Inquiry End of Term 3 2019

Expanding Skill Bases

This term has seen the priority learners expanding their literacy skills and learning to manipulate sounds in unfamiliar words in their reading as well as in their writing.  This is giving the children a degree of independency in learning to recognise words and how to write words they need.  They are learning to develop their phonemic awareness using a wider range of skills and to know that some letters represent one sound in one word but a different sound in another word.  Some letters when put together make a completely different sound.

In reading they are learning to distinguish sounds at the beginning of a word, in the middle of a word and at the end of a word.  This means they have to listen carefully to the different sounds in letters as they try to use their newly learnt skills.  Perhaps it is thinking of a word that begins with the same sound, isolating just a single sound within the word, blending individual sounds into a word or breaking a word into individual sounds.  Manipulating sounds by being able to change, move or modify the individual sounds in a word is another important skill that the children are beginning to be aware of.

To use any of these skills the children are really "thinking" as they reading.  They know they need to  attend to or notice the letter components of a word and the sequencing to work out what skills are needed to help decode unknown words.  If one strategy doesn't help they need to be able to switch tack and choose a different strategy.  They are learning that some strategies may be more helpful on a word than another and to at least try something different instead of appealing to the teacher.

It is important that they remember to use these skills as they are moving up to levels where the books are longer and the challenges of a larger, more complex vocabulary is greater.  Three of the children are now reading at Level 11/12 and the other child is reading at Level 8/9.

In writing they are being encouraged to record sounds even if they aren't able to record every sound in the word and move on to complete their story, going back and editing later.  This is giving them more confidence with their writing - they are not getting stuck on one word and leaving the task incomplete.  They are writing three or four sentences and on the whole making some good approximations of unknown words and being proud of their efforts.  Their enthusiasm to write each day is great to see along with the writing they are doing in their own time.  Some of the words and phrases they are using are not coming from the writing discussions but from books that we read aloud and they have remembered.  This is something new.

Unsupported writing is still formulaic in ideas - "I went to ..." as it is easy and something they know how to write but one of the children is starting to try and include speech with what was said in the story.  Spelling is mainly high frequency words but with the beginnings of "inventive" spelling.  It is good to see that being unsupported they are trying hard to be resourceful and use their knowledge to complete the task.

Looking at how many correct words they can write in 10 minutes is also improving.  One child can write 19 correct words with the highest being 35.  These include topic words, high frequency words and well as word families.  All these children are still striving to learn words from their word lists.

Other ways to encourage enthusiasm for writing are dictation iPad activities, learning to say and write words and games and listening skill activities such as Chinese Whispers, "I went Shopping and bought...", oral cloze games and rhyming "I Spy".  These games and activities give the children time to practise their skills in a fun way.

It is exciting to see the children on the way to becoming "code breaker" and "meaning maker" word detectives by progressing up the continuum of learning phonics even if they still need support as they practise their skills.