Task+1-+REPORT

THE REPORT Laurie is motivated and loves to learn. She has a background full of rich experiences and good opportunities. She feels confident to take risks in a safe learning environment and through her reading and writing I observed that she has a wide bank of high frequency words (most used). She explained to me the strategies she uses at school for selecting a book- the five finger test. Laurie demonstrated the ability to clarify her understanding using questions about what we were doing and what I had explained. She can articulate her feelings and opinions to me and justify her responses. When we went through the comprehension questions Laurie could respond to higher order questions on the topics of the texts with confidence. Laurie and I sat down and had an informal chat before we started the two Literacy tasks. We talked about what and how she feels towards reading and writing. I used the reading //interview in “Hill”// as a guide to base my conversation. We talked about where Laurie mostly reads and writes. Also what her likes and dislikes are, why she reads and when she reads.

We then read both the Mem Fox texts, Possum Magic and Koala Lou. In task 1- reading component it explains what we did. I used the Phases of literacy development in order to understand the stage at which Laurie is at and where she should be working towards. The Phases of Literacy Development can be understood from the work of Dewy and Vygotsky. It is used to enable teachers to predict the distance or the “zone of proximal development” (Hill 2006, pg 5) between what children can do and what is to be learnt. These are useful to assess where children are in their learning and importantly for planning for future understandings. Dewy focused more on building on what children already know and Vygotsky pays attention to scaffolding. In relation to Laurie, figure 1.1 on page six of Hill and further reading about the stages of literacy development I can see that she is in the Transitional stage of her reading and writing. This is the phase where the children are “fine-tuning” their strategies that have been embedded until present before becoming most confident in their literacy.

When reading Laurie becomes frustrated quickly and feels like it’s a chaw. She explained to me that she “feels bad” when she can’t read the books that her friends are reading. When she cannot concentrate it makes her angry, she like’s to read when her baby brother Jay is asleep because she can focus easily. Her frustration comes from getting stuck on words that she doesn’t know and therefore does not understand the story.

In my discussion with Laurie about reading she was surprised to see that she does a lot more reading than she first thought. When we talked about reading we acknowledged that she reads, menu’s, signs, instructions, postcards, emails, calendars and she loves to flick through books and read the back of the DVD cover. All these elements of reading are for a purpose I explained. We discovered that Laurie is more afraid and frustrated with the formal component of reading and writing and when she is expected to read. Going through the background information- when/why do you read? This gave Laurie a more positive view of reading immediately. After we read the book we went through some problem solving strategies- re-read, read on and does that sound right? I then modeled fluent reading to Laurie (not reading like a robot) and we checked for understanding through questioning (why was Grandma Poss sad?). We then re-read the book to practice fluency. To assess Laurie I used a few different resources. The reading rubric from hill where I identified Laurie as mainly on level two, rate, phrasing, pausing, stress and expression. However she did show a slightly higher score in phrasing, using a mixture of word- by- word- reading. I also used the comprehension questions discussed in TASK 1 and a self assessment of how Laurie felt she went upon reflection. Self assessment is the evidence that is gathered to make informed judgments and to interpret and identify areas of strengths and areas for future improvement in learning by the child themselves. This is an important aspect of assessment as most children have a fair idea of what the have achieved, what they want to achieve and where they need help. It is crucial to encourage students to reflect upon what they are doing. You can pose the following questions to help children with their response. “What have I learned?, what do I want to learn? What do I need help with?” (Hill 2006). Figure 7.11 “Early reading behaviors” in Hill page 155 outlines the concepts of how print works and the strategic thinking involved in Early readers. Musing upon this also gave me another reason for placing Laurie in the Transitional stage as she is confident with most of the points. Laurie is now able to read texts that are longer and more complex. I could have also used a running record as a resource for assessment which teachers find very useful for reports and talking to parents.

Laurie’s writing shows that she understands how stories are written. She uses narrative structure ie, beginning, middle end. She uses some punctuation and self correction. In her piece of writing about the horse she is using a topic that is personally significant to her which is also an indicator of transitional writing. As well as re-writing the events in a sequence in her writing of Possum Magic Laurie can evidently create a context for the reader eg, “Grandama Poss made Hush invisible”. I would need to moderate between a few pieces of writing however from this I can see that Laurie is at level 2.5 and progressing towards level three in VELS, Victorian Essential Learning Standards.