Early Literacy Strategies

1. Early Literacy Strategies Bev Flückiger Griffith University

2. Targeted Intervention Few children Point-in-time Support Some children Quality Teaching All children School Literacy Strategy All staff Shared Philosophy Whole school community

3. We must avoid the push-down of teaching methods into Prep. • We must ensure rigour across the Early Years.

4. View of Children • Have a kitbag of resources • Learn by acting and doing • Strive to make meaning and be successful • Use strategies and tactics • Enact agency and voice

5. Scaffolder of Learning • listens and responds • builds understandings • makes learning explicit and relevant • builds connections • investigates alternative ways • discusses outcomes of choices • challenges thinking • reduces support as independence grows

6. Pathways to Prevention Strong correlation between children’s language development, their behaviour and success in school. 38% receptive vocabulary difficulties 19% expressive vocabulary difficulties 44% language complexity difficulties Homel et al. (2006).

7. Features of Conversation • Two (or more) speakers cooperate. • The speakers draw upon their knowledge of the world and their ability to use language. • Each speaker is supported by the listener through eye contact, attention and encouraging, affirming utterances of ‘yes!’ ‘absolutely!’ ‘Uh-huh’ and so on. • A speaker ensures that the listener has understood and adapts the message accordingly. • The co-constructed message is genuinely negotiated. • There is interest and engagement from both parties. • In the best of conversations, the interaction occurs over a minimum of five exchanges, from which both parties benefit, learn, and gain enjoyment. Riley, J. (2006).

8. Implications • The most important aspect of children’s language experience is its amount. • The most important aspect in early years’ classrooms is the amount of talk actually going on, moment by moment, between children and their teachers.

9. Phonological awareness skills • Word Level - recognize how many words are in a sentence • Syllable Level -segment and blend words of at least 3 syllables • Rhyme Level - understand the concept of rhyming - recognize and generate rhyming words • Sound Level - isolate the beginning or ending sound in words - segment and blend sounds in a word with three sounds - change a sound in a word to make a new word in familiar games and songs

10. “Without direct instructional support, almost one quarter of all children are unaware of phonemes” …..which impacts on learning to read.(Adams, Foorman, Lundberg & Beeler,1998). 

11. Fourth Grade Slump • Lack comprehension strategies • Lack of fluency and automaticity (Chall, 1983, 1996; Stanovich, 1986) • Language gap (Hirsch, 2003)

12. “Because of the developmental nature of reading, the later one waits to strengthen weaknesses, the more difficult it is for the children to cope with the increasing literacy demands in the later grades.” Chall & Jacobs, 2003.

13. Active comprehension strategies Predicting Questioning the text Monitoring comprehension • Making • connections • Text-to-text • Text-to-self Visualizing Comprehension Strategies at work Summarizing Finding important information Inferring QUT Literacy Secretariat, 2009.

14. Building Comprehension Skills • Read Alouds • Page peeping • Asking Questions • Elbow partners -The Big Idea • Concept mapping, story mapping • Accountable talk • Comic strips and picture strips • Telling a friend – inside outside circles • Pictures in the mind – drawing • Did that make sense to me?

15. Principles that underpin comprehension • Fluency allows the mind to concentrate on comprehension • Breadth of vocabulary increases comprehension and facilitates further learning; and • Domain knowledge increases fluency, broadens vocabulary and enables deeper comprehension. Hirsch, 2003

16. Fluency Expressive interpretation automaticity accuracy Word decoding Comprehension

17. To read fluently children require: • Accurate decoding of words in text; • Automaticity, or decoding words with minimal use of attentional resources; and • Appropriate use of phrasing and expression to convey meaning.

18. Strategies to develop fluency • Repeated oral reading practice • Echo reading • Choral reading • Readers’ Theatre • Paired reading • Recorded reading • Computer assisted reading • Buddy reading (peer tutoring)

19. The Three Billy Goats Gruff Reader's Theatre Seven Characters: Narrator1, Narrator 2, Narrator 3, Troll, Little Billy Goat, Middle-Sized Billy Goat, and Big Billy Goat NARRATOR 1: Once upon a time there were three billy goat brothers named Gruff. NARRATOR 2: The three billy goats lived by a river. NARRATOR 3: Across the river was a meadow with tall green grass. NARRATOR 1: One day, the billy goats wanted to cross the river to eat the grass. NARRATOR 2: But there was only one bridge across the river. NARRATOR 3: And under that bridge lived a mean, hungry troll. NARRATOR 1: The troll had eyes as big as saucers and a nose as long as a poker.

20. Knowledge of Words and the World • Emphasize oral comprehension • Larger focus on expository text • Systematically build word and world knowledge

21. In the early years we need to: • teach decoding skills • develop fluency • develop automaticity • teach vocabulary • build word knowledge • teach children to use active comprehension strategies • encourage students to monitor their own comprehension

22. Primary Classroom teaching • 76% teacher centred (didactic) • 16% subject centred • 6% child centred • Limited student engagement Borman (2005)

23. Teaching with rigour in the early years’ classroomWhat does that look like?

24. Fullan, Hill & Crevola, 2006.

25. Personalization Puts each and every child at the centre and provides an education that is tailored to the students’ learning and motivational needs at any given time Fullan, Hill, & Crevola, 2006.

26. Precision To get something right. Precision is in the service of personalization because it means to be uniquely accurate, that is precise to the learning needs of individuals. Fullan, Hill, & Crevola, 2006

28. Reading Assessment • Oral language development • Comprehension of texts • Fluency • Concepts about print • Phonemic awareness • Letter identification • Phonics • Word knowledge • Vocabulary

29. Professional Learning • Focused on-going learning for each and every teacher • Daily learning is needed individually and collectively • Schools need to work from the classroom outward - not centrally developed PD • Professional development works when it is school-based and embedded in the daily work of teachers Fullan, Hill, & Crevola, 2006

30. Targeted Intervention Few children Point-in-time Support Some children Quality Teaching All children School Literacy Strategy All staff Shared Philosophy Whole school community

31. System District school and community Teacher & Child

32. References Adams, M., Foorman, B., Lundberg, L. & Beeler, T. (1998). The elusive phoneme: Why phonemic awareness is so important and how to help children develop it. American Educator, 22, 18-29). Baumann, J. Ware, D. Carr Edwards, E. (2007). “Bumping into spicy, tasty words that catch your tongue”: A formative experiment on vocabulary instruction. The Reading Teacher, 61(2), pp.108-122. Borman, K. & Associates. (2005). Meaningful urban education reform. Albany: State University of New York Press. Chall, J. (1983). Stages of reading development. New York: McGraw-Hill. Chall, J. (1996). Learning to read: The great debate (Third Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill. Chall, J.S., & Jacobs, V.A. (2003). Poor children’s fourth-grade slump. American Educator, 27(1), 14–15, 44. Fullan, M. Hill, P. & Crevola, C. (2006). Breakthrough. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Gambrell, L. (2005). Reading literature, reading text, reading the internet: The times they are a’changing’. The Reading Teacher 58(6), 588-591. Hirsch, E.D. (2003). Reading comprehension requires knowledge of words and the world. American Educator [retrieved online 20.03.09]. Homel et al. (2006). The Pathways to Prevention Project: The First Five Years, 1099-2004. Sydney: Mission Australia and the Key Centre for ethics, Law Justice & Governance. Hart, E. & Risley, T. (2003). The Early Catastrophe. American Educator. [Retrieved online 20.03.09]. QUT Literacy Secretariat, (2009). Effective instruction in reading comprehension. Professional learning series for classroom teachers. Queensland University of Technology. Rasinski, T. V. (2003). The fluent reader: Oral reading strategies for building word recognition, fluency and comprehension. New York: Scholastic. Riley, J. (2006). Language and Literacy 3-7. London: Sage Publications. Stanovich, K.E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360 -407.