Overview
To celebrate all the brilliant work Cai has been doing with reading.
This has been two pronged: phonics and real reading.
Skoolbo and teach Your Monster to Read have been a fun way to teach him phonics as a tool to decode words. While he is often lacking in confidence over diagraph games and asks for help, once one or two is done he quickly takes over and does them all himself. He just needs support over his initial panic.
He has shown he really understands these tools by decoding made-up words, like the names of unfamiliar Pokemon.
Overall, though, most of his reading seems to be sight words from repeated exposure to text in his everyday life, and through recognizing the shape of words. When he confuses words, it is usually because they have a similar shape--'pizza' and 'plaza', for instance, or 'expedition' for '--and he rarely confuses them again once it's pointed out for the first time.
It's noticeable that he reads sentences, even quite complex ones, with more confidence and ease than individual words. The questions he answers fastest in Teach Your Monster to Read are the ones that are sentences, not words--for example, "Give the red cat to her" is instantly followed. I think he instinctively uses context to figure out words.
He gets real pleasure in reading signs and words in everyday life. He practices reading in games, and lately he has independently read kids' books to me, without ever having had them read to him. We use library books, not readers.
He also has a big preference for ebooks that read aloud while highlighting the words, and I notice his eyes following the text carefully. I think his fondness for them has really contributed to his reading skills.
We discuss his thoughts and feelings about what he reads, his favourites and his responses to stories and nonfiction texts. He enjoys retelling favourite books and games and talking about the characters. He also creates new stories around favourite texts (especially games) in his imaginative play, creating complex narratives (using toys and speech) around the basis of the text.
He understands the difference between imaginative and informative texts. While he is comfortable with imaginative texts in games, he has a strong preference for informative books and videos.
He also demonstrates knowledge of the authorship of texts, especially as I am a writer, as is the father of one of his friends, and he's seen and handled our books (and read the dedication to him in mine!)
Learning Goals
- To learn the common letter sounds and diagraphs
- To learn about pronouncing new words with segmentation, blending and letter families
- To develop skills and practice with guessing new words based on known words
- To learn to sight read common "tricky" words
- To enjoy reading as an everyday activity: books, games and other text examples.
Australian Curriculum Links
English
Text structure and organization
Understand that texts can take many forms, can be very short (for example an exit sign) or quite long (for example an information book or a film) and that stories and informative texts have different purposes
Understand concepts about print and screen, including how books, film and simple digital texts work, and know some features of print, for example directionality
Expressing and Developing Ideas
Recognise that sentences are key units for expressing ideas
Recognise that texts are made up of words and groups of words that make meaning
Explore the different contribution of words and images to meaning in stories and informative texts
Phonics and word knowledge
Recognise and name all upper and lower case letters (graphemes) and know the most common sound that each letter represents
Understand that words are units of meaning and can be made of more than one meaningful part
Segment sentences into individual words and orally blend and segment onset and rime in single syllable spoken words, and isolate, blend and manipulate phonemes in single syllable words
Segment sentences into individual words and orally blend and segment onset and rime in single syllable spoken words, and isolate, blend and manipulate phonemes in single syllable words
Literature and context
Recognise that texts are created by authors who tell stories and share experiences that may be similar or different to students’ own experiences
Responding to literature
Respond to texts, identifying favourite stories, authors and illustrators
Share feelings and thoughts about the events and characters in texts
Examining literature
Identify some features of texts including events and characters and retell events from a text
Creating literature
Innovate on familiar texts through playTexts in context
Identify some familiar texts and the contexts in which they are usedInterpreting, analysing, evaluating
Identify some differences between imaginative and informative texts
Read decodable and predictable texts, practising phrasing and fluency, and monitor meaning using concepts about print and emerging contextual, semantic, grammatical and phonic knowledge
Use comprehension strategies to understand and discuss texts listened to, viewed or readindependently
Read decodable and predictable texts, practising phrasing and fluency, and monitor meaning using concepts about print and emerging contextual, semantic, grammatical and phonic knowledge
Use comprehension strategies to understand and discuss texts listened to, viewed or readindependently
