Literacy: Shared or Interactive Writing Teaching.

Learning activity 5.8: Develop a series of steps to teach students how to recognize and write a sentence. Consider that you would teach this during shared or interactive writing. Refer to SR 5.14: Pinnell & Fountas, page 203 for strategies to assist you.

According to Pinnell & Fountas (1998), “interactive writing is a teacher-guided group activity designed to teach children about the writing process and about how written language works.”
A series of steps to teach students how to recognize and write a sentence:

* The teacher gathers children around an easel/ blackboard/ a vertical plane on

which the teacher will be writing. All children should be able to see the writing.

* Together the teacher and children co-construct a message/text, i.e children write

word parts/whole words, teachers fill in the rest. These words for the children would be new or unfamiliar words, a challenging word, whereas the teacher will write in the simple familiar word. The reason for this is to spend more time focusing and learning the difficult word. This may take a series of days, if the sentence is a long one.

* Other ways include having word lists, word wall, name charts, referring to books

that children can refer to.

Demonstrating Writing:

* An example of interactive writing piece of work where the class students and

teacher can co-construct as part of an integrated science unit experiment incorporating other Key Learning Areas, for example a plant growing project.

The children with the teacher prior to experimenting would predict the outcomes, and the teacher would scribe down their predictions. After the experiment has been completed, the teacher and children would come together to discuss and write out their findings. Pinnell & Fountas (1998) suggests a strategy, whereby before composing, children reread some of the sentences they have written before proceeding further. They further suggest that these worksheets can be collected and be part of a big book, or it could go into the children’s individual folders for assessment.

Learning activity 5.9: Consider management issues such as size of groups, moving to next activity, behaviour, time issues and learning content of activities. Write a brief explanation describing how you would address the following:

Management issues – size and dynamics of groups, transition and rotation of groups, behaviour guidance.

Size and dynamics of groups:
To have effective management of student’s behaviour, each group should have about 6-7 children in a group in order that they could receive adequate attention from the teacher or adult who is working with them. The classroom teacher would enlist the assistance of teacher aides and parent helpers to assist in rotation learning groups. Parent helpers would help best in activities that do not require use of formal instruction or tools.

Transition and rotation of groups:
A task chart or something similar works as an effective visual behaviour management to guide to the learning centres they have been assigned to. The students would also be reminded to keep away the activities they have worked with for their rotation learning centre for the next group, and wait quietly to go into the next activity as

An egg timer is also an effective way of informing all groups that it is time for transitions. During rotations, the main teacher could also ring a bell for a similar effect. The main classroom teacher should also go from one group to another to observe how the students fare or work in each learning centre.

Behaviour Guidance:

The use of behaviour charts on the wall serves as an effective visual reminder and behaviour management tool. The teacher also reminds the students of the behaviour expected of each student together as she explains the activities being implemented for that learning centre

Literacy: Modelled Writing & Strategies

Learning activity 5.7: Read SR 5.13: Hoyt, Mooney & Parkes and describe and explain the purpose of modeled writing and strategies a teacher could use when modelling and verbalizing the ‘thinking in their head’.

The purposes of modeled writing include that students understand the similarities and differences between reading and writing, and between fiction and non-fiction.

This enables students to creatively and effectively use each type of literacy practice, irregardless whether reading or writing for a variety of purposes and with a variety of audiences.

The purposes of modeled writing include

§ Watching the teacher use phrasing in sentences or paragraphs.

§ Observations of leaving a space between each word to make it more coherent and understandable.

§ The use of correct punctuation.

§ Become familiar with the different types of genres.

§ Know that the words that a speaker says can be translated into symbols and signs and written down on the blackboard/whiteboard/ or paper.

§ Understand that words that are written down can be broken into parts and is a combination of different letters (of sounds) put together.

Strategies that a teacher can use:

§ Provide explicit and frequent models and demonstrations in shared reading and writing.

An example is the modeling of writing an invitation card to a friend for a birthday party. The teacher takes out an old invitation card and shows it to the students. She then asks the students questions about the invitation card, and lists down on a chart or the blackboard what is needed to be written down on their invitation. The students can work on creating their own invitation cards during individual work time based on these criteria.

§ Inviting and supporting dialogue about the writer’s craft during informational book read aloud.

As a continuation of work for the invitation card that the children have written, the teacher can take out an informational book such as a recipe book. She will then read out the recipe and ask the students what they require from the recipe. The teacher then scribes down on the blackboard or paper as the students state their observations. The teacher can plan for the implementation of a cooking activity based on the recipe book used during the informational book read

§ Continuing the demonstrations and dialogue with the expectancy of increased involvement and understanding during shared reading and writing.

Finally, when the making of the invitation is completed, the teacher can present in a subsequent lesson, on how the envelope can be used to send a letter and what information is needed on the envelope. For this, the teacher will show and model the children a sample of used envelopes and stamps. She will frame the questions in context of the envelope, and scribe down the children’s answers. The students can then be provided each with an envelope, or create one of their own, and write in the information on their envelopes and post it into the “classroom post box”. If there is not a classroom post box, one can be made in lieu of this unit.

§ Providing further demonstrations and increasing the expectancy of independent use during guided reading and writing.

Finally, the teacher can implement the use of journals to write down their reflections on their feelings and findings through out the implementation of this unit of work. The teacher will revise some of these terms and new words that they have acquired throughout the week, or the unit and this would be used as part of the children’s work assessment.

The use of old invitation cards, used envelopes and recipe books are real-life examples that can be presented to the children. It not only provides real life examples of the literacy practices of people in society, but it provides a pre-made genre which the children can relate to as they would have seen these as familiar objects in their own daily lives.

Literacy: Modelled reading (Early Years Level)

Learning Activity 5.1:
Develop a list of suitable literature for reading to/modelled reading in the early years. Choose a variety of texts and complete the table below.

Text	Text type/ Genre	Purpose
Who sank the boat? (Pamela Allen) The Potato People (Pamela Allen) Can You Keep a Secret? (Pamela Allen) Bears on Wheels (Stan and Jan Berenstain) Sleepytime ABC Three Billy Goats Gruff Mrs. Wishy Washy. Elliot the Piglet. Q2	Fiction- Picture Book Fiction – Picture Book Fiction- Picture Book Fiction- Picture Book Non-Fiction: Picture Book Fiction- Big Book Fiction- Big Book Non Fiction- Picture Book	Humourous story-to develop prediction skills. To discuss about relationships between families, grandparents. Discusses about crowns, kings and rulers and prepositions. Discusses about acrobatics, numbers and bicycles. Introduces letters of the alphabet. Introduces concepts of big, small, middle sized. Talks about familiar animals on the farm. Discusses about a pig who feel secluded due to his size.

Key Learning Areas (QLD) : Literacy

The literacy activities in this entry is more suited & is undertaken by children in the early years & in context of primary schooling.

Learning activity 4.2: Access your English/literacy/language arts syllabus and compare its description of reading with the Literate futures definition above. Are the reading learning experiences in your syllabus linked to its reading belief? Give examples of this.

Reading is a social practice that draws on a repertoire of social, cultural and cognitive resources to construct and reconstruct meanings from various traditional and multimodal texts. It is enacted in different ways for different purposes in a variety of public and domestic settings. Reading is therefore a cultural, economic, ideological, political, psychological and social act.

(Source: Education Queensland (M Anstey) 2002, Literate futures: reading, p. 23)

A definition of reading is not found in the Queensland English syllabus, but rather, one that encompasses the practice of reading with other literacy practices as follows:

In English, students learn to speak, listen to, read, view, write and shape texts to make meaning with purpose, effect and confidence in a wide range of contexts. They learn how language use varies according to context, purpose, audience, and content, and they develop their abilities to use this knowledge. Students develop their ability to use language to talk about language and to reflect on and critique its use.

The study of English occurs in a rapidly changing world — culturally, socially, economically and technologically. Increasing social diversity, the globalisation of economies, cultures and workplaces, as well as new information and communication technologies, place increasingly complex demands on citizens to be multiliterate. (Education Queensland (2005) English: Years 1-10 Syllabus, p.1)

Both these definitions of reading and literacy practices place an importance on students acquiring skills which require students to draw from their background knowledge as well as learn and develop a multitude of skills from a range of literacy practices. The onset of globalization taking place in a rapidly changing world has come to mean that students would no longer be able to be complacent but would need to develop a wide range of literacy skills in order to be considered as “literate” and read from a wide range of texts, include that of traditional texts, i.e. newspapers, brochures, posters, banners, to multi-media, which encompasses website prints, powerpoint presentations, television advertisements, cinema advertisements and perhaps holographic shows.

The reading learning experiences in the syllabus are linked to its reading beliefs as stated, as the English syllabus framework is divided into three sub-strands, which are the Cultural, Operational and Critical sub strands. The study of these three interrelated strand are developed and planned that it encourages students to develop a range of literacy practices to help them become multi-literate, active and and informed citizens able to participate as lifelong learners in a rapidly changing world (Education Queensland, 2005, p.3).

An example for planning is taken from the Level 1 Statement for the strand Reading and Viewing as states: Students interpret and construct simply structured brief texts that make connections with own experiences in familiar situations. They use textual resources including awareness of stages of the generic structure of texts, patterns of simple sentences, words, letters, images, sounds and voice. They identify similarities between textual representations and own experiences.

(Education Queensland (2005) English: Years 1-10 Syllabus, p.15)

The core learning outcomes for this strand states that students acquire the reading viewing skills by the end of Year 2 are:

Substrand: Cultural

• That familiar written, visual and multimodal texts have particular cultural purposes.
• That texts maintain a topic or idea related to their personal experiences or familiar texts
• The roles and relationships that texts can be produced for different audiences
• The texts can be produced in familiar paper and electronic mediums.
  
  Substrand: Operational
• Different Text types which have their own genre and generic structure
• Students develop understanding of subject matter of what consists of a sentence, use of vocabulary choice, noun groups, verb groups, adjectives, statements, questions, and commands, questions,
• Students develop understanding of the different types of mode and medium of what consists of linguistic elements of text, starting point and direction, simple conjunctions, patterns, pronouns, simple synonyms, Word structure (spelling) and punctuation,
• Students develop understanding of skills reading through use of graphophonic cues, visual letter patterns and rimes, two-letter consonant blends,
• Students develop understanding of punctuation in reading texts: full stops, question marks, capital letters.

Substrand- Critical:

• Students demonstrate these reading and viewing outcomes
• Students recognise that in texts people can be recognised by how they are portrayed.
• Students understand that background effects and facial expressions can be used to represent people, places, events and things in particular ways.