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Creativity and English Alphabet teaching
Arezou Ebrahimitouri
1- English Teacher, MBA of IBS, UTM, Kuala Lumpur
([email protected])
Abstract
Nowadays in the beginning of three millennia, creativity is that
key which differentiates civilized life
from Neanderthal one. Creativity helped today child, compared to
yesterday one, to step speedily in
learning various subjects. One of the goals of teaching and
learning is developing thought and
creativity, the missing piece of present schools. On one hand
applying more and more traditional
approaches in which the teacher is the only pivotal role in
class and the teachers who are not aware of
creative procedures on the other hand, gradually lead to classes
with no opportunity of emerging the
students' potentiality. Based on one of the aims of ministry of
education about emerging talents andenhancing creativity of
students, and to reach this goal, schools should work on it.
Therefore, the
objective of current study is to present new procedures in
teaching English Alphabet for the better
performance of learning process in preschool children.
Key words: creativity, teaching, English Alphabet.
1. Introduction
Creativity is a mental and social process involving the
generation of new ideas or concepts, or newassociations of the
creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. Creativity is
fueled by the
process of either conscious or unconscious insight. An
alternative conception of creativeness is that it
is simply the act of making something new (Wikipedia, 2009).
Many educators have recognized the importance of involving
students in skills that encourage critical
thinking, and have approached this concern through the inclusion
of activities and strategies which
encourage creativity in non-verbal, symbolic domains (visual,
spatial, kinesthetic, and aural) (Gardner,
1983, 1993).
Creative teaching is a high-risk strategy requiring
self-confidence and an investment of time and
energy (Yeomans 1996, Davies 1999). Creative teachers have been
described as planning geniuses,
innovators and experimenters (Woods 1996). Creative teaching is
not about being extraordinary,dazzling or arty, just four qualities
of a clear sense of need, the ability to read the situation,
thewillingness to take risks and the ability to monitor and
evaluate events are required (Halliwell, 1993).
When students have an enjoyable experience (fun), the brain is
able to better retain information. Brain
scans showed that when preschool students collaborate with
classmates in joyful cooperative learning
activities it enhances the passage function of the brain, which
moves information from the intake area
to the memory storage regions of the brain (Willis, 2007).
The objective of current study is to present creative procedures
in teaching English Alphabet for better
performance of learning process in preschool children.
2. Method
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]
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slightly by changing the rhythm and the volume. TheLook and Say
of the reading textbook is a part of
the routine of each day since the first day of school.
B- The Creative Strategies
Have you ever watched five-year-olds at play? They are curious
and highly creative in their games.
They dont know yet, what they dont know. Their creative limits
have no bounds; no one has toldthem that they cant do something.
Theyre fearless explorers, artists, or musicians; some are
evencomedians in the making. They have not yet been pressured to
conform and they think they can do
anything and that nothing is beyond their capabilities.
Research shows that every human being is capable of creative
thought. We have creative abilities that
often show up very early in life. Studies show that the average
adult thinks of only three to four
alternate ideas for any given situation, while the average child
can come up with sixty. They have
proven that as far as creativity is concerned, quantity equals
quality.
In order to fully take advantage of the creative linguistic
ability that children have, it is necessary toprovide them with
situations where:
1. The desire to communicate forces the child to find some way
to express
himself.
2. Linguistic situations are unpredictable and they are not
situations where a
child repeats sayings and expressions, but they serve as a
stimulation for the
child to actively create language on his own.
The following strategies are the creative and practical alphabet
activities that most of creative teachers
have been using for the last decades in their preschool-aged
children classrooms:
The easiest way to teach the alphabet is to teach them the song
ABCD.Use the AlphabetSong to familiarize children with the letters
and their names. Sing it often, if not every day.
Take care not to sing it so fast that the letters run together
and are not easily
distinguishable, such as with l, m, n, o sounding like elemeno.
You can sing it as a rap or to
another tune for variety. It is also helpful to have a large
alphabet chart so that you can
point to the letters as you sing them.
One of the best ways to teach letter shapes is to have children
write the letters. The twomost common forms of letter writing are
Zaner-Bloser style ( Figure 1) and DNealianstyle ( Figure 2).
Whatever you teach, remain consistent with the method of letter
formation you use.
Practice the alphabets by using students' names. For example (A)
(Ali) (Z) (Zahra) (F)(Farbod) (R) (Roya), etc.
Let themplay with play-dough or modeling clay and create clay
alphabet shapes. They willnever forget what they make with their
own hands.
Write a letter on the board and ask them to express their
feeling about that letter bypainting or doodling it on a sheet of
paper.
Use the technique of associating the consonant sounds with the
vowel sounds in a chart likefollowing (Figure 3). Practice saying
the alphabet in the order presented in that chart. It'll
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be easier to memorize similar sounds in association. Although
some of the letters can't be
related to others, students usually learn faster if the alphabet
is introduced and practiced
this way.
Take an alphabet walk around the school or neighborhood. Look
for letters that you havebeen studying in environmental print. You
can also have children identify objects that start
with specific letters that the children have recently learned.
(Figure 4)
Play hangman using recycled vocabulary from the lesson. (Figure
5) Play "I Spy" by having children try to identify what you spy
that begins with a certain
letter. You can give added hints if needed. For example, "I spy
something that begins with
B. You can read it." (book) Have the child who correctly
identifies the object go to the
board and write the letter. Have everyone practice saying the
word with emphasis on the
first letter.
Play letter card scramble by having children use letter cards to
spell a CVC word that youwrite on the board. Then have them
scramble the cards and put them back together bysounding out the
word. Another twist is to have children write their names using the
cards
and then scrambling and putting them back together. They can
also work with one or two
classmates. They can make their own name with the cards, show
them to a classmate, and
then scramble the cards. A classmate then puts the cards back
together to spell the name.
Be sure that children sound out letters carefully, as the
purpose of the activity is to practice
recognition of letters and their sound correspondence.
Place children into groups of four to five, and have them use
their bodies to form letters. Ifit takes only one or two bodies to
form a letter, have the group form more than one of the
letters.
Write the name of a common and familiar CVC word on the board.
Say one of the letters inthe word, and have a volunteer come to the
board and circle the letter. Have children
identify the letters positionbeginning, middle, or end. Repeat
by saying the other lettersand having volunteers circle them. Then
segment and blend the word.
Write word family pairs on the board, such as hog and dog,
matand rat, andpin and tin.Ask children to identify the letters
that are different in each pair. Ask if they can name an
initial letter that makes yet another word.
Play alphabet concentration using letter cards. Use no more than
16 cards (8 pairs). If 16 istoo many, adjust the number of cards so
as to not frustrate children. You can also use
picture cards and letter cards. Each letter card is matched with
its corresponding picture
card.
Hand out a letter card or picture card to each child. Write a
letter on the board. The childwhose picture begins with the letter
or who has a matching letter card stands up. That child
says the letter and the word of the picture (if they have
picture cards). You should reinforce
the answer and have all the children repeat the sound.
Write a large letter on the chalkboard. It can be upper- or
lowercase. Write a number ofsmaller letters around the larger
letter. Many of the smaller letters should be the same as
the larger letter. You can either put them in the same case or
mixed cases. Have volunteers
come up, one at a time, and circle a letter that matches the
bigger letter. As they do, they
say the letter out loud and name a word that starts with the
letter. A sample might be:
M m m N n w s m M m W m U
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Label objects in the classroom that begin with a letter you have
just taught. Or you can givechildren cards with the letter on them
and have them attach the letter card to anything in
the classroom that begins with that letter. A more difficult
task would be to have them
place the letter card on an object that ends with the letter.
This can only be done with
certain letters that appear at the end of words and make the
common sound you have
taught.
Give children a clipping from a newspaper or magazine and have
them circle or highlightall the examples they can find of a
specified letter. You can challenge them to find a certain
number of occurrences, such as seven. The number should vary
with how common the
letter is.
Give children letter cards. Call out four to five letters. As
you do, those who have the cardcome to the front of the room. When
four to five children have come forward, direct them
to arrange themselves in alphabetical order.
Provide experiences for tactile activities related to letter
formation. Use pipe cleaners, waxsticks, or salt or sand in
trays.
Have children perform an action that represents a letter. If you
say H, they hop. If you sayW, they walk. If you sayJ, they jump. If
you say Y, they yawn. You can give them a prop
such as a ball and have them do things with it depending on the
letter called out. For
example, say B, and they bounce the ball. Say T, and they toss
the ball. Say C, and they
catch the ball.
Divide the class in half. Give one half of the class lowercase
letter cards. Give the otherhalf matching uppercase letter cards.
Have children search for their match. You can play a
similar game with letter and picture cards.
Write letters on paper plates. Mix them up. Have children make
chains or a caterpillarusing the paper plates. However, they have
to put the plates in alphabetical order. Give
them pipe cleaner "antennae" to put at the head of the
caterpillar.
Reproduce connect-the-dot pictures that use letters for each
dot. Have children draw thepicture by connecting the dots in
alphabetical order.
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Figure 1(Zaner-Bloser style)
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Figure 2(DNealian style)
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Figure 3 (Similar sounds in association)
Figure 4 (Alphabet in Nature): The letters of the English
alphabet reveal themselves in unexpected
places if you search for them. They hide in the infrastructure
that shapes the world around us.
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Word:_ A N _ _ A N
Guess:HMisses:e,i,o,s,t
7
Word:_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Guess:EMisses:
0
Word:H A N _ _ A N
Guess:R
Misses:e,i,o,s,t
8
Word:_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Guess:T
Misses:e
1
Word:H A N _ _ A N
Guess:N/A
Misses:e,i,o,r,s,t
9
Word:_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Guess:A
Misses:e,t
2
Guesser loses - the answer was HANGMAN.
Word:_ A _ _ _ A _
Guess:O
Misses:e,t
3
Figure 5 (Hangman): An example gameillustrates a player trying
to guess the word
'hangman' using a strategy based solely on
letter frequency.
Word:_ A _ _ _ A _
Guess:I
Misses:e,o,t
4
Word:_ A _ _ _ A _
Guess:N
Misses:e,i,o,t
5
Word:_ A N _ _ A N
Guess:S
Misses:e,i,o,t
6
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Creativity Inspired by the Alphabet
Inspiration can come from just about anywhere, and even
something as simple as the ABC's of
the English alphabet can be a great source of creative
ideas!
Meat Alphabet by Robert J. BolestaAlphabet made or raw hamburger
(Each character hand-shaped, packaged, and photographed
individually).
Alphabetical Paperclips by Steghen ReedLettered paperclips can
be used to file document alphabetically or linked to form
words.
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Butterfly AlphabetLetters and numbers photographed on the wing
of butterflies.
Sky Alphabet by Lisa Rienermann"Type the sky" alphabet created
by Lisa Rienermann (while studying at the University of Essen
in Barcelona).
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3. Conclusions
Everyone who interacts with a young child is a teacher.
Preschool teachers have both the
wonderful opportunity and the important responsibility to teach
and nurture the youngest
children. The years from birth through age five are a time of
extraordinary growth and change. It
is in these years that children develop the basic knowledge,
understandings, and interests theyneed to reach the goal of being
successful learners, readers and writers. All young children
deserve experiences that will help them to achieve this goal. In
this regard, parents who spend
many hours with children and ministry of education both can have
effectively important and
helpful role in emerging talents and enhancing creativity of
students in this way.
The children are in schools with the expectation to sit in their
class politely, study and learn
structure of the sentences, grammar and its usage, spelling etc
etc. And sureeducation is formal,
but by considering the fact that the lessons are about becoming
a responsible person, language
teachers ' prominent target is to help their students use
language that is lively and common and is
the flavor of everyday communication as unique individuals.
Moreover, the old system of just
grammar is not match the new age of technology and nowadays
student as a tiny part of this
increasingly ever-changing world. Therefore, what we need is
merging that formal and oldeducation, the traditional Strategies,
to the new and informal one,the creative Strategies.Although
relatively little research has been conducted that examines the
creative teaching
practices of elementary teachers providing instruction in
English in Iran where English is the
second language, there is an increasing interest in this field
which has been very productive
lately. Hence, it is suggested that a foreign language education
begin during the stages of Early
Childhood Education by using above-mentioned creative teaching
strategies.
4. References
Davies, 1999.Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: the theory of
multiple intelligences . New York:Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (1993) Multiple Intelligences: the theory in
practice. New York: BasicBooks.
Halliwell (1993) Teacher creativity and teacher education, in
Bridges, D. and Kerry, T.(eds.)
Mur, Olga: Como introducir el Ingls en Educacin Infantil,
Madrid, Escuela Espaola.1998.
Wikipedia (2009) Creativity.Willis, J. (2007).Brain-friendly
strategies for the inclusion classroom. Alexandria, VA:Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Woods, P. (1996) The Good Times, Creative Teaching in Primary
School, Education3-13, June 1996.
Yeomans, M. (1996) Creativity in Art and Science: A Personal
View , Journal of Artand Design Education, 15(3), 241-50.
