Spell-O-Matic Blocks

MEET Mrs Letty Maglacion – a Grade 1-Lily teacher in Bugo Central School. She has been a teacher for 28 long years. Her seniority has made her a leader in Grade 1 level for six years. At present, she is a Teacher 3 (Read: She earns quite a lot).

But it is not about the money (as Jessie J would say it in her Price Tag song) that she endures teaching little kids (Read: KIDS) but it is her passion and dedication in educating children. And this ardor has led her to what she calls Spell-O-Matic Blocks.

Curious, I asked if this is her original ‘invention.’ She proudly said yes. She baptized this IM as such, spelling out the name of the punctuation mark that squeezes in O in the middle as dash. I protested (long pause) in my mind as I remembered PDI Stylebook (Read: A journalist’s Bible) mention that hyphen, joins; dash separates. The word is a portmanteau of Spelling and Automatic.

Now let us go back to where we were before I totally go off tangent.

These blocks are made of discarded boxes. She formed a block in which each side of the slab is a letter of the English alphabet. Just in case you have forgotten, there are 26 letters of the English alphabet. The letters are mounted against a colorful backdrop.

She made a hundred of these Spell-O-Matic Blocks. There are 40 students in her class and five tables in her well-lit room. She assigns 20 blocks per table. She uses this IM in her English subject, particularly in her lesson on Building Words. I call it Spelling. She agreed.

She starts with simple words. She starts with words having a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) structure, like the words rat and cat. Then, she moves the difficulty a notch higher to Consonant-Vowel-Vowel-Consonant (CVVC) structure, like the words meat and beat.

The students form the word/s using the blocks. They manipulate these attractive blocks.

She does drill of building words by family, meaning, for words with the CVC structure, she changes the first letter first then later the last letter – say from Cat to Rat to Bat, and so on; for the words with CVVC structure, on the other hand, she changes the first or/and the final letter – say from BeaT to MeaT or FarT to MarK, and so on.

She would make the building of words as a contest by table. And then, after the group contest she would assess them individually.

“Because of this IM, my students have become fast-readers,” she said. Furthermore, students are taught proper pronunciation of the word after they have ‘built’ the word.

I have seen it myself that the students were not bored. They are so engaged with the use of the blocks.

“It is as if they are playing, which they actually are, and yet at the same time they learn how to spell the words,” she said with a grin.

She has the same IM for Mathematics only that she calls it Place Value Blocks. On each side of the bock are numbers with labels on top to represent place values (Hundreds, Tens, and Ones).

She uses this IM in her lesson on Writing Numbers.

After English and Math, I remembered Science. She said that there is no Science subject in Grade 1 in a sense that Science, as a subject, is integrated in English. For example, students learn the parts of the flower in our English subject.

The perks of this IM? This could perhaps pass Tourism’s campaign: It is more fun in the Philippines. She said that her students have fun while learning. And for her, that is important.

This is an assignment submitted for Education 27 Principles in Teaching.