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I find the last sharing was insightful and beneficial. Through the sharing, I realize that there were many different ways and approach towards teaching literacy. There were no specific methods and one size fit all for teaching literacy.

Personally, I do find explicit phonics instructions enable the children to have stronger basics letters and sounds awareness. As for the whole language base approach, it enable the children to learn and develop on their language as a whole - speaking, listening, reading as well as writing aspects. Whichever approach we used as teachers, I feel that it is still important to understand the children and adapt different strategies accordingly as no one size fit all.

Looking forward to more sharing so I can bring the learning back to my own class =)

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My centre's focus is learning through play as we believe that children learn better when they are actively engaged and having fun. Hence, we will incorporate a lot of fun activities and games in our lessons such as treasure hunt, BINGO, tech toys (Bee-Bot) etc.
Recently, my centre starts to have a new reading programme from Marshall Cavendish. Each reader focuses on a particular sound that we want to teach the children. We have both the big book and the digital format of the reader which facilitate children's learning. To extend children's learning from the readers, there are also interesting hands-on activities for the children. E.g. For the reader on 'oo' sound, children use play dough to make cookies.
The first ECLC session is really beneficial as I learned about other centres' literacy programme and good practices. I believe I will learn a lot more from others in the upcoming ECLC sessions.

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I am in the midst of encouraging learning through play in Language for my centre. This is is to engage children better and still providing their need; play. It is also something to create awareness towards teachers that Language can be fun, too!

Through the session, I realised that there are so many different ways to teach phonics/language. There is no one size fits all method. This had made me even more excited as I am very sure I can learn so much more and continue to share that Language is not boring!

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Photos of Children's Pre-Reading Experiences

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In my experience of being a preschool teacher, I find that it is important to build pre-reading skills as early as infant and toddler years. Here are some strategies that can be used for Toddlers.

1. Building Children's Print Awareness
We begin introducing some print in the classrooms such as having song charts and picture cards with words. However, do not overstimulate the environment. We also get children to look at print outdoors during neighbourhood walks such as looking at shop logos or signs.

2. Giving Children Opportunities for Story Time
Story Time is very important in our toddler's class. We do it before nap time to tune the children into calming down in this quiet activity. We also do it outdoors to excite children about things in nature or in the neighbourhood. Story Time, when consistently done, can help develop a lifelong interest in reading.

3. Spending Time Looking at Illustrations
We get children to look out for pictures of new vocabulary learnt such as fruits, flowers, trees and so on. We would read the sentences and then get the children to point to the item. For example, 'Can you see the flowers? Yes those are flowers!' Getting children to know that the  illustrations in the book are related to the print that is read out, helps them when they begin on reader books at preschool age. They would learn the skill of looking at illustrations to help them when they cannot read a word or for meaning-making of a sentence.

4. Involving Parents in Their Child's Reading Development
We encourage parents to play an active role in their child's reading development. Take-home activity kits such as making a book about the child's favourite foods for example, is very helpful in getting the child to have an interest in reading or flipping through books. These books can also double up as picture talk or show and tell experiences for that term. Children are free to take their family-made books out from the shelves and revisit during their playtime.

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From the last session we had on explicit phonics instructions, I am eager to try and get my preschool teachers to use a similar approach during school holidays. I find that Dalia's sharing on Dr Alice Tang's approach is helpful in getting teachers to quickly assess children's level of phonics competency. This way, teachers can spend more time on helping children who are weaker.

However, we must also be sensitive and respectful to child's readiness to read.

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From the discussions we had on which approach works best, I am grateful that we have a mixture of approaches at hand such that we can learn from each other even more.

I am even more grateful that the different organisations cater to the needs of the families and children we take in. Here are some reflection points.

1. PCF remains as one of the preschools and AOP that caters to families with diverse backgrounds and range of SES. As such, it is important that PCF continues providing a whole language approach to give a better head start for children's language development. Our aim is to make language learning fun and progressive, but the process would take longer and much perseverance from teachers.

2. MFS's pilot programme with explicit phonics instruction is really effective as teachers can really work on identifying and assessing children, as well as sharing these observation and assessment reports with families efficiently.

3. I find that a combination of strategies can be useful if teachers are skilled in knowing the objective of each strategy. For example, using a whole language approach to support love for learning languages, while the more explicit phonics instruction is to build consistency in learning phonics. However, teachers must be systematic and clear on what they are working with the children. Mixing instructions and strategies without correct implementation and objectives can make the learning less effective for the children, and more tedious for the teachers to do preparation work.

4. As such, I find the L&L sessions in ECLC very fruitful, as we get to discuss and understand better with clarifications from each other, on why we do what we do. Knowing the children and families we are working closely with, as well as the team of teachers we have is important too. We must recognise that language learning is not something that happens overnight, and it certainly take a pool of caregivers (teachers and parents alike) to build this love for reading.

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Literacy is an important factor for children in their early years. It is very important that teachers understand the importance of teaching and guiding children to excel in their language and literacy. I am glad to join in such sharing sessions where I can learn from one another on the various methods used to develop children's literacy skills.

In my school, we are venturing into 'learning through play' as there are different types of learners, we need to accommodate to their different learning styles. Therefore customising activities for them would be effective way to focus on children's learning.

Children enjoy learning when there are hand-on activities for them to learn from. Currently, we have a readers programme under Marshall Cavendish that helps children with their reading. They have digital books and activities for children to play online/ipad as well.

I am actually more excited to listen to other teachers and their experience on using effective ways to teach children language and literacy.

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In our school, we use different strategies such as story telling (without book), with props, hot seat, corners, story path, story board, conscience alley(K2 children eplly) to promote their language skills.

We also engage children in treasure hunt activities for letter knowledge, sensory bin for letter hunts, tech toys such as bee bot (beginning sounds, blends etc), question blocks etc.,

Sowmya
WE KN BLK 728, PCF

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For myself, I believe that learning language need to be fun and in a variety of forms to invite children to find their own love for learning in that area. While trying to maintain certain expectations as required, I try to engage children in a variety of ways to entice them to be interested and love L&L and adapting to learning with different needs. As home support system varies from child to child, I usually group children according to similar abilities. So that I can give extra time to children who needed more support and more challenging activities to support children who are more advanced. I hope that in future, all classrooms could have a second teacher to better facilitate while observing children and guide them through this important component of learning.

The photo collage above shows a portion of the L&L centre in my classroom whereby children can explore letter knowledge and letter formation through a variety of materials and forms and learning is encouraged at their own time during learning centre time.

Always learning,
Widia

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Recently, as part of our initiative to help parents with building their children’s language skills, we held a Parental Engagement session on

How to make story telling with early years children interesting?

We believe strongly on a solid home school partnership to optimize children's learning.

Firstly, we discussed the importance of story telling which are

1.       Promote bonding with children

2.       Helps with thinking and social skills

3.       Improves language skills

4.       Promotes brain development & critical thinking

5.       Develop imagination

6.       Helps develop deeper understanding of the world

7.       Builds listening and memory skills

I will be sharing on making story telling interesting for infants. We focused on choosing the right type of books.

Books for infants 0-6 months:

1.       Wordless

2.       Large and bold prints/pictures with contrasting background

Books for 7-12 months

1.       Simple drawings of familiar things, action and events

2.       Medium and large photos

3.       Bold prints

4.       Books that are in indestructible format

Books for 13-18 months

1.       Books with familiar pictures like common animals, family figures

2.       Action pictures as children at this age are also stating to be more active

3.       Books with songs and repetitive words

4.       Books that are in indestructible format

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Knowing about the various programs preschools have offer to develop children in their literacy skills, it has only left me overwhelmed. Along the way we have also discussed about the differentiation we have in the programs to meet the needs of the children. We are also a centre which integrates phonics in the curriculum along with the reading program. I have received feedback from my teachers that they see a significant progress in the children's ability to recognize words with sounds.

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Apologies for the multiple post (Padlet do not allow more than 1 photo for each post).

My centre also integrates technology for children to experience during their lesson time. Though mainly, the technology aspects do come in during inquiry project or during STEAM lesson, I have always wanted to use it for literacy as well.

One of the application which my Teachers are exposed to is called TinyTap. It is an application that allows Teachers to create games for the children. The beauty of this game is that it allows Teachers to curate game according to the needs of their children rather than purchasing online games which are already fixed.

The use of technology allows teacher to create differentiated teaching based on the children’s abilities and at the same time adding the fun element (especially for children who show no interest in literacy).

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It is so refreshing to find out and understand the different literacy approaches of the different centers. During our sharing, it was highlighted that some centres integrate their literacy component into other lessons instead of having a dedicated time. That has got me thinking on the importance of teaching literacy by integrating into other domains.

For my centre, we do try to combine literacy with gross motor. But this approach is mainly for revision purposes and is a great assessment tool. A simple game as such allows children to enjoy the process and it is versatile too.

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I learnt that Preschoolers develop their ability to read comprehend through phonics in their early age.  Explicit and systematic teaching of phonics is a foundation of effective early reading. Explicit instruction in phonics involves systematic and sequential teaching of the letter-sound relationships in English that allow children to decode words.. I also learnt five components of reading .Explicit instruction in Phonics awareness, systematic phonics instructions teaching, to improve fluency, vocabulary development and teaching comprehension skills. In this session learnt phonological awareness and phonic terms We had opportunity to share different literacy programmers in our preschools.

Deepa Bhatt

Khalsa Kindergarten

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feel free to create new posts to share your innovative practices on LL, any new ideas that you have recently been inspired to try or reflections from your first LC session :)