CHAPTER 5 TEACHING READING AND WRITING

THEORY, PLANNING AND APPLICATION

Consideration for Teaching Reading and Writing

Reading is an interactive process involving the reader, the text, and the writer.

Listening & reading are similar, both receptive skills, processing what others have said

or written, but doing so in an active way.

Speaking and writing are similar, both productive skills, where we take what we known

about the world, about the texts, and about language to express an idea or opinion, to

make an observation, to provide information, to communicate our thoughts or needs, or

to create a poem, a story or a song.

First and Second Language Reading and Writing

When there is sufficient English language development, many of the child’s skills and

strategies used in reading and writing in the first language will transfer to another

language(Cummins, 1979)

All children, whether first- or second language readers, go through the same five initial

literacy steps:

1. Awareness and exploration

2. Experimenting with reading & writing

3. Early reading & writing

4. Transitional reading & writing

5. Conventional Reading & writing

(Association & the National Association for the Educational of Young Children, 1998)

When children learn literacy skills in the first language, they develop several broad areas of

knowledge that they can access in English. These are:

Visual knowledge: about print and text direction

Phonological knowledge: about sounds represented by symbols(though children will

usually think of this as the sounds that symbols make)

Lexical knowledge: about meaning construction and making sense of words

Semantic knowledge: about social use of language as discourse

(Brewster, Ellis & Girard, 2004)

Challenges awaiting for young learners as they begin reading and writing in English.

a) Writing system – children whose language is written in same Roman alphabet as English

will have much less difficulty learning to read and write in English than those whose

language is written in another alphabet.

b) How text presented on the page – whether one reads and writes from right to left or top

c)

to bottom and right to left, or from left to right as in English.

c) Limited vocabulary, different background (cultural) knowledge than may be required to

interpret a text, and differences in text structure (Lenters, 2004/2005).

When we are developing literacy activities for young learners, then, we need to consider at

least the following:

Has the child learned to read and write in her/his own language?

Is the child just beginning to learn to read in her/his own language?

Is that language written in the Roman alphabet, another alphabet or characters?

How does one read and write a text in that language (from left to right, right to left,

top to bottom)?

What skills and strategies has the child developed in making meaning from and with

text?

One challenge facing all children(including English-speaking children) is to learn the

different ways in which English represents sounds.

According to Geva and Wang (2001) in their review of the differences in learning to read

in different languages, English has a “deep” orthography, one in which it can be difficult

to sound out many words from the way in which they are written or spelled.

Why include Reading and Writing in Young Learners Classes?

Reading and writing can reinforce what is being learned orally

Reading expands the sources of input, and writing helps in remembering that input

Writing provides a way to consolidate learning from the other skills and reading helps

students to see the conventions of writing

Children enjoy reading and writing if the texts are meaningful and related to their

experiences (including using the many resources of the internet)

Reading and writing help link the EYL class with home, as children bring home

writing they have done to share with their families or do homework requiring reading

and writing.

Reading and writing can also link EYL class with other classes in school, where

written language plays an important part

Writing provides another means of self-expression and, when read by others, a

sense of confidence and pride

(Pinter, 2006; Scott & Ytreberg, 1990)

Teachers can make their classroom especially “print-rich” by labeling objects in the

classroom; posting calendars, maps, or class birthday charts; creating word walls as

new vocabulary is introduced; engaging children in drawing and labeling pictures to post

in the room, and as they write more, to produce class books that can be read by children

during independent reading time(Curtain and Dahlberg, 2010; Pinter, 2006; Collins,

2004).

Considerations for Teaching Reading

Reading is a process of relating written symbols to oral language, of constructing

meaning from written text (Goodman, 2005), or “making sense and deriving meaning

from the printed word” (Linse, 2005, p.69).

To be able to read, a child has to:

Understand the alphabet

Decode

Develop sight vocabulary to read fluently (with automaticity)

Develop strategies to help with comprehension and fluency

Read texts that match her/his reading level and interests

Engage in extensive reading (independent reading of a variety of texts)

(Adapted from Lenters, 2004/2005, p.331)

Schemata are known as experience and background information.

Language and content are recycled to help students to develop the background

knowledge, the vocabulary, and the structures to make sense of written texts.

APPROACHES TO TEACHING READING

When we read we activate two types of knowledge:

a) What we know about making meaning (top - down processing)

b) What we know about language (bottom – up processing)

In balancing an approach to reading, at least the following three approaches should be

considered for young learners:

1) PHONICS Is a bottom-up approach to processing a text.

It focuses on the smallest unit of text: the letters.

It teaches children the relationships between sounds and letters, how a particular sound

is symbolized in print, and how to “sound out” a word, given those sound- symbol

relationships.

The goal is to help children decode written language, using the sound-symbol

relationships they have learned, either in isolation or from other words.

Phonemic awareness activities Children need practice in discriminating English sounds- what is referred to as

phonemic awareness.

Example: separating the spoken word big into three distinct phonemes, /b/, /i/, and

/g/.

Phonemic awareness activities

a) Using traditional rhymes

b) Going on a rhyme hunt

c) Playing match mates

d) Developing riddles

e) Playing odd Man Out

f) Playing bouncing ball

g) Playing Rhyming Words Walk-About

Phonics activities

- While phonemic awareness focuses on oral language, phonics focuses on

written language, with the goal of learning the relationships between the sounds

and letters (spelling)of English.

Some phonics activities

- Identifying the number of syllables in a word

- Pointing to word that share a common letter-sound

- Sorting pictures or making a collage of objects that begin with the same letter-

sound or rhyme

- Matching words that share a common letter-sound

- Creating words from letters that have a common letter-sound

- Repeating chants with common letter-sounds that are written on the board

- Using predictable or patterned books

2) WHOLE LANGUAGE

- Begins with meaning and uses language in contect for futher word or language

study.

- It involves top-down processing, in which children bring their knowledge of the

world, their experiences with oral language and texts, using four types of clues:

a) Grapho-phonemic clues

b) Semantic clues

c) Syntactic clues

d) Pragmatic clues

- Sight words are taught because they are meaningful to the children and can then

be used in a variety of activities.

- Learning sight vocabulary helps children to see the connection between meaning

and visual representation.

- Teachers using a whole language approach to reading may take their learners

through the following sequence of reading activities which are complemented by

a similar sequence of writing activities (to be discussed).

STAGE OF A LESSON ACTIVITY

- Presentation - Reading aloud

- Controlled practice - Shared reading

- Guided writing - Guided reading

- Independent activity - Independent reading