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Alqahtani, M. (2015). The importance of vocabulary in language learning and how to be taught. International journal of teaching and education, 3(3), 21-34.

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Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2019). Content for Year 2 - Learning area content descriptions. Retrieved from http://docs.acara.edu.au/resources/Content_for_Year_2_-_Learning_area_content_descriptions.pdf

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Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2019). F-10 curriculum: Literacy. Retrieved from https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/literacy/

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Cambridge Dictionary. (2019). Punctuation. Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/writing/punctuation

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Chomsky, C. (1972). Stages in language development and reading
exposure. Harvard Educational Review, 42, 1–33.

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Conrad, R. (1972). Form and color as short-term memory codes in preschool children. Psychonomic Science, 27(4), 225-226. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03328945

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Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. (2009). Belonging, being and becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. Retrieved from https://docs.education.gov.au/node/2632

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Ferreiro, E., & Pontecorvo, C. (1999). Managing the written text: The beginning of punctuation in children's writing. Learning and Instruction, 9(6), 543-564. Retrieved from https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0959475299000067

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Gillon, G. T. (2017). Phonological awareness: From research to practice. Guilford Publications.

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Goldsworthy, C. L., & Lambert, K. (2010). Linking the strands of language and literacy: A resource manual. Plural Publishing.

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Hill, S. (2012). Developing early literacy: Assessment and teaching (2nd ed.). South Yarra, VIC: Eleanor Curtain Publishing.

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Isbell, R., Sobol, J., Lindauer, L., & Lowrance, A. (2004). The effects of storytelling and story reading on the oral language complexity and story comprehension of young children. Early childhood education journal, 32(3), 157-163.

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Kaderavek, J., & Justice, L. M. (2002). Shared storybook reading
as an intervention context: Practices and potential pitfalls.
American Journal of Speech–Language Pathology, 11, 395–405.

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National assessment Program. (2016). NAPLAN: writing. Retrieved from https://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/writing

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Montessori, M. (1914). Dr. Montessori's own handbook. Schocken.

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Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2004). The case of case: Children's knowledge and use of upper- and lowercase letters. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25(3), 413-428.

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Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2003). The role of letter names in the acquisition of literacy. Advances in child development and behavior, 31, 105-138.

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Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2019). Focus Areas in English. Retrieved from https://victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/english/introduction/scope-and-sequence

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Victorian State Government. (2019). Phonological awareness and early writing.  Retrieved from https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/writing/Pages/litfocusphonoawareness.aspx

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The importance of writing in early literacy development

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The importance of writing in early literacy development

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Writing is an important tool in our daily life for representing language with signs and symbols. It could help people to express ideas, interact with others,  participate in activities(Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority[ACARA,  2019)  and it is also acting as a communication bridge.

Writing is a vital part of children's overall development, it tightly connected with all the aspects in literacy. The reciprocal relationship between learning to read and learning to write has been well documented (Clay, 1998; Hill, 2015, as cited in Victorian State Government, 2019). For instance, when children begin writing as well as reading, they are making links between speaking. Writing is viewed as the foundation of reading by Montessori(1914). Children's writing provides a window into their thinking and problem-solving (Hill, 2012).

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As mentioned above, this assessment will be mainly focused on writing. But will also mention the reading area. The specific literacy content areas which will be mentioned in this assessment are phonemic awareness, punctation, sentence structure, grammatical features and vocabulary.

Sentence structure is the way how a sentence is arranged grammatically and it includes where the noun and verb fall within an individual sentence. Writing within a clear and correct sentence structure help readers to fully understand the context and purpose. Understand how different types of sentence structures are presented, and use knowledge of sentence structures are important learning areas mentioned by Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2019).

Vocabulary, as defined by the National Assessment Program(2016) is the "range and precision of contextually appropriate language choices". Vocabulary is an important part of the marking criterion of the NAPLAN test.

Alqahtani (2015) pointed out that vocabulary is the central to English  teaching and it is also of paramount importance to a young language learner. Increasing vocabulary can help learner to write and express their ideas confidently.

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1. Story book

The first assessment tool is a story book. This aim is to assess the child's present level of performance and help in the next step of the planning process.

This picture story book names "This & That" which consists of several small stories. Many research studies have shown that children make significant gains in various areas of development, for instance  through shared storybook experiences (Kaderavek & Justice, 2002). There are two assessments include in this tool : story reading and sentences writing.

During storytelling, educators could have an idea of the child's current knowledge, such as his vocabulary and phonemic awareness. The child will be asked to read the book (if he/she has difficulties, the educator will take the role of reading the book.

Firstly, we will read the book together. During the time, I will ask questions such as
- "what do you think will happen next?"
- "what have you seen on the page?
- "can you explain why he is doing this?"

Next step, I will give the child a pencil and a piece of paper, and ask him to write down a sentence of what has he seen on the page. This step aims to assess the child's learning level on sentence structure, and as well as his vocabulary and grammar learning.

I will develop assessments based on the story book in order to assess the child's development of more different literacy learning areas.

There is one page with a picture of a carriage, and I will ask the child "What is this? Where do you think they are going? " Then I will ask "Could you please draw on the paper and write a sentence to describe it ?" There is a strong relationship between drawing and early writing. This is supported by Calkin (1986, as cited in Mackenzie, 2011)  that drawing provides relief and stability which supports the new challenges of writing.

Moreover, it has been suggested that imaginative development is a key benefit of stories being told (Ellis, 1997).

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The second assessment tool is a paper-based worksheet. This worksheet involves eleven small questions. This assessment tool could practice the child's handwriting and to hone the child's creative writing skills. The child will be asked to fill the blanks and write some simple sentences.This assessment tool could help to assess the child's current vocabulary level.

This activity also relates to the knowledge of sentence structure and punctuation. The underpinning theory is Psychosocial theory proposed by Erikson (Woolfolk & Margetts, 2016), which highlights the significance of identity and personality in educational development.

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All About Me! | Worksheet | Education.com

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Let's get to know you! Have beginning writers complete this activity all about them, a great way to help practice handwriting and to hone creative writing skills. This also makes a great "icebreaker" activity for new classmates. Grade Subject View aligned standards

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Woolfolk, A. & Margetts, K. (2016). Educational psychology (4th ed.). Melbourne, VIC: Pearson Australia.

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This child whom I assessed is an eight years old girl whose name is Elise,  currently a student of Grade two from my pervious placement school.

English is her mother language and she speaks English at home.

In the primary school I had my placement, children will have one hour of learning time called "discovery time" everyday. During the discovery time, children are asked to choose one activity they like (for example, they can use their laptop to research how to make a cupcake.) Firstly, children will write a plan, after they finish it, they will write an evaluation. During my placement, I observed that Elise was interested in reading books, writing and drawing. She is always quite and very patient. She can immerse in her work for a long time.

Elise was curious, when she found a new word or something she couldn't fully understand, she would come and ask the educators in the room.

Elise told me she had a lot of story books at home and she enjoys reading them very much. She can write sentences individually. She can understand most of the words in the story books that the school provide in the room. Moreover, she was able to use kindle to search information online by herself.

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1. Firstly, we started from the story book. Elise was able to distinguish the cover, back and front page of the book.

2. Elise was able to read by herself clearly and correctly. When she met some difficult words such as "cavernous" and "chimp". Elise developed well of her phonological knowledge. It's mentioned by Hill(2012, p.22) that phonology includes intonation, stress and timing. Phonemic awareness, as defined by Goldsworthy & Lambert (2010), refers to the ability to mentally manipulate words, syllables and sounds in spoken language, it is very important for children to understand the alphabetic principle and also a basement for later reading and spelling activities (Gillon, 2017).

Elise was doing intonation well, she knew how high or low her voice should be when producing a sound.  She also had the knowledge of juncture, that Elise was clear about when to pause and how to make connection between word, phrases and sentences.

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The first two photos above are taken from the story book "This & That", they are used to assess Elisa's literacy development. Elise was asked to describe what has seen on the book by writing sentences.

As shown on the picture, Elise's writing developmental stage should be at the early writing stage.

As described by Hill(2012), in early writing, children continue to create or invent spellings of words. Elise has a good vocabulary that she has learnt a lot of animals names, she was trying to spell the word "giraffe" but she wrote as "girrafe". This shows that she has a good understanding of the phonemes, she was trying to transfer the spoken word into letters.

When we saw the picture of peacock, Elise looked at me and asked what is this? I told her it is a peacock, then she tried to write this word.  The word she wrote down is "pecock"(as picture three shows), which is close to the correct word.
Treiman & Kessler(2004)indicated  that young children could invent spellings for words that reflect the words' phonological forms, thus, spelling is not purely a matter of rote memorisation.

Elisa was attempting to represent the phonological forms of words when she spell. The sound of "e" and "ea" could be confused to the child of this stage, but she was showing her understanding of the relationship between how sounds are used to produce words and also how to use alphabetic principle to link sounds to letters.  According to Hill(2012, p.198), the knowledge of alphabetic principle is very crucial that it extends children's early reading and writing achievement.

Elise has progressed to the independent spelling stage that she could spell most of the word by herself correctly, while sometimes she still need phonics as a strategy.

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Elise's work shows that she has already developed some knowledge of grammar.  She knew the plural of "chick" is "chicks", she was able to use grammatical markers that indicate number such as "a tree", " a giraffe". When she saw there are different kinds of animals, she wrote " I can see animals". However, she wrote "mice" as "mouses", this shows that Elise might confused about these complex plural forms of words.

Elise do have some knowledge of morphological rules. For instance, she knew when to use the present continuous tense.

As presented by her work, Elise has a good understanding of syntax. Syntax, is the grammar or the rules by which words are organised into sentences, that it refer to the ways words, phrases and clauses are structured in sentences(Hill, 2012). Elise's sentences structures are clear and she was able to use function words such as "and" in her sentences. She was consistently spacing between words which is a symbol of the early writing stage (Hill, 2012).

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Elise made some spelling mistakes in her work, such as she wrote "can" as "cas". But when I asked her to check whether there were any mistakes, she pointed at "cas". She has the ability of self-correction. She knew how to spell the correct words but just sometimes be careless.  This might because she was still not familiar with the word.

Capitalised letters are a common punctuation mark in English (Cambridge Dictionary, 2019). The difference between capital letters and lower-case letter has been recognised, however, Elise found difficulties in recognising upper case or capital letters.  It is understandable that it can be hard for a lot of children to use capital letters and lower-case properly, that their choice is hardly based on phonology, because capital letters and lowercase forms of a letter both represent the same sound.  Elise capitalised the first letter when she started a new line.
This shows that she has already known that we should always use a capital letter to start a sentence, but she was confused about the definition of what's the meaning of "start a sentence".

Additionally, I found Elise sometimes use capital letters in the middle of a sentence. This could represent that she might have difficulties in recognising some letter's capital and lowercase forms. This was seen in Treiman & Kessler's research (2003) that children's performance on lowercase letters is strongly influenced by whether a lowercase letter is similar in shape to its uppercase counterpart. Thus, all lowercase letters are not equally difficult.

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In order to get more details of Elise's current understanding of capital letter and lowercase letter, I developed a play-based activity. As shown on the photo below, there is a man driving a carriage. I asked Elise "Where do you think they are going to? Could you please draw on the paper?"

Play-based learning has been emphasised by EYLF(Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations[DEEWR], 2009), it can be linked to the outcome five that children are effective communicators, they use the creative arts such as drawing and  to express ideas and make meaning.

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After Elise drew this castle, I asked her "Could you please write a sentence to describe your castle? I want you write every single letter in capital letter."
For this assessment, I aimed to assess her knowledge of capital letter. However, Elise seems to be misunderstanding my question, and she wrote a sentence with every single words starting with a capital letter.  From the sentence she wrote, all the capital letters she wrote are correct, and she has the idea of past tense.

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This paper-based assessment aims to assess Elise's learning of vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure. As shown on the photo, Elise used capital letters when she answer a question because she might regard it as the beginning of a sentence.

Her vocabulary is developing well that she has tried to spell some long words and she was nearly correct. She spelled "spagetti" as "spahggetti", when she was trying to spell the word, I observed that she read out the word. This shows Elise has phonic awareness that she knew every spoken word can be conceived of as a sequence of phonemes, she knew that words have spaces between them and she also has the conscious attention to the sounds in words(Hill, 2012).

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Generally, Elise's literacy learning content which has been assessed in this assessment has satisfied the requirements of Year 2 Literacy content listed by Australian curriculum(ACARA, 2019).

Elise was able to read and understand the whole story book which is chose by me. She was able to make conscious choices of vocabulary to suit its purpose, Elise was able to use connections between ideas,  she has grammatical and phonic
knowledge, for example she knew when to use past tense. Elise already has the idea of Capital letter and lowercase although she was not too clear with the concept.

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Achievement Standards of Australian curriculum 

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Achievement Standards of Australian curriculum 

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In this assessment, Elise's current learning of vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar and phonemic awareness have been assessed.

Overall, Elise has done a good job.  Although she was just on the halfway of Year two, she has nearly reached the achievement standards which is written for the students who have finished the whole year.

- When discussing her ideas and experiences, Elise was able to use everyday language features
and topic-specific vocabulary.

- She was able to read texts that contain varied sentence structures, Elise successfully read out some unfamiliar vocabulary and she can clearly explain the images she saw.

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The literacy area that I would like to support Elise further in is writing. As mentioned, Elise's writing development is at the Early writing stage. The goal I set up for Elise is to develop her writing skills and help her to move into next developmental stage: Transitional writing. I would like to help Elise with her knowledge of punctation.
Punctuation is one important areas of the marking criterion of writing in NAPLAN. Students are expected to use of correct and appropriate punctuation to aid the reading of the text (NAP, 2016).

The goal for Elise is to understand that there are different punctuation marks (such as full stop, comma, colon, question mark) in English, and to use them properly in her writing. This is required by Australian Curriculum(2019) that by the end of Year 2, children are expected to recognise that capital letters signal proper nouns and
use basic punctuations such as use commas to separate
items in lists. I designed the activities on this basis, and I add some new knowledge. She was also expected to become clear with the use of capital letters.

What's more,  as Elise has shown her interesting in literacy, I will develop her interest in literacy learning by using play-based activities.

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1. Elise will tell the name of different punctuation marks (full stop, comma, colon, question mark and exclamation mark) and explain how should we use these different punctuation marks.

2. Elise will be asked to write a sentence in which all the letters of each word are written in capital letter.

3.Elise will be asked to create a story by herself. She will be able to use different different punctuation marks in her story and explain the reason why she has used this mark here.

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This punctuation poster could be printed out and give to children as a learning material. Each punctuation mark has an explanation which is simple and clear.

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*Please note all of our posters are originally designed using high resolution images and fonts at A3 paper size.

Be aware it will be automatically resized to your default paper size when using Adobe Acrobat Reader without any loss of quality. If you would like to print these documents at larger sizes you can read the Adobe Resize & Scaling FAQ here.

We recommend laminating them for best results.

Finally if you would like to purchase a completely editable version of this document to alter without any restrictions you can purchase it for $10.00 simply by emailing us.

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Free Punctuation Poster for your Classroom

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Do you know the difference between a colon and a semi-colon? When is it the correct time to use a Hyphen? Should I use an Apostrophe or Period? Where should you use a question mark?

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useful materials : punctuation learning sheet

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useful materials : punctuation learning sheet

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This paper-based resource can be used in a variety of ways. Students can either write the punctuation in the boxes at the end of each sentence, or they can cut and paste using the strip provided on the right side of the worksheet.

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FREE Printable Spring Punctuation Worksheet!

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Help your students learn how to end a sentence with proper punctuation. Is it with a question mark, a period, or an exclamation mark? This exercise will also help with reading, grammar, and fine motor skills. The worksheet can be used in a variety of ways.

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useful materials: the punctuation mark stick puppets

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useful materials: the punctuation mark stick puppets

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learning activity one: punctuation mark stick puppets 

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learning activity one: punctuation mark stick puppets 

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The first learning activity for Elise aims to help her:
1. learn different punctuation marks
2. Understand the basic rules of using the punctuation marks.

It is crucial for children to understand the rules of punctuation, not only because the development of conventional punctuation is related to the development of logical thinking in children(Ferreiro & Pontecorvo, 1999), but also because using of wrong mark of punctuation or wrong placement of mark of punctuation can change the meaning of the sentence completely.

The materials will be used in this activity are:
1. punctuation mark stick puppets
2. five craft sticks
3.crayons or colourful pencils
4.scissors
5.glue
6.paper

In this hands-on and play-based learning activity, the child will firstly colour the punctuation mark stick puppets, this aim is to help her become more familiar with the punctuation marks. Colour is an effective mediator and colour could significantly improve children's recall of new knowledge (Conrad, 1972).
After the child finished the first step, she will asked to cut the coloured punctuation marks from paper then stick them on the craft sticks. This is also underpinned by the EYLF that children should be provided a wide range of tools and materials to resource their fine motor skills (DEEWR, 2009).

After these punctuation mark stick puppets are made, the educator will write several sentences on the write board, then the child will be asked to use the stick puppets to fill in the missing punctuation.

Examples of the sentences on the write board:
1) Is this your pencil ( )
2)It is so interesting ( )
3)I like butterflies ( )
4)I like cats ( ) they are soft( )

What's more, educators can link this activity to the vocabulary learning. Language expert, Chomsky (1972), believed that  a growing vocabulary in young children could be attributed to the adult–child reading experience.  Educators can use some new words in the sentences such as : The emu is the tallest bird from Australia( )

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Do you remember learning about how to use punctuation marks correctly?

I bet it involved sitting at a desk and filling in a lot of worksheets. Learning to correctly use punctuation marks can be dry and boring.

But research shows us that kids learn better when they are actively involved and having fun.

It only makes sense that the same is true when it comes to learning about punctuation.

These cute punctuation mark stick puppets can be used in fun punctuation mark activities that will help your child learn.

(For more hands-on learning, check out our )
Affiliate links have been provided below at no additional cost to you.
Recently we were given a copy of the book to review. The kids fell in love with the characters in the book, especially Comma, who really likes cookies Semicolons, Cupcakes, and Cucumbers , cupcakes, and cucumbers.

They giggled and laughed as I read what each character said. A few pages into the story they noticed that each character used their specific punctuation mark over and over again. The book was a great opportunity to introduce using commas in a series, semicolons, and to review end punctuation.

The kids enjoyed the book so much that I decided to put those characters to work by turning them into stick puppets for some fun hands-on learning punctuation mark activities.

Punctuation Activities

Materials Needed:

Print off the free punctuation mark stick puppets template found .

Have your child color the characters.

Cut them out and glue them to the ends of your craft sticks.

The punctuation mark characters can be used in a variety of activities.

Write sentences on your dry erase board and leave out the punctuation marks. Have your child use the stick puppets to fill in the missing punctuation.

In a classroom setting you could have the students copy the sentences on their own individual white boards.

Or, write the sentence for all the students to see and have them hold up the stick puppet that is needed.

You can also use the white board and the punctuation mark stick puppets to create scenes from Semicolons, Cupcakes, and Cucumbers or to create your own comic book-style scenes.

Our punctuation mark puppets have become a favorite in our homeschool, being played with throughout the day.

Our stick puppets have made learning punctuation marks much more fun with plenty of hands-on learning.

You'll also like:

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hands-on activity to teach punctuation marks

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Make Learning Fun with These Punctuation Mark Stick Puppets

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Do you remember learning about how to use punctuation marks correctly? I bet it involved sitting at a desk and filling in a lot of worksheets. Learning to correctly use punctuation marks can be dry and boring. But research shows us that kids learn better when they are actively involved and having fun.

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useful materials: Captial letter practice worksheet

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useful materials: Captial letter practice worksheet

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This paper-based material can be used in two different ways:
1. children can follow the example and then practice the writing of capital letters

2. this worksheet can be used as an assessment tool, teacher could ask children to write down the corresponding lowercases after the Capital letters.

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image via funny-pictures.picphotos.net

this printable sheet is related to Capital Letter Worksheets Printable. if you searching for capital letter worksheets writing and you can save this printable sheet but use it as personal use. we also hope this printable of capital letter worksheets writing can be useful for you. we will update our website for printable sheet.

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image via funny-pictures.picphotos.net this printable sheet is related to Capital Letter Worksheets Printable. if you searching for capital letter worksheets writing and you can save this printable sheet but use it as personal use. we also hope this printable of capital letter worksheets writing can be useful for you.

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learning activity two :Capitalization Worksheets Rewrite the Passage

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learning activity two :Capitalization Worksheets Rewrite the Passage

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This activity aim to help the child understand the rule of capital letter.
As mentioned, Elise has already gotten some ideas of capital letters but she was confused of when to use it. When she start a new line, she thought it was the beginning of a new sentence. This activity is tightly linked to the PLOP of Elise. The child will learn what should she use capital letter. This activity can help her get used to use a capital letter after a period. This activity can also practice her hand-writing skills.

Additionally, this activity will strengthen Elise's understanding of capital letter that it can help her become aware of she should capitalize dates, holidays, product names, geographic names and names of people.

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Capitalization Worksheets Rewrite the Passage

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This product contains 16 worksheets that focus on capitalization. Each worksheet features 2 passages that have to be written again using correct capitalization. The main purpose of this product is to help students get used to USE A CAPITAL LETTER AFTER A PERIOD. Many of my students used to begin a...

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This learning activity combines the knowledge of capitalization and punctuation.

In this activity, the child will be abled to learn the rules of using full stop.

She will understand that in English we use full stop at the end of a sentence. When we see full stop, it means a sentence has ended. After the full stop mark, if you start a new sentence, you should use capital letter because it is a new sentence.
After this activity, Elise will become more clear of when should she use capital letter.