“If you give a pig a pancake…” well, let’s just say there’s no end to what might happen!
The delightful children’s book If You Give a Pig a Pancake was the starting point Tuesday morning as speech pathology students from Stephen F. Austin State University worked with Pre-K four-year-olds at Nacogdoches ISD’s Fredonia Early Childhood Center.
After enjoying the story together, students broke into small groups with the SFA undergraduates to explore phonological awareness activities connected to the book. These activities focused on essential early literacy skills such as recognizing sounds, retelling stories, rhyming, alliteration, onset and rhyme and practicing letter sounds.
“Phonological awareness is a foundational skill that helps children recognize and manipulate the sounds in spoken language,” said Fredonia Principal Lindsey Turner. “It’s critical for literacy development because it enables children to decode words, improve pronunciation and build pre-reading skills.”
The activities planned by the SFA speech pathology students align directly with the Texas Pre-Kindergarten Guidelines and the CIRCLE Assessment, which Fredonia administers three times a year to track student growth.
The students just completed their first CIRCLE assessment, and those results help teachers, interventionists, and speech students plan activities that help students strengthen their phonological activities.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, SFA students rotate through eight Fredonia classrooms over a two-week period, providing the phonological awareness lessons. Two additional classes focus on letter sounds and story comprehension through small-group work.
This marks the third year of the partnership between SFA and Fredonia. The collaboration not only benefits NISD students by providing specialized support but also offers valuable hands-on experience to future speech pathologists preparing for graduation.