Early+Years+Teaching+Practices

**Early Years Teaching Practices **

I observed various different teaching styles during my school experience and literacy observation. Many of the classroom activities revolved around students working in small to medium groups relating to their literacy level. Several other techniques were also used in the classroom, including partner reading, whole class teaching, independent writing and also independent reading. = = =**Partner Reading: **=

One of the literacy approaches that I observed to work quite well in the higher levels was partner reading. "Learning with a partner or a small group is very effective for encouraging children to read independently and to increase their fluency"(Hill, 2012, p406). The children had set pairs for the week and each day at the end of their literacy block they would sit together and read picture story books for 10 minutes. The children were able to decide how they worked as a team to read in that time, ie: each reading a page, reading solidly for five minutes and so on, but I was able to observe that the younger children, particularly in grade 1, were very unfocused during that time, and didn’t seem engaged at all in partner reading, therefore allowing me to assume that this particular teaching approach doesn’t work as effectively as group tasks in early literacy blocks.

=Whole Class approach: =

During the beginning of each literacy block, the teachers often spoke to the class as a whole group to explain activities, their expectations and the literacy schedule. They also grouped as a whole class at the end of the literacy block to reflect on their projects and activities and discuss what t hey’d been doing. The teacher didn’t spend too much time focusing on the class as a whole because after several minutes of standing in front of the whiteboard the students would begin to get restless and lose concentration. It was explained to me that the teacher would only spend 4-5 minutes at a time with them as a whole on the floor because their listening and observation skills were still developing, and after a certain time they would tune out.

However, the whole class approach was used when they were teaching with the interactive whiteboard as the children felt like they were being ‘entertained’ rather than learning. Most of the time, whole class learning was used to do activities such as shared reading and writing or S&L (speaking and listening) It is apparent that the whole class approach works well if there is a time limit on how long you need the individual attention of each student.

=Individual learning: =

The children also participated in a lot of individual learning tasks, such as independent reading and writing. During independent reading, the children had the use of several big books throughout the classroom, and also many picture story books. There were quiet areas set up in the learning space for the students to sit quietly in, they included bean bags, bucket style chairs and reading mats. The children enjoyed spending the last 10 minutes or so before home time on independent reading and relaxing.

Independent writing was also another task that the children were set, although it was not used often as the younger children often had difficulty doing individualised activities because their learning levels were quite different. Some of the older children, particularly in level two, were able to handle individual writing tasks better than the children at a lower level. I found that when the teacher gave the composite class the same activity, more of the children struggled than when they were separated into their literacy groups.

 =Group learning: =

Much of the literacy tasks that were set for the children were group oriented. The classroom had different native animals as group names and the children in these particular groups worked together in their learning environment as a team. I noticed at the end of the literacy lessons that the teacher would consider the work of the children individually and determine if they should continue working in that group or move up/down a group to help with their learning. I noted that the importance of this was quite significant as it allowed each child a fair chance of learning at their own speed and level and it encouraged them to work harder to do the activities in the higher groups. I particularly noticed that the children in the lowest group really found their work challenging but were really trying to give it their best shot. The teacher was able to focus more of her time on the lower level students because of the ability of the other groups so they were given more one on one time to focus on work.

During the group activities, the children worked on various activities throughout one two hour literacy block, including things such as big books, guided reading, cutting and pasting sentences from stories, colouring in, using the interactive whiteboard and making posters. They were able to do several different activities and develop different learning skills throughout the literacy block as well as staying engaged because they only had a certain amount of time to complete each task.

During my observations of early literacy I found that group oriented tasks often worked the best and whilst the children did enjoy working and collaborating with their peers, there was definitely a time and place for the other teaching styles mentioned as well.