Early+Years+Readers


 * Early Years Readers **



//‘Reading involves not just the print and the illustrations, but also readers bringing t ////o the process their knowledge of the world and their past experiences’ // (Hill, 2012).

As Hill (2012) describes, ‘reading development begins at birth when babies listen to books read aloud, and continues throughout the years before school and into school years’. Throughout this unit we have been taught many techniques in terms of identifying suitable texts, assessing reading fluency and comprehension. The information below will be describing some of these techniques and the results we found whilst using them.

**Identifying Suitable Texts: **

Each child is different in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and thus each child will start school at a different stage of learning. Knowing what learning phase the child is at, and knowing the child's interests will help you to determine a suitable book to cater to both their needs and wants. Some children begin school at the beginning phase of literacy development whilst others start at the emergent or even the transitional stage. Therefore the following phases of literacy development should only be used as a guide, and the ages given are approximate.

The six phases of literacy development are: Beginning (0 - 3 Years of age) Early-Emergent (3 - 5 Years of age) Emergent (4.5 - 5.5 Years of age) Early (5.5 - 6.0 Years of age)  Transitional (6.0 - 7.0 Years of age)  Extending (7.0 - 8.0 Years of age)

Each member of our group conducted a reading interests survey with their participating child to find out what type of things they like to read, when they read, who reads and why people read - this assisted us in choosing books that suited the child's interests. The children surveyed were all in grade 1 or 2 (more about their funds of knowledge can be found here). After carrying out these surveys we were able to conclude that the majority of the children were in the Early phase of literacy development, with a couple of them bordering onto the Transitional phase.

Some things we observed in order to determine that the children were at this Early stage of literacy development included: >
 * Still reading word-by-word, matching each printed word with a spoken word
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Using multiple sources of information and self correcting if the reading doesn't make sense
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Adjusting reading style to suit the type of text.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Retelling the story in sequence
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Increasing the fluency of reading and reading by vocalising aloud.

**<span style="color: #34b25c; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 22px;">Assessing Fluency: **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">One form of assessing and monitoring a child's development for reading fluency is the Reading Fluency Rubric. Fluency is important in reading because it frees the child to concentrate on the meaning of the text rather than focussing their attention on decoding the individual words (Hill, 2012). The rubric shown below (Figure 1) shows us indicators of word-by-word or phrased reading, evidence of syntax, expressive interpretation and the ability to monitor his/her predictions. It is important to note that reading fluency is not just about automatic recall of individual words but reading of a connected text.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">By using this rubric the majority of the children interviewed by our group were found to be at Level 2, with 1 of the children on Level 3. The indicators which determined the children to be at Level 2 were inconsistent evidence of syntactic awareness, little expressive interpretation and only some awareness of punctuation. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">The child that I observed was able to read the majority of the book in phrases without many pauses, he showed good evidence of syntax and understanding of sentences, he paused at full stops and he was able to reread words when he noticed a mistake. According to the Reading Fluency Rubric and these observations I believe the child observed is at Level 3.

**<span style="color: #34b25c; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 22px;">Assessing Comprehension: **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">Teachers can enhance children's comprehension of a text by asking questions and initiating conversations at different stages of the book. After reading the story, a retelling provides useful information about the children's understanding of the characters and events in the book. If the book is factual, then the important facts can be retold (Hill, 2012).

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">There are three different types of comprehension questions:

__ **<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Literal questions: ** __ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">These questions are related directly to words or images found in the book.



__ **<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Interpretive questions: ** __ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">answers to these questions are less direct. The child needs to think between the lines and sometimes look at the pictures to answer.

__<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: medium;">**Inferential questions:** __<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> These questions are designed to get the child thinking beyond the text and images in the book and make <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">connections to their own world.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">Each member of our group interviewed our children using literal, interpretive and inferential question after they had read the book that we had newly introduced to them. We were able to find that the children were all able to answer each of the questions that we had asked them quite confidently. The book which I had chosen for my child was 'Rose Meets Mr. Wintergarten' by Bob Graham and shown below <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">are the results from the comprehension questions

**<span style="color: #34b25c; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 130%;">Literal: **

**<span style="color: #34b25c; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: center;">Interpretive: **
 * <span style="color: #34b25c; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: center;">Inferential: **