Early+Years+Literacy+Observation+-+Reading

Connecting with an early years teacher and their teaching program.


Teachers: Mrs E

 * =====**Reading** =====

10:00 – Share time / Whole
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  Observation was in a grade 1 class of a Catholic primary school in Geelong. The structure of the lesson conducted by Mrs E followed the whole – group – whole format as discussed in Hills. The teacher began with a whole group share reading exercise that consisted of a big book displayed on the smart board. The second part saw the class be divided into smaller groups or between 2 and 5 members and sent off to perform different task around the classroom. Finally the groups were brought back together, where a selected couple of groups reported or performed.

During the shared reading, the children were instructed to sit altogether on the floor. Mrs E set up the smart board with the book that they were going to read. The big book came from the “[|story lands]” website and was called “Spike the Dragon". The use of the smart board for this purpose is fantastic, the technology instantly engages the children and it children who have vision difficulties to see the words and pictures clearly.

The choice of the book is very important, it needs to appeal and engage the children. Being a grade one group most of the children will be at level 2 of VELS moving from an emergent to an early reader. The text choose, was in line with an early text, as it contained many early readers text features including: longer text length, longer sentences and different syntactic patterns. However it still did contain features of an emergent text such as simple story line and the use of high frequency words. (Hill, 2008).

Mrs E began by telling the children she was going to read the book to begin with. Modelled reading is one of the core teaching strategies used when teaching early learning literacy. By reading to her students she is modelling fluency, demonstrating the use of punctuation and grammar and engaging the students in the text by reading with expression. Modelled reading is used in conjunction with shared and guided reading as a scaffolding approach to learning to read. It demonstrates many strategies learners can use when learning to read.

Whilst reading the book, Mrs E occasionally stopped to ask the children about the text. This included questioning the children in regards to lettering, punctuation, grammar and the pictures. By discussing the mechanics of the text, she is allowing the children to develop the link between oral and print. For example the children are asked how an exclamation mark changes the way we read the text and why we do not stop reading at the end of a line. To enhance the modelled experience, Mrs E uses a pointer. By pointing to each word Mrs E is modelling the one to one word correspondence, it also helps the children to keep up with the reading

Mrs E uses the talking parts of the text to engage the children in the story. She encourages them to bring the dragon to life and become involved with the story. As the children read you can clearly hear some children that can get the text easily whilst others that struggle. This method of group reading helps students to pick up reading cues from other children can also build a slower readers confidence, as they are part of a group and not singled out to make mistakes.

Once the book was finished and discussed, Mrs E proceeded to ask children questions related to the text, to gauge the children’s comprehension. She asked the three types of questions literal, interpretive and inferential designed to do this. It was interesting to hear the variety of answers to the interpretive and inferential questions. Mrs E listened and clearly valued each child’s answer, this is very important as it builds a learners confidence. Encouraging children to gain meaning from both the text and the pictures encourages a level of thinking beyond what is presented and helps to develop critical analysing.

Group reading followed and the children were guided to each activity. The five group activities were made up of a mixture of different types of literacy activities. Including making ANZAC biscuits or procedural reading, computer work and guided reading with the teacher. I also assisted in taking a group of 5 children and read a big book in a guided reading scenario. Guided reading is another key teaching strategies for early years reading. Guided reading focuses on giving the children problem solving strategies they can use when reading themselves (Hill, 2006 p80). Prior to beginning reading like in shared reading a discussion to place regarding the book, key features such as title and cover picture was discussed and also the type of book ie: fiction or non fiction.

During this group session, each child was given the opportunity to read from the text and “prompts were used to encourage children to integrate visual, phonological, syntactic and semantic cues” (Hills, 2006 p82). These cues are also part of the scaffolding approach to early years literacy as they encourage the children to think and problem solve independently and instils confidence when a successful outcome is achieved. During this time my group also developed a little play to go along with the big book.

Finally, at approximately 9:50 Mrs E brought all the children back together for shared time. This is where the children came together to perform the little plays they had learnt during the group sessions. They children were also given the opportunity to discuss what they liked about the things they did in the group session and if they learnt any new words. Bringing the group back together allows for the reading session to come to a natural end and the writing part of the block to begin.