EDU20001 Developing Literacy and Reading Literacy Development

Reading development in children occurs at different paces and in varying amounts of time at each stage (Olson et al., 2014). During this process, they require proper support and aid from the parents and children that would help them to read and develop their literacy. In the two scenarios, Riley and Mia are year 1 children who are learning to read and working their way through the texts. Both their ways of reading are different and depends upon their strengths, interests and needs. Year 1 stage is considered to be the checkpoint for literacy and numeracy development. When Riley and Mia’s reading texts were compared, Riley requires more assistance than Mia so that they both are able to develop their reading skills. The following essay deals with the various teaching strategies that would help to develop their reading skills and use of vocabulary to understand their reading skills. It would also deal with the teaching assessment that would be helpful to enhance their reading literacy development.  

In the first scenario, Riley is a year 1 kid who is learning to read the written texts and trying to understand the words and their meanings. After the assessment of Riley’s reading and comprehension of the text, it is evident that Riley is facing difficulty in reading words and in understanding the meaning of the words. He is mispronouncing the printed word despite of the fact that the misread word is within his receptive vocabulary. He is also using the words that he is familiar with like sat instead of lay and was unable to read the long words like Wombat and Echidna. He is having difficulty in reading the words adventure, explorers as he lacks vocabulary and meaning of the words and its understanding. He used the familiar words and requires teaching strategies that helps him with vocabulary and reading developmental skills in Riley.

For the development of teaching strategy, it is important to assess the depth of the knowledge of the child through the vocabulary, age and language requirements of the child. To support Riley’s reading development, it is important the teacher should consider the characteristics of Riley’s reading, characteristics of the words that he is expanding or missing during the reading and depth or level of the word knowledge. Taking into consideration the Riley’s reading, it is evident that he requires strategies to develop his vocabulary, phonic knowledge, word recognition, grammatical knowledge and fluency (Cabell et al., 2015).

Vocabulary and word knowledge are the most important teachings strategy that is required for Riley to support his reading development (Metsala & Ehri, 2013). Phonetics teaching is also an important strategy that is required for Riley that would enhance his phonetic awareness and reading skills. Vocabulary decision-making model is an effective way where the teachers can support the vocabulary learning (Wasik, Hindman & Snell, 2016). Firstly, the teacher need to identify the vocabulary that is curriculum based and then this model can be used to select the specific words and introduce new vocabulary to teach Riley. In the first step, the teacher will identify the unfamiliar words that Riley is unable to understand after the comprehension of the text. Secondly, the teacher would select the vocabulary words that needs emphasis and required during the story-telling by reading it loudly and acting out the words. In addition, it was required to teach the new words through a direct approach. For example, for introducing the word adventure in the story, teacher would illustrate the meaning of the word adventure through description and after he is familiar with the word, he can be checked for the elicit word use and its meaning in the story (Khan, Nelson & Whyte, 2014).

For the phonetic and alphabet awareness, letter words need to be introduced to Riley via introduction of the sound that it makes so that he is able to relate the letter to the words and encourage reading. Analytic and synthetic phonics that emphasize on the learning of the read words that uses letter names (Meeks et al., 2017). In this, Riley should be taught map letters to the sounds and focuses on the visual pattern, saying and hearing of the words and its meaning. Morpheme awareness is also required for Riley as he is unable to understand the parts of the words that bear meaning like sunbathing. This would help him to unlock the meaning of the words during the process of structural analysis.

This strategy would help Riley to develop his reading skills through the use of vocabulary and phonetic awareness. The interaction with Riley is a learning experience where it focuses on the vocabulary learning and phonetic awareness. This learning experience would help to support the reading skills in Riley and value of this learning experience is that it would help him to enhance his reading skills through development of vocabulary and enhanced phonetic awareness (Ehri, 2014). This is a classroom based experience where he is supported with learning experiences via independent reading opportunities, drama play, role- play, loud reading and explicit vocabulary instruction.

Reading assessment strategy through reading and language comprehension is an important measure to assess the reading skills in the year 1 children (McKenna & Stahl, 2015). In this, Riley needs to be encouraged to read the same text again and this would help the teacher to make note of the errors and then questions are asked in comprehension to the reading text. Therefore, reading comprehension text is an important way to assess and evaluate the child’s reading skills.

The transcript of Mia’s text shows that her reading skills are proper and comprehension of the text is better than Riley. The problem with her reading skill is that she is exaggerating the long words and requires assistance with the understanding and reading of the long words with their meanings. She is exaggerating the words like Wombat, Echidna, seaside, sunbathing, explorers, drifting and friends and climbed. Her way of reading is proper; however, it requires assistance with the pronunciation of the words and enhancement of vocabulary and the word meanings. The teaching strategy is required for her word-learning and the way to pronounce it. In addition, she also requires support in the vocabulary enhancement and familiarity with words.

There are several teaching strategies that can be employed like pointing and labeling, eliciting and nom-eliciting of questions, brief definitions and extended approaches that would support Mia with word learning (Oxford, 2016). There are three steps for the recognizable, smooth pronunciation with the vocabulary development for Mia. Firstly, teacher needs to label or point out the word that helps her to connect with the word, its concept and its connection with the word and image. In the elicitation and non-elicitation, the teacher comprehend question that that create memory and provide information about the word concepts. Next, child-friendly and brief description of the words and its meaning would help to maintain comprehension of the words. Extended approach is an important way to support Mia’s word-learning that would provide her opportunities to deepen the meaning of the words that uses target word correctly in the meaningful context.

Learning experiences where it would help in the development of pronunciation through the role of suffixes that helps to understand the accented or stressed vowel. Moreover, it would help Mia to learn the way to control the word sound by loud reading where she would be encouraged to read on her own by providing them new vocabulary that aligns with the interest of the child in book reading. Independent and purposeful reading opportunities should be provided where Mia would choose her own books according to her ability and interests. By rehearsing the key parts of the context that put emphasis on the right syllables with proper rhythm or proper accentuation, Mia would be able to pronounce the words clearly without exaggerating it (Lapp et al., 2013).

Decoding assessment is a technique to assess the strategy that would support Mia’s reading skills. In this, words would be selected that are within own vocabulary, fluency with the help of regular and irregular phonetically words (García & Cain, 2014). In this assessment, Mia would be assessed on her pronunciation accuracy, word-naming and assessment of her ability to decode the words. Phonology assessment is also important that involves the discrimination between the words that seem familiar to Mia. The National Assessment Program- Literacy and Development (NAPLAN) would also be helpful in assessing the Mia’s progress in the development of reading skills (Daraganova, Edwards & Sipthorp, 2013). According to the Australian curriculum, assessment tools like letter-sound knowledge, word lists and independent reading skills would help to enhance her reading skills and reading of long words that she is exaggerating. Apart from teacher observation, questions and answers are also helpful in assessing the effectiveness of the implemented teaching strategies for Mia.

The two children in the scenario, Riley and Mia, year 1 kids are in the stage of their reading development and working their way through the texts. According to the Australian curriculum, Year 1 children understand the use of vocabulary in their everyday school contexts and use of the vocabulary in the familiar contexts that are related to their personal interests, everyday experiences and relevant topics that are taught to them in the school. Both of them have different ways of reading and require teaching strategies that compliance with their interests, needs and experiences. Moreover, the assessment of the strategies and learning experiences would help them to develop their readings skills, pronunciation and literacy.

References

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Daraganova, G., Edwards, B., & Sipthorp, M. (2013). Using National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) data in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5-21.

García, J. R., & Cain, K. (2014). Decoding and reading comprehension: A meta-analysis to identify which reader and assessment characteristics influence the strength of the relationship in English. Review of Educational Research, 84(1), 74-111.

Khan, K., Nelson, K., & Whyte, E. (2014). Children choose their own stories: the impact of choice on children's learning of new narrative skills. Journal of child language, 41(04), 949-962.

Lapp, D., Flood, J., Brock, C. H., & Fisher, D. (2013). Teaching reading to every child. Routledge.

McKenna, M. C., & Stahl, K. A. D. (2015). Assessment for reading instruction. Guilford Publications.

Meeks, L., Stephenson, J., Kemp, C., & Madelaine, A. (2017). How well prepared are pre-service teachers to teach early reading? A systematic review of the literature. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 1-30.

Metsala, J. L., & Ehri, L. C. (Eds.). (2013). Word recognition in beginning literacy. Routledge.

Olson, R. K., Keenan, J. M., Byrne, B., & Samuelsson, S. (2014). Why do children differ in their development of reading and related skills?. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 38-54.

Oxford, R. L. (2016). Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies: Self-Regulation in Context. Routledge.

Wasik, B. A., Hindman, A. H., & Snell, E. K. (2016). Book reading and vocabulary development: A systematic review. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 37, 39-57.