Week 11 Class reflection - Emergent reading and writing

The class began with a small discussion started by JoAnn's question as to whether or not gender makes any difference in one's ability to read and write, since according to JoAnn's experience, her daughter learned these literacy skills much faster than her son. As we discussed in groups and then as the whole class, it seems that most people agreed that this has more to do with individual differences than gender. Also, in my opinion, the fact that one child can read or write faster and better than others rests heavily on the amount of time and practice he/she devotes to reading and writing. Another thing about early reading and writing that i feel greatly identified with and which worked well for me is that very often what one reads at the early stage of the literacy development process will stay longer than anything else read at a later age, and this can also nurture a love for reading and writing which may continue to be with a child for a good long time.

For the first activity, we watched a short clip about a teacher teaching reading to a group of young students and then jotted down the literacy development principles that we saw being demonstrated. The list that we were able to come up with after that includes guessing the content of the reading, explaining difficult words, reading aloud, taking school activities home, taking into consideration students' interests, and another interesting feature spotted by Stephanie is "finger following along". A couple of ideas were then brought up to explain why the teacher did that (and this is also usually done by teachers who work with young learners as well). In my opinion, this gesture might be used to keep young learners focused on what they're reading, in case a large number of reading lines may distract them. This analysis of reading principles very much reminds me of a reading software that i was exposed to while i tutored English language learners at Franklin Elementary school last month. The software is called Reading Naturally, and as i learn about the principles for developing learners' reading skill, it becomes clear to me that the software follows closely these principles. The reading texts in the software are categorized into different levels and based on their language level, each learner is assigned to work with a certain number of reading passages. A goal is set for each learner by the teacher and he/she has to reach that goal before being able to advance to a higher level. Each reading practice starts with the learner choosing a topic he/she is interested in. The computer will then pick a passage and the student first needs to guess what the passage is about based on the picture given. New words are then explained and the learner is asked to pronounce them along with the computer. Then comes the main part of the practice: the student reads the passage along with the computer several times before reading alone. Comprehension questions are then asked to check how well the student understands what he/she has just read. Personally i found this software a very good tool to help second/foreign language learners practice their reading skills, both reading aloud and silent reading. Students can also learn accurate pronunciation of words and good intonation as they read along with the computer.

The next and also last activity was a fun one, when in groups we went out looking for and chose among library resources some artifacts that can be used to teach reading and writing to young learners. Chris, Stephanie and I picked a book about farm animals and decided to use puppets as reading aids. Each student is assigned an animal role and is given a puppet representing the animal. As the teacher reads the story, the student whose role is mentioned would make a sound of the animal role he/she plays. We thought such direct involvement would make reading more fun and exciting to young learners. After working in our group, we got the chance to work together with Thea, Rachel and Brian and exchange the activities we had. I must say the books our partner group chose were all suitable for teaching young learners, and Thea was a really good narrator as she demonstrated the activity to us.