Educating the Dragon

Currently I’m reading Effective Literacy Practice.
This is conveniently broken down into chapter headings:

Knowledge of Literacy Learning
Knowledge of the Learner
Instructional strategies
Engaging learners with texts
Expectations
Partnerships.

To the trained mind each of these is self explanatory. However a chapter has been devoted to each and as I read each one I intend to feedback the bullet point learning that I have done and hopefully express how what I have learnt impacts on my classroom practice. I was hoping to get this done before term start but I don’t fancy my chances. I’ll see how it goes. Bear in mind the overall goal:
“[to focus] on what [I can do] that leads to improved outcomes for [my] students”

So first chapter is ‘Knowledge of Literacy Learning’

Oral language underpins both reading and writing. Children need to be given the opportunity to talk about events and discuss ideas. Their language is enriched with plenty of these types of opportunities with appropriate feedback and encouragement. Associated with oral is visual language and it has dawned on me during this reading that understanding and interpreting signs and symbols is now vital for everyone, the computer and its applications, let alone Web2.0 technologies, mean that the visual language is becoming ever more central.

Developmental perspective. In old money ‘ages and stages’ but now the key vocabulary is ‘pathway of development’. The goal is fluency and independence but we, as teachers, should be teaching not only the knowledge and strategies to use but an awareness of how to use them.

Socialisation model
So often it is hard for teachers who come from different backgrounds to those they teach. The activities established in the classroom should not necessarily be culturally biased but must reflect the home and community settings. ‘All pupils should find classroom literacy both enjoyable and challenging’ I would add to this quote by saying that all students should be successful in these activities if motivation is to remain high. What better way for a student to be a life-long learner than to develop self discipline and motivation.

Be strategic in planning. Choosing learning activities and identifying individual needs are essential if students are to make sound progress. We need to share with the students the purpose for their learning. Studies have shown that this simple addition to classroom practice raises student achievement significantly- they have to take ownership of their literacy learning. There is talk in the text about “Literacy learners who are emotionally engaged will have a positive, sometimes even passionate, attitude towards reading and writing.” But a question: what does becoming emotionally engaged mean or look like in a real classroom?

Okay here’s the framework:
Learning the code; ability to decode and encode written forms of language.
Making meaning; Using knowledge, strategies and awareness to get and convey meaning in a text.
Thinking critically; analysing meanings, responding critically on a personal level. Expressing opinion is key here.

Children Learn:
• Print contains a message
• Text is written and read from left to right
• Text has meaning & purpose
• Text have a particular structure, according to their purpose.
• Print is a written for of spoken language; there is a one-to-one match between each spoken and written word.
• Illustrations convey meaning and relate to text on that page.
• The conventions of print are consistent; sentences start with capital letters and end with full stops. Print on the left is read before print on the right.
• Print on a book’s cover gives the title and other details (author?)
• Written text is constant.

Comprehension
On page 39 of the book detail is given about the learning of comprehension.
Prerequisites for comprehension learning:
• Large oral vocabulary
• Fluency in decoding and sight vocabulary
• Opportunities to listen, actively to the teacher reading aloud.
• Extensive reading of a range of texts
• Engagement in many reading and writing experiences
• Ability to relate text to background knowledge.

So my teaching?

• Instructional, daily reading.
• Activites covering a range of reading material
• Activities which will allow a level of success and a level of challenge for each group.
• Reading not recording is the key.
• Establish reading partners, maybe of differing levels maybe the same. The experience should be reading and responding. Let’s keep oral skills to the fore.