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 how to use knowledge of letters and sounds including onset and rime to spell words

Know how to read some high-frequency words and other familiar words

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

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 play

Texts in context

Identify some familiar texts and the contexts in which they are used

Interpreting, 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

Cai won a Reading Badge!

Posted on

Wednesday 24 January 2018

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