There are a few literacy content areas that I will be focusing on under Reading and Viewing - print awareness, alphabet knowledge, alphabetic principle, and fluency.

 

While doing independent reading, if Tom is struggling to read a certain word in a book, he will pause to look at the picture to make a connection and read it off based on his understanding of what is going on in the picture. Tom also showed that he has developed certain reading skills such as recognition of high-frequency words such as "I", "and", "my", "me" and "the", and strategies. Clay (2002) calls reading strategies a self-extending system. He discussed that when a child is given a knowledge of some items and some strategic awareness of how to work on print, he can apply what he knows to similar items, and has a way of working on new items. For instance, a child predicts the meaning of the text in the book based on his or her prior experiences, similar experiences with books, and picture cues in the book. If the information does not check out, then the child will self-correct by rereading and sampling, predicting, confirming until meaning is achieved. Should he still not know what the word might be, he will ask the teacher, "What is that?" before repeating and continuing his reading.

 According to Tom's father, he is exposed to multimodal text such as online read-aloud books on phone applications and YouTube videos, outside of school. Kress and Jewitt (2003) advocates for multimodal literacy and stressed that literacy are occurring within and around new modes of communication.

 

After analysing the child's abilities in reading through the various assessment tools, I have found that at Tom's present level of performance, he is able to identify all the upper and lower case letters of the alphabet, identify some of the sounds of the letters in the alphabet, has some form of print awareness and is somewhat fluent in reading a simple picture book. 
 
 In order to assess his alphabet knowledge, I used a picture book as well as lower case and upper case letter cards. As you can see on the letter identification and letter sound checklist, Tom is able to identify all the upper and lower case letters of the alphabet in isolation. This is also iterated during his reading of the picture book. When prompted with questions like, "Can you show me a letter?" and "What are the names of some of the letters?" to assess his concept of a letter in a book, he demonstrated that he is able to recognise letters in words and sentences. According to Reutzel and Cooter (2000), assessment of alphabet knowledge should occur in two contexts: letter recognition within words and sentences, and letters in isolation. However, it would appear that he needs further support with letter sounds as he was not able to identify the sounds for half the letters in the alphabet.

 

Based on the standardised assessment tool used to assess Tom's emerging concepts of print, he is able to somewhat grasp the concepts of print, except for locating the title of the book and recognising and identifying the punctuation marks in a book. 

 

As for assessing his fluency in reading, judging by the results in the reading assessment used in the form of a running record, he is able to read most words in the book except for the "cucumber" and "pumpkin". It appears that he needs assistance with longer words that are harder to read, and words that he has never come across before. Although read correctly, Tom reads dialogue in a monotone manner. There are no indication of a question being asked or something being exclaimed in the book. He does not use the punctuation such as a comma or a full stop to stop reading at times, and simply keeps going. 

 

Therefore, my literacy goals that I would have for Tom would be for him to be able to identify all the letter sounds for both upper and lower case letters in the alphabet, and understand the mechanics in a picture book and the names of the different punctuation, such as full stop, comma, question mark, exclamation mark and quotation marks. This, in turn, will also help him develop reading fluency.

Based on the assessments I have gathered on Tom's reading and viewing, I have come up with a literacy plan with specific activites that I will conduct with Tom in a formal setting in school, over the course of a term (10 weeks). These activities will support Tom in his areas of improvement that I have observed.

 

The objectives of these activities are to 1) Identify all the letter sounds for both upper case and lower case letters in the alphabet, and 2) understand the mechanics in a book, and recognise the names of different types of punctuation such as comma, full stop, exclamation mark and quotation marks.

 

The first activity will be a mystery bag activity where items of the same beginning letter sounds will be placed in a drawstring bag or a paperbag. Tom will take each item out of the mystery bag and name the item. Once he has named all the items, I will prompt him for the beginning letter sound for all three words. Should he has trouble figuring it out, I will enhance my pronounciation and add a prolonged beginning letter sound, before reading the word. For instance, for letter "A/a", I will place an apple, a toy ant, a toy alligator into the bag. This activity will be repeated with different items that begin with letter "A/a" to letter "Z/z".

 

Another activity that will support Tom's identification of letter sounds is a letter sound listening game. The resources required for this activity are letter mats for each letter, dot markers or dry erase markers, and word cards. These letter mats will be laminated so that they are reusable. If I am teaching the letter sound of "B/b" for that day, I will pass the letter Bb mat to Tom and go through the stack of word cards, calling out each word. Tom will listen out for the beginning sound of each word, and if the beginning sound matches the letter on his card, he will stamp over one of the letter "Bb" in his letter mat. If the read word does not begin with that letter/sound, he does not stamp anything on his letter mat. This activity will also be repeated over the weeks in the term, to cover letters "Aa" to "Zz".

 

These two activites are play-based and meaningful, and is supported by Piaget (1962), whose theory of play argues that as a child matures, their environment and play should encourage further language and cognitive development. He also mentioned that purposeful play isplay is integral to the development of intelligence in children. 

 

As for teaching Tom the mechanics in a book and the different types of punctuation, I will prepare picture books and do guided reading with him. As mentioned earlier, if Tom is able to grasp the concepts of print, it will have a trickle-down effect and he will thus be able to read picture books more fluently. According to Hudson, Lane and Pullen (2005), a student's inflection should reflect the punctuation in the text (e.g. voice tone rising at the end of question), and he or she should use punctuation to pause appropriately at phrase boundaries.

 

I will select appropriate text for Tom that will challenge him, by getting books that consists of dialogues and various types of punctuation (Hill, 2012). While reading with him, I will give prompts that cue him to  the syntax and sentence structure such as "Look at this comma, you can pause here to take a breath before continuing to read". As I am also planning to support his letter sounds recognition, I will add that teaching focus during guided reading too and provide prompts such as "Check the beginning of the word", "It could be, but look at the first letter".

 

Guided reading is also supported Vygotsky's Social Constructivist Theory (1978), whereby he discussed the zone of proximal development, stating that the distance between children's actual developmental level and their potential developmental level can be reached with scaffolding by teachers.

 

To keep track of Tom's progress overtime, I will continue to use assessment tools that I had used previously on Tom, and assess him on different dates to check if there has been any improvements.