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Microsoft Learning Tools is a free programme on computer that offers a dictation feature that converts children's spoken word to text on-screen. This offers children’s understanding and interest towards how words in print are symbols for voices and speech and communicates meaning. When children uses technology for learning, it relates to children being "early adopters". Karen Wohlwend (2009) explains that "early adopters signals two simultaneous identities for young technology users: 1) as developing learners of new literacies and technologies and 2) as curious explorers who willingly play with new media".

In a preschool classroom, many children enjoy decorating the room for special events like birthdays and holidays and each new season provides opportunities for decorating! Children will speak messages into this dictation programme (or a microphone for added interest), get it to print out their words for cards or displays, or record greetings to play during parties. In this way, children are using new technologies and embrace the collaborative nature of new literacies as they become and be proud of their literate identities.

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This documentation tool offers teachers a quick and easy way to identify and chart the interests of each child within their classroom. When teacher find out what children already know and are interested in, it relates to teachers opening the virtual school bag– accessing children's funds of knowledge (Thomson, 2002). This documentation tool serves as a portfolio, which can be identified as "a belonging and empowerment tool; a means for school teachers to access to children’s funds of knowledge; playing a role in constructing a positive self-image about learning" (Peters et al., 2009). Teachers can also use this tool as a checklist to identify literacy activities already occurring and available to children every day.

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This resource offers a literacy programme that is created to help children to reach age-appropriate levels within a period of time. It focuses on every individual as it highlights the importance of the different needs of every child, from the child’s prior knowledge to planning lessons for him/her. This relates to the importance of reading comprehension and the process of learning how to use letter and word without losing focus on its meaning.

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It involves a short series of daily one-to-one lessons for 30 minutes with a specially trained teacher. Reading Recovery is different for every child, starting from what the child knows and what he/she needs to learn next.

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Learning sight words is fundamental for all emergent readers. The National Reading Panel (2000) identifies the “sight word reading competencies” as an important part in developing young children to be early emergent readers. This resource offers an engaging way to help children learn sight words as they will be learning through play. This is supported by Bruner et al (1976), as it relates to the increase of children’s problem solving skills through play.

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This resource offers alphabet awareness such as recognizing the letters of the alphabet and the corresponding sounds of each letter through the use of ABC books. Paging through an alphabet book, the adult points out letters and sounds based on what captures the child’s interest. This helps toddlers start to identify letters and its upper case and lower case form, and develop a connection between the shapes they see and the sounds they hear. Adults can ask the toddler questions about what one sees on the page. They can help the child listen for the sounds in a group of words with the same initial consonants. Reading and sharing ABC books with the toddlers help them learn that each letter has it’s own name and it’s own sound, and become interested in the alphabet.

Selecting ABC books that weaves in songs and rhymes relates to exposing them to new alphabets in a fun way, as supported by Singapore's Nurturing Early Learners framework (Ministry of Education, 2013, pp 39) which states that, "Songs, rhymes and finger plays are natural tools for learning about language in a fun way, especially those that have repetitive phrases... [they] expose children to new vocabulary and help them to notice sounds and intonation patterns which develops their phonological awareness." In this way, weaving songs and rhymes into text provides opportunities for children to develop sensitivity to beginning sounds of words.

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Teaching Target Letter: Shapes and Names

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Teaching Target Letter: Shapes and Names

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This resource offers alphabet awareness using textured alphabet letters, where children learn to distinguish letters based on visual features (i.e. lines, curves, direction) of an alphabet. This teaching target letter is an adaption from “Teaching Target Vocabulary” by Singapore’s Nurturing Early Learners framework (Ministry of Education, 2013, pp 38). It states that “children need to know the words in order to understand them. They need exposure to the words in different contexts over a period of time in order to learn them. Teachers should not assume that children will pick up new words just by listening to stories.” Thus, this research urges that teachers must select target letters and intentionally teach these letters to the children. As such, this resource creates the exposure through an art activity that invites toddlers to participate in creating and touching the texture, which helps familiarize them with the appearance of the letters.

This is another way to involve children in creating a literacy-rich environment. The teacher who responds positively and encouraging children to play with or make these art build their familiarity, interest, and comfort with them the alphabet.

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This resource offers opportunities for young children to create stories based on their personal experiences which will provide a sense of belonging to them. This relates to the understanding of concept of print as children and teachers read the illustrations together to make it a point that the story remains the same every time it is read. Concept of prints consists of the handling of books such as reading from left-to-right, top-to-bottom and also the understanding of relaying a message through prints. This is supported by Allen (1976) as it highlights the importance of having the Language Experience Approach (LEA) as part of an emergent reading program.

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The language experience approach integrates speaking and listening, reading and writing through the development of a written text based on first hand experiences.

Through scaffolded talk, the teacher supports students to document experiences and ideas, using familiar and expanded vocabulary, modelling ways in which their thoughts and words can be written down and later read.

The experience

Typically, the language experience approach involves a shared experience such as everyday happenings, common school experiences, a classroom event or hands-on activity, excursions but can also include students' personal experiences or ideas.

Spoken language

The teacher's role in language experience is to support the student to recreate the experience orally as they:

capitalise on students' interest and experiences

prompt the students to reflect on the experiences

ask questions to elicit details about the experience through more explicit language

help students to rehearse the ideas they will be writing about.

Creating the text

The text might be written by the teacher or by the student. As the writer, the teacher acts as a model, demonstrating how thought and words can be represented in writing as students dictate their ideas. Individual children might dictate a sentence, or a longer text might be written.

Alternatively, students will write their own texts. Here, the teacher can guide students' writing, encouraging them to understand that what they think can be said, and what they say can be written down by them or others (Hill, 2012).

In the writing that occurs as part of the language experience approach, it can be helpful to remind the children that the writing produced will provide information for those who did not directly share the experience.

In that way, differences between spoken language and written language can be emphasised.

"How can we put that in writing for someone that wasn't there?" is a question that might support children to create more elaborate, extended text.

As the texts written through the language experience approach reflect first hand experiences, the formats will vary - for example, charts, labels, captions, lists or genres such as recounts, procedures, information reports.

Drawing either before or after writing will often complement the written text. In her research into connections between drawing and writing, Mackenzie (2011) found that when emergent writers see drawing and writing as a unified meaning making system, more complex texts are created.

Reading

What is written can now be read. As the language experience texts are relevant to the students, the opportunity to read them aloud creates a positive experience and reinforces the reciprocity between reading and writing.

Texts that the students have produced based on their experiences, using familiar language make good early reading material which can be read chorally or individually.

The following examples show how one Foundation teacher provided varied opportunities for her students to create texts using the language experience approach where:

following discussion, writing about different topics and experiences is captured which can later be read about (for example, an excursion to the zoo, a visit by the fireman, an investigation of nocturnal animals)

simple sentences using a repetitive structure are written for the students to illustrate and copy, supporting both reading and writing

students are encouraged to write their own ideas, using compound or complex sentences and expanded noun groups

the writing includes the labelling of a diagram.

Example 1 - The fireman

After a visit to the school by the fireman, and extensive discussion of that experience, each child was provided with a series of simple sentences following a repetitive structure 'Here is the .... (hose, ladder, fire engine).' In the example below, the child copies the sentences and illustrates it

Example 2 - Nocturnal animals

As part of a direct experience and subsequent investigation of nocturnal animals, the students were provided with a simple structure following a repetitive structure, but were encouraged to extend the information based on their classroom research. Here, the student includes a labelled diagram of a bat.

The teacher has written two labels after asking the child 'What do we call this part of a bat?', and the child has added one label independently.

On another page in the booklet, the child copies the sentence supplied by the teacher, 'I can see an owl' but also extends the text by adding 'And they have eyes that can't move but the head can move'.

These additions to the simple base sentence provide an example of a rudimentary information report where the purpose is to inform. The child's writing includes:

a compound sentence which includes the coordinating conjunction 'but' to contrast ideas (i.e. 'And they have eyes that can't move but the head can move'.)

a relative clause to expand on the noun 'eyes' (i.e. eyes that can't move)

the present simple tense used in information reports

simple punctuation (full stops).

Example 3 - An excursion to the zoo

In this instance, the child's writing includes:

a complex sentence 'When we went to the zoo I heard the elephants stomping loud'

an embedded clause which expands on the noun 'elephants' (i.e. elephants stomping loud)

simple past tense used to recount the experience and what was seen (e.g. went, heard, was)

capital letters and full stops.

Because of the high degree of involvement the children have in the initial experience, subsequent discussion and creation of a written text, these texts often become favourite texts for children's classroom reading.

Example 4 - A shared experience

After participating in a shared experience of 'jumping like kangaroos', the teacher acted as scribe. The teacher provided prompts to support the students to recount and comment on their experience as well as to recall some of the information about kangaroos that they had been learning.

In this instance, words which students will later use in their own writing are used, such as kangaroos. High frequency words and conventions of written text such as capital letters and full stops also feature in the text.

For more examples, see: Language experience unit of work for a foundation class

For an example of the language experience approach for EAL/D students, see: Language experience unit for EAL/D students

Lorraine Wilson advocated the importance of the language experience approach in 'Write me a Sign', published in 1979. A key message from this publication is that language is central to learning in all areas of the curriculum. Wilson also acknowledges the need for children to read published texts which open up possibilities of engaging with other people's language and ideas as they become more experienced readers and writers.

Understanding the difference between spoken and written language is critical in the primary years of schooling (Christie, 2013). Hill (2012) states that language experience enables young literacy learners in particular to understand the difference between spoken and written language.

Importantly, children's language is extended through interactions with an 'expert other', that is, the teacher. Through the expansion and extension of oral language based around experiences, students are supported to write about these experiences. These student-generated written texts then become texts the students read allowing the experience to be revisited.

While the language experiences approach benefits many kinds of learners, it is particularly beneficial for for English as an Additional Language or Dialect students.

For more information on the language experience approach and EAL/D students, see: Language experience approach and EAL/D students

Christie, F. (2013). Writing development as a necessary dimension of language and literacy education.

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

Mackenzie, N. (2011). From drawing to writing: What happens when you shift teaching priorities in the first months of school? Australian Journal of Language and literacy, 34 (3), 322-340.

Wilson, L. (1979). Write me a sign. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson Australia.

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The language experience approach integrates speaking and listening, reading and writing through the development of a written text based on first hand experiences. Through scaffolded talk, the teacher supports students to document experiences and ideas, using familiar and expanded vocabulary, modelling ways in which their thoughts and words can be written down and later read.

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This resource offers knowledge about print, where children collect visual labels, signs and logos in daily life. This relates to the importance of environmental print as word and print awareness comprise key elements of young children’s emergent literacy development. This is supported by Marie Clay (as cited in Aldridge, 2006), who found that children explore the details of print in their environment—on signs, on cereal packages, and in television advertisements (p. 4). They develop concepts about print in their environment and about books. Consequently, more advanced concepts emerge out of children’s earlier understandings. This leads to the formation of primitive hypotheses about letters, words, or messages they see. According to Aldridge et al. (as cited in Aldridge , 2006), reading environmental print is something children often engage in before reading print in books (p. 4).

Adults can take advantage of all this print by using it in ways to talk about letters, words, and print. After they have gathered lots of pictures of signs and words from items within the house and classroom, children can sort these items by beginning letter. A simple alphabet book can be created using all your cutouts by organizing all the A words, B words, C words, etc. Children can have fun learning to read even when books are not available and use their prior knowledge of the item to support their identification or guess of the sounds made by the letters in logos. Environmental print provides lots of opportunities for kids to interact with letters, sounds, and words.

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Functional Prints Must-Haves in every classroom

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Functional Prints Must-Haves in every classroom

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This Nurturing Early Learners resource by Singapore's Ministry of Education (2013, pp 49 -51) offers suggestions on how to organize the learning environment to support children's reading. Part of creating a print-rich environment is a teacher to provide prints related to daily classroom activities. Examples of functional print include labels, lists, calendars, classroom rules and messages. This is supported by the whole language approach by Kenneth Goodman. This form of instruction is taught using a holistic approach, meaning that children do not learn to break down sounds individually but to take words at face value and associate them with prior knowledge. Functional print such as labels and charts around the classroom develop children's print awareness. It also help children understand and recognize that print has meaning.  Lists and charts are useful resources as they contain simple phrases that children can learn to recognize. Also, when children put their names on a list, they gradually come to recognize their own names and their friend's names.

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This resource offers the joy and ability to tap into a child’s eye-view of the universe. Dr. Seuss’s books offer engaging content of different rhymes that are fun to read and easy to remember. This relates to young children’s ability to read at the emergent reading level and their lifelong interest with books. This is supported by Maclean, Bryant and Bradley (1987) as it highlights the relation between rhyming and the development of abstract phonological skills and emergent reading abilities.

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The Herald Sun website offers a combination of audio, visual and linguistic information for children readers to access the meaning of text regardless of their linguistic reading ability. This is relevant to the multimodal approach to reading. Reading is not just to decode, but to understand the meaning from words, the pictures and how these portray a story, the spoken word and how the inflection in spoken language can affect us. At the same time, it includes ICT in the classroom, providing resources from videos to news articles. The use of the news site can allow for rich discussions around critical literacy and can be used like any other reading event as the teacher draws attention to the vocabulary, images, perspectives and main ideas.

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Kids News | Home | News for Kids | Herald Sun

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Kids News will now be free into 2018 as we continue to develop our trial site to best suit teacher and student needs. Register your email now to use Kids News free and sign up for the Kids News newsletter. View our Privacy Collection Statement here.

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This resource offers opportunities to explore the conventions of print and reading process whereby children learn how to read various text types and problem solve in terms of word identification. This relates to young children developing print awareness as emergent readers. They explore the large print and texts and children may even get help from their peers as there is group support as compared to an individual reader. This is supported by Lev Vygotsky (1978) as it highlights that social learning plays an important role in the process of “meaning making”. It is also supported by Susan Hill (2012) as it states that "Shared book reading develops children's vocabulary and grammatical development (Wasik & Bond, 2001), print skills such as left-to-right direction, letter names (Justice & Ezell, 2000), and comprehension development (McGee & Schickedanz, 2007)."

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During MLEA, the Primary 1 classes wrote a class dictated text about their visit to the Zoo. The text was based on the shared experience that the children had at the zoo. The learning journey to the zoo provided the context and content for the students to think and discuss their experience.

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This resource offers a permanent display of words which helps children to see the relationships between words that enhance the phonics and spelling skills. This relates to clear connection between reading comprehension and word knowledge. This is supported by Davis (1944, 1968) as it highlights the importance of vocabulary knowledge that will affect comprehension. To extend the children’s learning, games can be integrated to the planning of word walls, such as “Wheels of Fortune” whereby children get to guess the words that will be going up the word wall. This relates to young children’s developing creativity and their understanding of phonemes in words.

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Language Arts

Ask students to hunt for words in their reading and writing that fit the phonic or word study pattern being studied. These words can create a word wall that illustrates examples of the different patterns studied. Students could keep a word study notebook to record the known patterns and their new understanding about words, and can play games and activities that apply their word knowledge.

Math

Word walls in math can provide visual cues and graphic representations of content. Consider using a math word wall that has three parts: key vocabulary, "in your own words" definitions, and a variety of ways to portray a function. For example, multiplication is portrayed by the following symbols: x, *, and ( ).

Number sense, concepts, and operations word wall
The purpose of the mathematics word wall is to identify words and phrases that students need to understand and use so as to make good progress in mathematics. Mathematical language is crucial to children's development of thinking. If students do not have the vocabulary to talk about math concepts and skills, they cannot make progress in understanding these areas of mathematical knowledge. They need to be familiar with mathematical vocabulary and mathematical terms to understand written and spoken instructions. See math word wall resources >

More ideas for word walls in math
Many teachers are familiar with basic word wall strategies including the use of a flashlight (to put the light on words) and a fly swatter (to highlight words). Teachers are also familiar with tested favorites like bingo; I Have, Who Has; and Mind Reader, but they really wanted other ideas. The purpose of this post by Dr. Deborah Wahlstrom is to identify additional ways to use word walls with mathematics content. More math word wall ideas >

Science

Using interactive word walls in science
Science is a vocabulary-intense subject that is dependent on students learning new and often times difficult vocabulary to increase comprehension and help them make connections between and among concepts. When science students are given the opportunity to interact with the vocabulary, they are more likely to remember it.

Ideas for using the words on your wall are only limited by your imagination. Some examples include:

Students categorize and sequence from largest to smallest (cell, bacteria, yeast, tissue, ribosome, organ, organism, organ system, protozoa, virus) Variation: Students are given vocabulary words, and their classmates must arrange them in the correct order and justify the placement.

Students remove words from the wall and make connecting statements about the words. The class can then create a summarizing statement, for example: cells make up tissues, and tissues make up organs.

For more ideas like these, read the full post by Toni Enloe.

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Word Walls | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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A word wall is a collection of words which are displayed in large visible letters on a wall, bulletin board, or other display surface in a classroom. The word wall is designed to be an interactive tool for students and contains an array of words that can be used during writing and reading.

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This resource offers visual connections of the materials that the children are reading. It also acts as a tool to support children to become proficient readers when it comes to reading comprehension as a story is organized visually so specific relationships of selected story elements are highlighted.  This relates to children’s focus on the key concepts and vocabulary which enhance critical and creative thinking (Bromley, Devitis and Modlo, 1995). This is supported by Philip Yenawine (2015) who highlights that visual literacy is an integral component of skills and beliefs related to inquiry.

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This resource offers creative creations of existing stories or poems from the children through analyzing. This relates to young children’s growing creativity as they innovate a brand-new creation from existing stories or poems with careful scaffolding from the teacher. This is supported by Don Holdaway (1979) as he mentioned that this will make cheerless reading sessions become more enjoyable for the children.

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Game - predicting vocabulary from big books through print awareness

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Game - predicting vocabulary from big books through print awareness

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This resource offers engaging involvement of children making vocabulary predictions by using pictures from big books through shared book experiences. This relates to children’s increasing bank of vocabulary words as they make predictions through print awareness and comprehension of pictures. This is supported by Don Holdaway (1979) as he talks about the potential in the big books.
To extend children’s learning, children can be engaged in making further predictions with solving phonics. This relates to the phonemic awareness which may be the crucial factor separating normal and disabled readers. This is supported by Adams (1990) as he highlights the importance of having phonemic awareness.

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This resource offers powerful connections about print between the adult and the child as it is based on visual intimacy with print. This relates to children developing print awareness whereby they may be able to learn how to read various text types, solving problems in identifying various words or ways in which punctuation and grammar are used to communicate meaning. This is supported by Don Holdaway (1979) who claimed that bedtime story is the main idea behind shared book experiences.

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Send Children on a trip with Reading Train 

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Send Children on a trip with Reading Train 

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This Reading Train Application resource offers early readers to use an App to begin reading simple stories with prompts to develop their independence and introducing them to a variety of genres. This relates to emerging reading with the use of technology. The App tailors to the need of beginning readers as they can listen, read and record, all by themselves.

Being introduced to technology at a young age is what Karen Wohlwend refers to as "early technoliteracies" (2010). According to Labbo (as cited in Wohlwend, 2010), children use keypads and touchscreens on a broad range of technological devices to browse, view, interpret, navigate, interact, and produce original texts (p. 145). Ways of reading and interacting with screens require concepts for reading screens (Merchant, as cited in Wohlwend, 2010) and new understandings about the organization of space and image that extend Marie Clay’s concepts about print.

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This resource offers strengthening vocabulary, building of reading confidence and stamina, and development of a deeper appreciation of storytelling, while using rich, lively visuals with limited amount of text to drive the narrative. This relates to adopting a multiliteracy approach when decoding a “text”, which constitutes of various modes in a graphic novel (i.e. written language, visual representation, gestural representation, and spatial representation), which is supported by Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope’s 2009 research on new literacies and learning.

Visual literacy is the ability to find meaning in imagery, hence is a form of comprehension so children actually apply reading comprehension strategies as they “read” or infer from images. It is alos hence important that children comprehend visual prints in the different levels of comprehension. Sadoski (as cited in Ministry of Education, 2013) states that there are 5 levels of understanding: literal, inferential, critical, application, and appreciation.

Using graphic novels contains  multiliteracies that engage deep thinking.

With that said, graphic novels holds potential in helping different types of learners. For children who are incapable of visualizing a story, the artwork helps them create context. Graphic elements also attract visually dependent readers, who then freely read the text, and help reluctant readers understand the plot of a story. This is especially useful for early and emergent readers to feel successful in meaning-making as they create their own perspectives and meaning.

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This resources offers inferring monitoring and this relates to engaging critical literacy when comprehending a text, which is supported by Jerome C. Harste (2003). He shares that preparing 21st-century literate beings requires children to think more than in terms of phonics, spelling, and grammar, and read things critically instead.

Through the song, we are reminded to infer deeper meanings from text, understand that language works beyond what is "in the text", that authors "give you just part of the story" (lyrics from Inferring Song).

Inferring is part of literacy that allow children to be critical literate beings.