and then draw a picture of their family inside the frame. The edges of their frame could be decorated with drawings of things that begin with Ff.

SEEL Lessons for Teaching Ff

The first page of Fran's Funny Frame is shown. The entire mini-unit can be viewed by clicking on SEEL Resources>Resources Database>Alliteration>September/October and scrolling to Fran's Funny Frame. As you will see, this lesson can be viewed and downloaded for printing.

When introducing an activity, the teacher states the objective. In another Ff lesson, Fuzz Frenzy, the teacher explains, “We will play with fabrics that are fuzzy. You will hear words that begin with the /f/ sound. You will also learn to say words that begin with /f/." The teacher also occasionally labels the pattern as children participate in playful practice. For example, in an activity in which children are feeling fuzzy fabrics, the teacher would say something like “Feel fuzzy fabric--they all begin with /f/.”

To teach alliteration skills, the teacher exposes children to many examples of alliterative words beginning with /f/ in a variety of activities. In Fuzz Frenzy the teacher reads the book The Great Fuzz Frenzy (Stevens & Crummel, 2005), and the children do a dance that alternates frenzy and flow. These motivating activites raise children’s awareness of alliteration with /f/ and deepen their understanding that words are comprised of sounds. In exposing children to alliteratiion with any activity, the teacher interacts in alliteration: "This music makes me want to float, and fly, and flow and flutter; but I don't want to flap and flip and flop." The teacher focuses on one alliteration element at a time, repeats the targeted words, emphasizes the alliterative beginning, and uses both breakdowns and build-ups.

Implement Playful Instructional Interaction

Over the course of instruction, the teacher should provide children with many and varied playful opportunities to experience the target skill. In addition to hearing the teacher's alliterative comments and questions, the children should have opportunities to make alliterative responses. Some responses can be non-verbal (perhaps identifying props that begin with /f/) or verbal (possibly generating words that incorporate the sound of /f/: e.g., fuzz, flip, fall, float, fold, feel).

Support Children's Responses

These opportunities for the children to do and say facilitate active processing and increase retention. The teacher should be prepared to support the children in making responses by providing choices, giving clues, and if necessary stating the correct response for the child to repeat and elaborate.

Provide Choices. The teacher can directly or indirectly model a correct response to guide the children in responding correctly. For example, the teacher could say, “Let's think of words that begins with /f/. How about fuzz?”

Give Clues. The teacher can point to objects that fit a pattern or act out a word to help children produce a correct response. If the children are asked to think of a word that uses /f/, the teacher might pick up a folder from the table or hand the child a piece of fuzz to feel or fold. The teacher could also begin to produce a word: for example,“The fuzzy fabric [drop the fuzzy object] f--.” Students would supply "falls."

State the Correct Response. The teacher can state the correct response and then ask a child to reproduce it: for example, “Fall and fold start with the /f/ sound. Do fall and fold start with the /f/ sound?” He could praise the correct response, or he could prompt the children by nodding his head yes. If he asked “Do fuzz and clap both begin with the /f/ sound?” he would shake his head no and say, “No, the words fuzz and clap do not both begin with the /f/ sound.”

Children’s responses should be strongly supported at first. If children make mistakes, the teacher should model a correct response playfully, always being sensitive to the child's feelings and needs. The teacher’s support can be gradually withdrawn as children become able to produce correct responses independently.

Engage in Conversation

A conversation with the children provides an excellent context for the teacher to give opportunities for meaningful responses. According to Cazden (1988, p. 54), instructional conversation is "talk in which ideas are explored rather than answers to teachers' test quesitons provided and evaluated." Goldenberg suggests five critical features of this type of teacher-student interaction:

It is interesting and engaging.
It is about an idea or a concept that has meaning and relevance for students.
It has a focus that, while it may shift as the discussion evolves, remains discernible throughout.
There is a high level of participation without undue domination by any one individual, particularly the teacher. Students engage in extended conversations with the teacher and among themselves (1991, p. 3).

Review What Was Learned

At the end of an activity, the instructor should review the sounds that were targets during the interaction. Reviewing what was learned helps solidify the purpose and the children’s progress during instruction. Reviewing also presents an opportunity to increase children’s desire to participate in future activities by adding some carefully phrased positive reinforcement. Reviewing can be as simple as acknowledging children’s progress toward the objective: “Wow, you are doing a great job of coming up with words that start with /f/.” It is a good idea to remind children of the target: “I really like the words you came up with; fast, family, fair and farmer are words that begin with the same first sound as fuzz.”

Monitor or Assess Children’s Understanding

It is important to assess children’s level of participation and understanding of each activity. Assessment allows the teacher to determine whether children are making progress toward learning objectives such as correctly identifying target sounds and words. Two forms of assessment can be easily implemented during and at the end of each activity to discern children’s understanding and application. First, formal or informal observation will generally enable a teacher to determine children's individual engagement and understanding, as well as general group interest and enthusiasm. Formal observations (i.e., those resulting in a project or a record of some sort) should be used to document children’s progress toward learning goals. A second strategy for assessment is to use probes to go more deeply and specifically into a child's progress and achievement.