ECL210-Part+B

Through my observation and subsequent discussion with a teacher, I was able to identify the approaches and organizational methods used in teaching an early years class. As a combined year 1/2 class there was need to separate the year 2’s who were generally more advanced in literacy than the year 1’s. The teacher therefore, began the lesson by dividing the class into four separate groups, with approximately 5 or 6 to a group, according to their literacy standard. The groups would then each begin on to a literacy activity for approximately 20 minutes of the allocated two hour literacy block, before the teacher would call out to the class to move on to the next activity. A parent helper was present in the class during this time and helped out at one activity, while the teacher was primarily at another activity that focused on reading and comprehending the meaning of the text, and gave the children on that activity time to discuss comprehension questions on their own for a short period, while he went over to the remaining two groups to help out. This encourages the development of an important stage in any child’s learning, the ability to think for themselves, that is, with limited guidance from the teacher. At the year 1/2 level, children would spend the majority of their time of learning under teacher supervision, while as they progress in years, more independence is given to the student. This was evident in my classroom observation as the teacher would often spend more time with the year 1’s and give year 2’s more of a chance to work things out for themselves. The activity that the teacher was primarily involved in, had the children reading through a set book in which the focus was on clarifying meaning of words and phrases and understanding general meaning of the text. Students are given reading levels for books that suit their level of literal development “ Teachers organise groups of books to suit each level. The books chosen for each group are based on the following: the complexity of concepts written, the syntax and vocabulary, along with the length of the text and its size.” (Hill 2006, pp.148). The pictures that accompany the writing are also an indicator of the level of difficulty of the book. For example, the text of a lower level book is often partnered with large pictures to assist children in understanding the plot, therefore if children are unsure of a particular fragment of writing, they can look at the pictures to assist their understanding. Pictures are also a means of getting children’s attention, as many children will naturally be drawn to books with interesting covers or funny pictures. As children progress through the years of schooling and hence levels of literacy, pictures are often smaller or nonexistent, as children gain the ability to understand the plot and literal, interpretive and inferential comprehension components of the text. The set texts that the teacher chose were different for each group as the groups were of different literacy standards, some contained more pictures than others which the teacher used to help explain the meaning of the text. When asking the children questions of the text, the teacher used the prompt, pause, praise method whereby he would ask them the question with little clues and guidance (prompt), give them time to answer (pause) and then complement them if they got the answer correct (praise).  While the main focus of the literacy task was with teacher and reading and reviewing the set book, the other three class groups were involved in other important areas of literacy such as spelling and punctuation, comprehension, and creative writing /literacy games. At the spelling and punctuation task, students attempted to spell words in a sentence as well as correctly punctuate, where they would complete a sentence whilst covering the correct answer and write down what they thought was correct. They would then uncover the answers and compare the two, noting down how many were correct and then retrying or moving on to another sentence. Students could opt to work in pairs on this task which they found to be more enjoyable and that way could encourage each other and narrate the sentence to the other student. The comprehension task involved the parent helper and was similar to the reading activity of the teacher while the literacy games involved children in little games that tested their comprehension and reviewing skills such as identifying misspelled words and little competitions that tested children’s overall literacy capabilities. This stage also involved a creative writing component “ //Independent writing // has the children writing on free choice topics. This includes responses to texts, journals, past experiences as well as stories. Independent writing has the child writing without much support of the teacher.”(Hill 2006, p.301). So of the 120 minutes designated to literacy, 80 minutes were designated to the group work stages, where students spent time working with the teacher/ parent helper, as well as by themselves to allow them to think independently. At the conclusion of this 80 minute session, the teacher allowed a further 20 minutes for ‘share time’, whereby students make a connection about the skills they have learnt during the activities, as a whole class. At this particular stage, students are encouraged to talk which stimulates the learning environment and allows students to identify what they have learnt. This is an important stage for children as the teacher uses this time to build children’s confidence and there was a general feeling of self achievement within the classroom at this time. The final 20 minutes of the literacy block were dedicated to reading through a paragraph of writing on an interactive whiteboard as a class. The teacher would read through the paragraph and ask questions to the class relating to that information regarding punctuation, spelling and separated words into fragments to assist children in letter identification, pronunciation and understanding the concept of syllables. ‘Letter identification is a part of the alphabetical principle, and readers and writers in the early stages of literacy are gaining an understanding of this principle as they learn how sounds represent in print’ (Hill 2006, p.209). Letter identification/ pronunciation is more commonly collectively known as Phonics, which is the sounding out of individual letters/ syllables to form words. This stage involved a time of shared learning, as children were led by the teacher as a group. Individual students were asked to come up to the front and could interactively change the spelling of the word on the screen or show the class the syllables in the word. The classroom environment was one that encouraged students to think for themselves rather than having the teacher controlling all learning by talking to the class as a whole and feeding them information. Students were encouraged to talk amongst themselves in discussions based on their learning, with the teacher acting more a as guide than as an authoritarian figure within the classroom.  The classroom learning environment was also assisted by posters involving literacy, on the walls surrounding the students, which contributed to their learning by covering various literacy components such as spelling, vowels, syllables and basic literacy concepts, which not only surrounded children with valuable information, but displayed the information with colourful writing and engaged the students with an easy to understand format. I enjoyed my time within the classroom and experienced a valuable insight into a successful literacy lesson that involved many methods of teaching that will be beneficial to me for years to come.
 * Portfolio assessment B: Connecting with an Early Years teacher and their teaching program. **