Assignment+1.+Part+A.


 * ECL210 Leah Moloney**
 * Assignment 1 700176578**
 * Assessment A**

A child’s experiences and abilities in the early years before primary education have a significant impact upon their learning abilities to read and write in the first years of school (Hill, 2006). The majority of the time, a child must rely upon their parents for these early learning experiences to be presented to them. The importance of exposing children to different forms of literacy’s from an early age was displayed through the interview conducted with a seven-year old, female, grade two student. Through the process of interviewing this student, it became evident that her family has encouraged her reading and writing intelligence from a young age. Due to this early exposure to literacy as well as educational opportunities, the child displayed a keen interest in reading and writing, therefore becoming intrinsically motivated to develop her literacy and language intelligences (Bennett & Maclean, 2008). The child was able to interrupt a new text literally and inferentially, however her reading fluency was slightly interrupted and still displayed signs of developing which would be able to be measured through ongoing assessment.

Most parents and families are the most influential models a young child looks towards in order for guidance emotionally, physically and intellectually (Elias, Hay, Homel & Frieberg, 2006). This parental guidance can significantly influence a child’s interest and attitude regarding the learning process. The significance of this influence was displayed throughout the interview conducted with the early year learner. As the grade two female student was interviewed about her views towards reading and writing, it became starkly evident that her family has played a significant role in developing her interests and abilities in literacy. The child described how she read to either her mother or her father every night. This displays her parents are dedicated to helping their daughter improve her reading and comprehension abilities. The seven year old has been exposed to a variety of literature, this became evident as she spoke of he mother’s enjoyment for reading cooking magazines and through mentioning that she enjoyed reading “chapter books”, such as //Aussie nibbles//. By mentioning that her favourite form of literature was a children’s novel, the child displayed that she is able to understand a story without requiring a visual aid to assist with her construction of meaning (Hill, 2006).

Despite her exposure to different forms of literacy’s and strong comprehension abilities, the child displayed some difficulties with less familiar words. This lead to some slower phrasing while reading her familiar text, //Mitch to the rescue//, which (when tested) displayed that the child was performing at a reading fluency rate of 2.4 (Hill, 2006). She displayed a strong ability to add accurate expression to the text and paused when necessary, displaying her thorough understanding of punctuation. However, her rate while reading was interrupted and not always suited to the context of the story. Her fluency was occasionally interrupted due to a verbal stumble over a word or she would pronounce a word inaccurately leading to confusion over the sentence structure. As the child stumbled over a word or meaning, she would persevere with the sentence until she was able to apply understanding to the phrase. Through this perseverance, the seven-year-old displayed a strong sense of meaning and syntax comprehension (Hill, 2006). While the child read her familiar text, there was little need for prompting or guided reading, as she intrinsically self-corrected her mistakes.

The seven-year-old spoke clearly and confidently during the interview process, expressing her thought process clearly. Throughout conversation, it became apparent that she enjoyed reading and writing, as she mentioned that she did the majority of her writing at home. She stated that she enjoyed writing about “made up things”, particularly horses. However, when she was asked to write and draw about the new text which she had read, she only copied her favourite sentence from a page in the text and did not elaborate on the text at all. This contradicted her statement of enjoying writing imaginatively. However, as she was asked to do this task, some of her class peers started to walk past the quiet room causing her to be distracted and therefore less interested in the task. Due to the lack of writing on the sample and the child’s distraction from the set task, assessing the differing elements involved in her writing was difficult. Using the emergent and early years writing assessment sheet in Developing Early Literacy (Hill, 2006), the child’s written language recorded a score of four, as she was able to construct a simple sentence from the reading text. A score of four was also recorded for her ability to understand text conventions, as she used the correct punctuation appropriately (Hill, 2006). However, despite her ability to convey her ideas clearly through verbal conversation while being interviewed, the child’s writing ideas were recorded as a level three because she copied the writing from the story book. This assessment cannot be viewed as conclusive due to the small amount of writing on the page and the child’s obvious distraction. When I inquired further about the child’s writing abilities, her teacher stated that she was a good writer and usually composes significantly detailed stories. This displayed that due to the child being significantly distracted, this assessment is questionable and the child would be able to develop her skills quickly when tested at a later date.

While reading the newly introduced text, Our Granny (Wild, 1993), the child displayed signs of reading at a transitional level. The book’s difficulty in terms of complexity of vocabulary and syntax as well as the amount of contextual support in the illustrations was applied well to the child (Hill, 2006), as I was able to scaffold her reading development within her zone of proximal development (Bennett & Maclean, 2008). By providing students with texts which suit their level of reading ability, the more knowledgeable listener will be able to scaffold the child’s reading, ensuring that they are able to gain sufficient practice from their experience while reading (Hill, 2006). While reading Our Granny (Wild, 1993), the child used multiple cues to gain the meaning of a word or sentence structures. These cues included breaking a word into smaller words or sounding out the syllables, if this cue did not initially help her, she would then look towards the pictures on the page to gain insight into the meaning. When these cues still did not assist the learner, I would help to scaffold her reading by sounding out the start of a word, or encouraging the correct sound for the letters in the word. This was specifically displayed when the child displayed difficulty in forming the word ‘caravan’, as she pronounced the letter c as an s sound. Once I had scaffolding the correct sounding of the letter, the child was able to correctly sound out and read the word correctly.

The child’s reading ability was assessed at a standard level of 2.5, however she was working closely towards the 2.75 standards of progression points (VELS website). She used a range of strategies to enable understanding of the text and to read unfamiliar words, such as looking at the illustrations and sounding out the syllables and letters. After the child had read the new text, she was able to answer the literal, interruptive and inferential questions accurately and was able to elaborate her thoughts to display her understanding of the concepts gained from the text. She was able to relate the information from the text to her own life, through her own experiences with her grandparents; this displayed her thorough inferential understanding of the text. When asked the different questions, the child did not hesitate to think about how to answer the questions, this displayed that she was able to encode the information from the text while she read the book. Her reading comprehension would be assessed at a 2.75 standard level, displaying abilities at working closely towards a level 3 standard (VELS website).

The child’s interest in reading and writing was displayed through her self motivation to pursue these activities while at home in her own leisure. This interest has undeniably influenced her skills and abilities to read and write. Her thorough comprehension abilities were at a higher standard level that’s expected of a child in early grade two. Although her reading fluency was slightly interrupted, she was able to self correct her mistakes regularly, displaying perseverance to achieve understanding