Connecting+with+an+early+years+teacher+and+their+teaching+program



Table of observation Shared and interactive writing || -White board -Illustrating -Alphabet -Guided reading -Book activity -Taped story -Magnetic letters -Write a sentence and illustrate || Literacy learning centres. ||
 * **Time** || **Groupings** || **Resources** || **Teaching approaches/learning experiences** ||
 * 10.00 am || Individual || Own chosen books || Trying to calm students down ||
 * 10.20am || Whole || Small book: Hairy MClarry SIT || Modelled. ||
 * 10.27am || Whole || Interactive white board || Writing Phonics from the story. Shared and interactive writing. ||
 * 10.30am || Individual || Paper & Pencils || Narrative writing experience. Teacher assist by rewriting the correct word under child’s attempt ||
 * 11.00am || Whole || Interactive white board || Class discussion about attitude of Narrative writing experience. ||
 * RECESS || || || ||
 * 11.30am || Whole || Big book: Wait! Said the mouse || Shared reading ||
 * 11.40am || Whole || Interactive white board || Writing phonics from the story
 * 12.00 || Groups || // Group rotation chart //

Observation notes:

The literacy block observed contained a variety of teaching and learning approaches that are mentioned in ‘Developing early literacy. Assessment and teaching’ The literacy block began with // Independent reading //. The teacher designates the beginning of each literacy block after a P.E session to Independent reading. This strategy was used to help settle the children and prepare them for the rest of the literacy block. Children chose their own text and sat down by themselves to read independently for 20minutes. Modelled reading of the text ‘Hairy McClary SIT!’ by Lynley Dodd was the next part of the literacy block. The teacher had full control of the text, and read it at a fast pace to the whole class, pausing in between pages to show the illustrations and place the student’s attention where she wanted it. Like Hill's understanding of Modelled reading, the book was slightly more complex than the reading ability of most of the children in the class. During the shared reading the teacher and students read the book together as a whole class, the teacher would point out specific uses of grammar. For example the teacher asked the students what the exclamation point at the end of a sentence meant, the question mark meant and so on, after each page the teacher asked various comprehension questions using various prompts and praise as shown by Hill (Hill 2006, p177.)

For the next half hour the students participated in a // Narrative writing experience. // The students used paper and pencil to write down their experiences from an after school activity that took place the night before. The teacher first discussed words that could be used in their story and encouraged the students to come up with other words that are in the similar word family and guess/fill in the blanks .


 * H(igh) || K(**//i)//**t(**//e//**) || M(**//y//**) ||
 * N___t__ || B(**//i//**)k(**//e//**) || Sk(y) ||
 * F_t || B(**//i//**)t(**//e//**) || Fl(**//y//**) ||

While the students were writing at their desks, the teacher wandered around the room assisting students when needed. The teacher listened to the student’s ideas, praised their work and rewrote the correct words under the student’s attempt.

Concluding the narrative writing experience, the students reformed into a whole class again, and participated in a class discussion about the attitude of the narrative writing experience. The teacher used the interactive white board to draw a pie chart that had a picture of a ear, and eye and the word FEEL in each of the segments The teacher posed the questions: “What did it sound like during out narrative writing experience?” “What did it make you feel?” “What did it look like?” The teacher then asked the students to come up with words that fit into each segment. This was used as a reflective tool on what the attitude of the students was during that session, and the attitude that the teacher expected from them.

After recess, the literacy block continued with // shared reading // of the text ‘Wait! Said the mouse’ It was a big book and the whole class were encouraged to join in with the reading, and individuals that weren’t participating were asked to. The students especially enjoyed the repetition in the story as well as the rhyming. The teacher read this story at a much more steadied pace compared to when she modelled the reading of the text ‘Hairy McClary Sit!’ During shared reading the teacher used a lot of reinforcement and repetition with the children reading out loud, sounding out with the teacher, while she used Graphophonic cues and also semantic cues as stated by Hill "as children attend to actual print they use several sources of information known as cues" (Hill 2006, p. 141).

The book was quickly discussed and then the students were broken up into their rotating literacy learning centre groups. The groups consisted of 3-4 students. The teacher preferred the smaller groups so the students could concentrate on their set task with a small group, rather than having more chances of distraction by being in a larger group. The literacy learning activities consisted of -White board: Students were given a list of 100 words, and asked to attempt to rewrite some of the words that they found ‘tricky’ onto their personalised white board. -Illustrating: Students were asked to illustrate scenes from the story -Alphabet -Guided reading: The aim of guided reading was for the children to use a range of problem-solving strategies to read the text. During guided reading, the teacher moved ‘from child to child, hearing small sections of the text read aloud’, just as described in Hill (2008, p. 82). -Book activity -Taped story: Students sat in a corner of the class room, while listening to the story again with head phones and a tape recorded -Magnetic letters: Create words with the magnetic letters -Write a sentence and illustrate: Students were asked to write a sentence about the story and accompany that with an illustration.

This activity continued until lunch time.