ECL210-+Part+A

The engagement with an Early Years learner involved an interview and assessment of the student’s literacy skills. I went to Wallington Primary School and interviewed an 8 year old student from year 2 and tested both his reading and his writing capabilities.
 * Portfolio Assessment A: Engagement with an Early Years learner ** **Part A and B combined, 2500 words **

The task involved an interview of a student on his reading and writing background and interests, via a survey, and was then followed up by asking him to read two separate texts. The student chose one text from his required level and I chose a second text for which I had previously prepared some literal interpretive and inferential comprehension questions (Hill p.193) to test his ability at comprehension. The book that I chose was called ‘//More’ by// Gordon Bain. This text was slightly below the difficulty level that my student was at, and as a very bright student he had no trouble answering my questions. The student was very knowledgeable in all areas of literacy for a year 2 student and completed all set requirements with ease. The text that the child read to me was what I considered to be far ahead of the average level of literacy for his age group, and he read it at a high standard, emphasizing words of meaning and punctuating difficult sentences whilst maintaining a steady pace. Likewise with the second text that I had selected, the student had no trouble reading and surprised me with his detailed and accurate responses to the literal, interpretive and inferential questions relating to the texts. There was no evidence to suggest that he had areas to improve on, in regard to his reading and understanding of the text, and was more than ready to move on to more difficult texts that would provide a greater challenge.

The questions that I asked in regard to my book ‘//More’// were literal interpretive and inferential questions, but we also had a discussion about the plot and central themes of the book, where he proved to be very knowledgeable in textual analysis. Literal questions are questions which appear within the text and the student merely has to find it within the book to find the answer, unless they can remember it .Some of the literal questions that I asked include ‘How many times did Uncle Osbert push Geraldine around the block?’ to which the student answered ‘23’ and ‘What did Geraldine do at the beach?’ he answered “build sand castles until she was stopped by the lifeguard.”

The interpretive question asks the child to read between the lines to answer. One of the interpretive questions that I asked was ‘Why did Geraldine stop saying more?’. To answer this question, the student had to look through the book to find reasons on more than one page and answered that “All the things that she did in the day made her feel bad and she had enough of wanting more. She wanted to go around on the billy- cart a lot and loaded the car full of things and went around on the roundabout many times and she felt tired and sick.”

Inferential questions are the hardest out of the three types of comprehension questions to answer, as they require an even deeper level of understanding of the book. One of the inferential questions that I asked was “What do you think is the lesson in this story?” He replied that he thought the lesson was to not ask for too much and to be grateful for what you have. Inferential questions relate to information not written in the story but relating to meanings and messages that the text sends to the reader. “The reader has to link the meaning of the text to their own experiences and then evaluate or make a judgement about the text” (Hill 194). While the student was confident with the reading tasks he was less responsive in regards to the reading and writing survey. Although I structured the questions so that he would expand his answers to avoid yes/no responses, his responses were brief and of little value in terms of a comprehensive analysis of his reading and writing background. He didn’t want to write answers to his questions or draw any pictures for the task, and preferred that I scribe for him.

From his limited responses, I was able to determine that he enjoys reading books, both reading by himself and reading to his parents, but is not particularly interested in other forms of writing such as magazines and comics. He told me that he doesn’t know anyone who is a good reader besides adults such as his parents and his class teacher. The student is interested in creative writing and being creative in general as he usually likes to draw pictures with his writing, except on this occasion. Creativity is one of his strengths and creative writing is his favourite activity at school. His favourite topic to write about is adventure and he told me that he writes regularly outside of school as well as during the literacy block. As the young learner I engaged with was approximately 8 and in year 2 class his learning is based around level 2 of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards which focuses mainly on laying the foundations of literacy. The student seems to have progressed above the required standards set at level two for which students are expected to be able to read independently and respond to short imaginative and informative texts with familiar ideas and information, predictable structures, and a small amount of unfamiliar vocabulary. ………….. predict plausible endings for stories and infer characters’ feelings. They self-correct when reading aloud and describe strategies used to gain meaning. They identify that texts are constructed by authors, and distinguish between texts that represent real and imaginary experience.” In my opinion, the student had exceeded these expectations for reading in level 2 and was probably at VELS level 2.25 which is shown below  ·  “use of strategies for working out meanings of unfamiliar words and phrases in context of texts read independently; for example, suggestions of synonyms for familiar words”  ·  understanding of author’s purpose for writing a text; for example, to narrate, to inform, and of how well the text achieved its purpose  ·  understanding of and responses to texts with several short paragraphs in print and electronic forms  ·  comprehension of ideas in informative and imaginative texts  ·  prediction of likely events and inferences about the consequence of actions represented in texts.   The student seems to have covered these guidelines appropriately. When reading he managed to read every word of the book without pausing so the use of strategies for working out meanings of unfamiliar words was not applicable. He had a deep understanding of underlying meanings and writer purpose and was excellent at comprehending textual ideas. He may well have progressed further in VELS literacy levels but would need more difficult texts to fully assess his ability.

It was difficult to assess his writing due to the time it takes to complete a writing task and the fact that he was reluctant to write at the time of our interview, but he seemed to have an excellent grasp of literacy and I was told that he writes in his spare time and is naturally very creative, so I would expect him to also meet or exceed the VELS standards for writing in level 2.

Interviewing and interacting with a student at this level was a great learning experience and gave me a good insight into this particular learner, his background and interests and his reading and writing abilities as well as a student perspective to literal learning. <span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">