ECL210+Assignment+1,+Part+A

Part A: Professional engagement with an early years learner

The first task was to engage with an early year’s learner in a classroom environment, through reading and writing exercises and learning about the child’s background and interests.

I went to Roslyn Primary school in Belmont to a year 1-2 (composite) class where children were from the ages of 7-9, the particular learner I interviewed was an 8 year old boy.

The task was to do a reading and writing interview with the learner, and also read to the learner with questions about the books involved, and also to be read to by the learner. There was an element of assessment in these tasks through a reading fluency rubric and also a writing assessment sheet and also chart 6 in the early literacy and development book on the phases of literacy development.

The child I interviewed had a strong family with his mum, dad and a brother and sister. He has many interests including the football, watching movies, cars and plays, his favourite book was “stars of the show”, about children taking part in a play at school. He likes to read and seemed like he was very much part of the group of students and was engaged in classroom learning activities.

The first part of engaging with this young learner was a reading and a writing interview, which involved the learner answering questions to do with his reading and writing history and his reading and writing abilities (A copy of both of these will be attached to the appendices). Some of the key reading questions included who reads to you? The young learner answered his teacher, parents and friends, what do you like to read? The young learner answered comics, magazines with cars and also a lot of different books, why do people read? The young learner replied to learn a lot and have fun. Some of the key writing questions were what things do you like to write about? He replied his excursions at school and what he does on his weekends, when you are writing a story how do you feel? He replied that he feels happy and like he is learning. When asked to draw a picture the young learner drew the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The next part of engaging with the early year’s learner was for me to read to him two books I had chosen, these were “Bear and Chook” and “Rex”.

During the reading of the two books I encouraged the learner to read along, he was a very confident reader and responded well to any help I offered, some of the prompts I used were helping him concentrate on the words not the pictures, sounding out difficult words that he was having trouble with and encouraging him by saying well done and letting him know he was doing well.

There were assessments involved in this exercise including a group of Literal or “on the line” questions which were easier, interpretive or “beyond the lines” which are at an intermediate level of difficulty and also Inferential or “beyond the line” questions which were more difficult questions.

These questions were to do with the books that were read to the early year’s learner. Some of the key Literal questions that the young learner was asked were what type of things did Rex do on his visits home with the students? He replied swimming, slept, went to the movies and dressed up in funny clothes and another one was for the “Bear and Chook” book was how many animals were their in the book? He replied 2 not realising that there were other animals in the book, we went back through the book and counted how many animals there were.

Some of the key interpretive questions that I asked were did bear and chook get along well? he replied yes they did get along they were good friends and did a lot together, another question was did Rex mind getting dressed up as barbie by sams mum? He replied no, it was funny.

Some of the important inferential questions were what would you like to do with Rex? He replied watch movies and play football, another question was what could be a different ending to “Bear and Chook”? He replied that bear could shoot up to the moon with chook.

Some conclusions can be drawn from these questions as to whether or not the young learner had an understanding of the texts. From the literal questions conclusions can be drawn that the learner had a basic understanding but didn’t pay attention to detail. From the answers to the interpretive questions, it shows that he understood those particular parts of the text and has a decent understanding of both texts. The answers to the inferential questions it can be inferred that he is a very imaginative learner and learnt from the texts.

The third book read during the exercises was “stars of the show”, in this part of engagement the young learner read to me, he seemed very confident and knew the book quite well, this part of the task was very successful and his reading was very fluent.

Another mode of assessment for this task was a reading fluency rubric (can be seen in the appendices), this assesses the young learners reading ability from levels 1-4 in the areas of rate in which the student read, phrasing, pausing, stress and intonation and expression. According to this rubric and my assessment the young learner paid attention to rate to suit the texts, used a mixture of word-by-word reading, showed attention to punctuation and layout of print on the page, attention to emphasis on appropriate words to reflect the meaning of the text and used some expressive interpretation.

According to figure 1.1 Phases in literacy development (which covers development in the areas of words, reading and writing) and also my assessments of the young learner, conclusions can be drawn that this young learner shows attributes mostly in the categories of emergent and early learner literacy development with a few attributes of transitional phase.

Some of the attributes he showed in the emergent stage are reading left to right, top to bottom directionally, begins to understand a sentence and some punctuation and understands that another person can read their written word.

The young learner showed the following attributes in the early phase of literacy development, uses multiple sources of information and self corrects if the reading doesn’t make sense, can write in simple sentences and is aware of and can use most forms of punctuation.

Some of the attributes in transitional literacy development were shown by the young learner, including that he reads with more fluency in phrases rather than word-by-word and also that he can retell main ideas and summarise what has been read.

I also used an emergent and early writing assessment sheet to assess where the young learner is at. In the area of written language the learner got 4 out of 6 and that was simple sentences. In the area of Ideas the learner got 6 out of 6 and that is composing several ideas and in the area of text convections the learner got 4 out of 6, which is that punctuation is used properly.

As the young learner I engaged with was 8 and in a year 1-2 composite class his learning is based around level 2 of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards which focuses mainly on laying the foundations of literacy. The young learner is showing evidence of progression to level 2 and shows attributes at the progression points of 1.25, 1.5 and also at 1.75. This showing that he is progressing towards being at level 2 of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards.

At 1.25 the learner shows the following in areas of reading, writing and speaking/listening… identification of common sounds for letters, some correct use of capital letters and full stops and taking it in turns while others are speaking.

At 1.5 he shows in the areas of reading, writing and speaking/listening inclusion of main ideas when retelling what he has read, the correct spelling of some high frequency words and plausible attempts at spelling unfamiliar words and also clear speech with simple phrases and sentences and also appropriate vocabulary.

At 1.75 the young learner in the areas of reading, writing and speaking/listening shows recognition of a wide range of letters and sound and blends in words with more than one syllable, uses mostly correct use of capitals, full stops and question marks and is able to retell some of the main ideas after listening to stories or viewing videos.

Overall this was a great success and gave me a good incite into this particular learner, his background and interests and his reading and writing abilities.