Engagement Strategies - Pronounce With Me

 Overview

  Use in the Classroom

Teachers can use the pronounce with me engagement strategy to introduce new academic or content specific vocabulary, ensuring that students hear the correct pronunciation of the new word/s before reading it themselves. To best utilise this strategy in the classroom, students should repeat the word after the teacher. Teachers should also provide a definition where it is needed.

Example:

• Teacher: Today in mathematics, we are learning to partition numbers.
• Pronounce that new word after me – ‘partition’.  
• Students: (pronounce the word): ‘partition’

Use with technology

• ‘Text to speech’ on a desktop computer can allow for the new technical language to be read and pronounced when clicked on.
• Teachers could also record themselves pronouncing specific words and then have students click to hear the words back.

  Personalised Learning

When students with additional needs are engaging with learning by using the pronounce with me engagement strategy, there can be some potential barriers that need to be considered.  These may include the articulation of speech, auditory memory for sounds, syllables and words or the presence of background noise or glare on a teacher’s face, making lip reading challenging.  Some students may be reluctant to speak in a group.

Some potential adjustments may include:

• Pre-teach some of the key words and provide time for practice.
• Make it safe to articulate a beginning sound, syllable or piece of a word.
• Use a pre-programmed text-speech technology function.
• Use a gesture for pre-taught words.
• Provide an attention signal before asking students to pronounce words.

  Resources