STEAM – it’s a word that we’ve been hearing a lot of over the past few years. This year, the school I’m working at has STEAM as a focus for learning, so I have been particularly interested in learning more about this learning area and how I can integrate it into my Prep classroom.
Continue reading “How To Integrate STEAM Into Your Early Years Classroom”
Mother’s Day is just around the corner and there are lots of teachers and educators searching for the perfect gift idea for the students in their class to make for the special mother figures in their lives. If you’re looking for fun and cute Mother’s Day craft ideas for kids, then you have come to the right place! There is something so special about handmade gifts from children that mothers really treasure. Read on to find out some of my favourite craft ideas for kids to make for Mother’s Day.
Wooden Hanging Heart Frames
I love these Wooden Hanging Heart Frames because of their versatility, there is so much you can do with them! Whether you’re leaving them plain for a more natural look or painting them with pastel paints, these frames are bound to look beautiful. If you’re leaving them plain, they look really nice paired with brown cardboard, ‘MUM’ tiles and plain wooden beads. If you’re after something a bit more colourful, using pastel paints to paint over the MDF wood is the way to go. Once dry, embellishing these with coloured cardboard showcasing drawings and special messages inside the love heart frame looks really sweet. Alternatively, adding a little extra sparkle with biodegradable glitter or pastel sequins also looks great! Finish off these Wooden Hanging Heart Frames by tying on a pipe cleaner so that these beautiful gifts can be proudly hung somewhere special for Mum to always see.
MTA Product Used:
Wooden Hanging Heart Frames
Pastel Paints
Pastel Crate Craft Kit
Wooden Letter MUM tiles – set of 20
Bio-Glitter Set of 8
Plain Wooden Beads – pack of 300
Heart Shaped Key Rings
Mothers are always carrying their keys around with them, so what better reminder that they are loved than these adorable Heart Shaped Key Rings? If you are a time-poor teacher and after a quick and easy Mother’s Day craft for your students, then I highly recommend these key rings. Simply cut out cardboard in a heart shape (you can use the plastic from the key ring to help with shape and sizing) and then your students can draw and write a special Mother’s Day picture and/or message. Alternatively, how cute would a photograph of each child look inside these clear key rings?! I am positive all mothers would love a special keepsake like this.
MTA Product Used:
Heart Shaped Key ring – Pack of 10
Wooden Bead Necklaces
Making necklaces for Mother’s Day is hands down my absolute favourite crafty gift and my students always enjoy making them for their Mum/mother figure too! The reason why I think necklaces are the perfect handmade gift is because they are pretty quick and easy to make AND I love seeing how happy it makes children when they see their Mum proudly wearing their creations. Now we know that mothers are absolute angels who will pretty much wear anything their children make them… but how good would it be if they actually got beautiful necklaces that didn’t clash with most of their outfits? That’s why I love these Wooden Bead Necklaces that were made using plain wooden beads, natural beading cord and beads that were painted with pastel paints. The wooden beads are lovely and natural and the beads that have been painted with pastel paints are subtle enough to go with almost any outfit. You can even make a matching bracelet by threading the wooden beads onto a pipe cleaner and tying it around!
MTA Product Used:
Plain Wooden Beads – Pack of 300
Natural Beading Cord
Pastel Paints
Pastel Crate Craft Kit
Handmade Cards
Is there anything more meaningful than a handmade card? I don’t think so! As a teacher, I know nothing beats a card that a student has made for you, which is why handmade cards are at the top of my favourite craft ideas for Mother’s Day. I love the look of these Natural Cards and Envelopes, they are a beautiful natural colour and the perfect blank canvas to get creative with! Children can use a range of craft materials to turn these cards into something special. My personal favourites are ‘If Mums were flowers, I’d pick you’ that can be paired with felt flowers, and, ‘I love you to pieces’ which involves cutting a heart shape in the front and then having lots of small felt pieces on the inside of the card. So sweet!
MTA Product Used:
Pastel Crate Craft Kit
Natural Cards and Envelopes – Pack of 20
Wooden Letter MUM Tiles – Set of 20
Felt Flowers – Pack of 100
Wooden Box Display Frames
Last but definitely not least in my favourite Mother’s Day craft ideas for kids is these adorable Wooden Box Display Frames. These frames are really cool because the contents inside the frame can be viewed from both sides through the clear plastic panels. They are perfect for displaying sweet messages, drawings and embellishments with craft materials such as felt flowers, pom poms, ‘MUM’ tiles and buttons. These display frames would also look very nice with a photograph inside them. So many options!
MTA Product Used:
Pastel Crate Craft Kit
Small Box Display Frame
Wooden Letter MUM Tiles – set of 20
Felt Flowers – Pack of 100
What is your favourite Mother’s Day craft idea for kids? We’d love to hear from you!
ABOUT HEIDI:
Heidi Overbye from Learning Through Play is a Brisbane-based, Early Years Teacher who currently teaches Prep, the first year of formal schooling in Queensland. Heidi is an advocate for play-based, hands-on learning experiences and creating stimulating and creative learning spaces. Heidi shares what happens in her classroom on her Instagram page, Learning Through Play. See @learning.through.play for a huge range of activities, play spaces and lesson
A happy new year to you all, and welcome back to the MTA Book Blog!
It doesn’t feel like very long ago at all that we were shining a light on our picture books for brighter times — I do hope you were able to enjoy that fantastic Brighter Times discount! And now here we are at the start of a brand-new year, hopefully full of brighter times ahead but definitely full of fabulous books just waiting to be discovered!
In the spirit of things that are brand new, for this first post of 2022, we’re going to be taking a closer look at some perfect picture books to support children who are starting school for the very first time this year.
Starting school is undoubtedly one of the most enormous and most emotional milestones in a young child’s life, and never more so than right now. With many of the children moving up into primary school this year having spent the last two years with decidedly disrupted routines, the transition to primary school is likely to be one that is approached with understandably increased anxiety and trepidation. As always, books to the rescue.
We have selected some utterly wonderful picture books to help young children prepare for the move mentally, physically and emotionally in our Starting School Book Pack. So grab your lunchbox, say one last goodbye to the cat and check you’ve got your lucky scrunchie, because we’re off to school!
‘First Day’ by Andrew Daddo and Johnathan Bentley
We start the day with the sweet and touching ‘First Day’ by Aussie author/illustrator duo Andrew Daddo and Johnathan Bentley. In ‘First Day’, we join a little girl and her mum as they prepare for the first day of school. But who is reassuring who?
In this cleverly written story, it’s not until the final page that the narrator becomes clear, and we realise that it’s the little girl who has been speaking the comforting words to her mother throughout, coaching her through the day, anticipating the challenges and conceding that she too has some first-day nerves.
‘I might have to be a bit brave, too.
But it’s not for long.
Let’s meet here when the bell goes.’
The transposition of traditional adult/child roles in books is always a source of delight for children, and ‘First Day’ is a great example of this. In demonstrating that those feelings of anxiety and uncertainty are not only natural but also shared by a big-brave-all-knowing adult, the book brilliantly models emotional vulnerability and allows children to find comfort in knowing they’re not alone in their first-day feelings.
‘Starting School’ by Jane Godwin and Anna Walker
For our next lesson, we’ll be looking at the gorgeously illustrated ‘Starting School’ by another Aussie author/illustrator team, Jane Godwin and Anna Walker. In this story, we are introduced to five children on their first day of school. Each child has different expectations coming into the classroom, and each one has a very different first-day experience.
‘Polly is trying to be brave.
Sunita doesn’t know anyone, but she feels ready for school.
Hannah feels excited, but Tim doesn’t want to leave his mum.
Joe has found an interesting book about dinosaurs.’
For me, it’s this diversity in the experiences that are presented that is the most valuable element of ‘Starting School’. As children approach school age, this also coincides with the development of their ‘theory of mind’; the understanding that other people have motivations, emotions and experiences of events that may differ from their own. This is crucial for a child’s social-emotional development, particularly within the context of establishing new friendships and relationships in a school community.
A follow-up discussion with your new starters about which one of the children in the story — if any — had the same feelings they did on their first day will encourage children to share their own experiences, promote empathy and further develop their theory of mind as they acknowledge the diversity of experiences within their new classroom.
‘The Wild Guide to Starting School’ by Laura and Philip Bunting
For our final lesson of the day, we’re in for a real treat with an adorably hilarious picture book from powerhouse Aussie husband-and-wife team Laura and Philip Bunting. If laughter is the best medicine, then allow me to prescribe a big gulp of ‘The Wild Guide to Starting School’ to soothe those first-day jitters. ‘The Wild Guide to Starting School’ reads as a how-to guide that will have your little ones giggling on every page as they learn what to do and — importantly — what not to do when they get to school. Helpful tips include:
At this point I should probably point out that the characters in ‘The Wild Guide to Starting School’ are all Australian animals (although would it be that much of a stretch?), which adds fantastic comic value and allows for some truly brilliant illustrations. However, amongst the silliness there is genuinely helpful advice, as well as some big-hearted truths about how devoted and caring teachers are and how everyone is feeling lots of Big Feelings, all of which are valid and all of which are perfectly normal.
There goes the bell! That means it’s time to wrap up this week’s post, tidy our tables, gather our things (how did I lose my sock?) and head on home, ready to do it all again next time!
So, if you’re looking for the perfect picture books to ease your new starters into your classroom — or if you’re an early childhood educator looking to help prepare your intrepid little learners and ensure their transition to primary school is as smooth as possible — then look no further than the titles in the Starting School Book Pack. These sweet, relatable and fiendishly funny books will fill your little ones with knowledge, confidence and empathy as they embark upon this most exciting of new adventures.
See you on the playground!*
*kidding, I’ll be in the library.
About the Author
Emily Bruce is the Managing Editor at Modern Teaching Aids (although she prefers the term Grammar-Wrangler-in-Chief). She has worked in children’s publishing in the UK and Australia for eight years and is passionate about finding the spark that ignites a lifelong love of literacy in the next generation of storytellers.
Every new school year brings with it a level of excitement for both teachers and students. It is my favourite time of the year as everyone begins with a fresh start and an enthused energy for the year ahead. For teachers, we have the privilege of getting to teach a new class of students, designing the learning space from a blank canvas, and for many, the always-elusive goal to be more organised.
In this post I will be sharing some of my must-have resources for the classroom along with my favourite beginning-of-the-year activities to get to know your students and for your students to get to know each other.
Classroom Must-Haves:
When setting up my classroom I always like to have a theme or colour scheme. Over the years some of my favourite themes that I have created have been based on butterflies, ‘Up in the Sky’ (hot air balloons, planes), the ocean and the circus. I love having the colours of the learning space, resources and display boards match to set the tone of a creative organised space that welcomes students to our class.
Some items I love to include in my classroom are;
These products can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom and the best thing is that they all match.
Lap Trays
These Lap Trays are a great addition to any junior primary classroom. They allow for flexibility in the learning space during group work and also during independent learning. I love that these trays provide students with a hard surface to complete tasks in their books so they do not need to write on the carpet or flooring. I use these daily with my students during small group work that takes place on the floor space around the class. Many students also choose to use the Lap Trays during independent learning time so they can work in a quiet spot or away from others. In my classroom, I have a beautiful courtyard outside where my students sometimes choose to go outside to work and these Lap Trays allow them to have a suitable surface to work on.
Classroom Book Caddies
These Book Caddies are a great way to store take-home readers and student books. I organise my student books in these Book Caddies and have labels on them for maths, reading, writing and inquiry books. I like having them all together for two reasons; the first being that students do not need to go to their tubs to get their specific book, rather I can either have the class captain hand the books out or I can call out student names to collect, and the second being that at the end of a learning experience students place all their books back into the Book Caddy and then I can easily view and assess their learning rather than searching through each student’s tub for their book.
Classroom Caddies
These Classroom Caddies are perfect for shared stationery and the vibrant colours stand out when placed on classroom tables. The compartments in the Classroom Caddies allow for pencils, pens, scissors, glue, rulers to be stored neatly, making them easily accessible for student use.
Classroom Caddies are also a great resource for sharing required activity materials. During STEM and Inquiry Learning activities I use the Classroom Caddies to provide each group or table with the resources they need for the specific activity. I can organise the materials prior to the lesson and, upon completion, students can return the materials in an orderly way making clean up a lot more efficient.
Chair Bags
These beautiful Chair Bags provide students with a place to store their essentials without the hassle of a tub. I love the various pocket sizes which allow for students to store their devices, exercise books and the book they are reading, along with their essential classroom resources like a ruler, pencil case etc.
Beginning-of-the-Year Activities:
At the beginning of the school year the priority should be on developing relationships with your students and getting to know what they each like and are interested in. Spending time undertaking activities that highlight student personalities will support you as the teacher but also allow students to get to know each other and begin to develop new friendships. These activities also provide teachers with an insight to see how students work together, interact and complete tasks.
These are my favourite activities to get to know your students:
Jigsaw Activity:
Materials
– Jigdraw – 20 Pack
– Snap-lock bags
Each student receives a blank Jigdraw template with 20 pieces. Students draw a different image on each puzzle piece that represents something about themselves. Some ideas for images can be family, pets, hobbies, favourite food, favourite places etc.
Students place their completed Jigdraw pieces into a snap lock bag.
The snap lock bags are then randomly handed out to students who need to put the puzzle pieces together and then try to guess which student is represented by the images.
These Jigdraw blocks are also a great resource to use for students to share their learning during inquiry learning. They can then build upon their ideas and knowledge as the learning continues throughout the year.
Chalk Mindmaps
Materials – Sidewalk Chalk
Chalk is a great resource to have in any classroom. I have found the Sidewalk Chalk to be the perfect size and thickness for student use and it comes in great colours. Students can use the Sidewalk Chalk to draw directly onto concrete, but I have created blackboard-painted timber pieces for student use across many learning areas.
Students receive a number of blackboard-painted timber pieces and draw a giant Mindmap to highlight the topic they are given. The topic gets placed in the centre and then students write or draw their ideas and place them around the topic to create their giant mind map. This is a great visualisation too.
Some ideas I like to focus on at different times are;
I hope this blog post has provided you with some inspiration to help you set up your classroom or provide you with some beginning-of-the-year activity ideas to get to know your students.
Featured Products:
About the author
Eleni Kyritsis is an award-winning Year 3 teacher and Leader of Curriculum and innovation from Melbourne, Australia. Eleni facilitates professional learning workshops around the world that focus on unleashing creativity and curiosity in classrooms. You can contact her at elenikyritis.com and @misskyritsis
A positive, nourished mindset is so important to keep the energy high all year round. Our goal is to support and nurture educators when the physical and emotional demands of day-to-day tasks and experiences exceed the amount of energy available! (Over a long period of time, this can lead to feeling overwhelmed and drained.)
In this piece, we’ll look at valuable ways in which learning spaces can be shaped to support and respond to children’s and families’ needs. This ensures everyone feels safe, connected and comfortable in the setting, including all the great educators out there worth their weight in gold!
Comfy & Cosy Spaces
Soft furnishings ensure children have access to a comfortable learning environment and can include anything from rugs and carpets to cushions, canopies, netting, fabrics and more!
Soft furnishings can transform a loud and busy learning environment by absorbing noise and helping to create pockets of calm where children can, for example, snuggle into a big cushion to read a book, or lie down and have a rest in a cosy and comfy spot. Soft furnishings can modify a rustic cubby house into an inviting and comfortable cave or create a welcoming area for the class to sit together to yarn, share stories and plan out the day’s events.
Featured Product:
MTA Spaces – Navy Foam-Filled Lounger
Calming & Reflective Spaces
Calming and reflective spaces offer a peaceful learning setting in which children can embrace quiet. Here, children can spend time relaxing and reflecting away from the hustle and bustle of a busy classroom.
Cushions, fabrics, tents and dens can all contribute to quiet and reflective spaces, making cosy and comfortable spots for children to explore and make their own.
Combine these spaces with books, puzzles, soft toys, tea parties or anything else that children would like to add to their retreat. A calming and reflective space can be just the thing to refuel children’s energy.
Featured Product:
Stockholm Spaces – Cosy Retreat
Spaces of Belonging
The way children and their families are welcomed into the learning environment makes an incredible difference to their sense of belonging. Belonging is all about feeling connected and secure, valued and accepted with the community’s people and place. A deep sense of belonging ensures the emotional wellbeing of children and their families can thrive, including their self-worth, confidence, capability and adaptability, to name a few.
Feeling secure and connected within their social and physical learning environments will also ensure that these settings become places of safety and refuge for children and families to work through the challenges and difficulties they might be experiencing.
Educators are in an excellent position to build a sense of belonging, not only with their words and actions but also with the physical settings too. Seeing welcoming resources such as wall hangings or displays or children’s names on parent communication pockets will invite families into the settings. Classroom journals will also empower children and their families to contribute to the program and the day’s happenings.
A place where everyone belongs.
Featured Product:
Mindful Spaces
Affirmations, mindfulness and restful breathing activities, including yoga, can all help ‘cultivate calm’ while fostering a peaceful and positive mindset. Creating a daily ritual with affirmations and yoga
or meditation and breathing will empower young children to nurture their self-awareness, set positive intentions and work through emotional regulation in healthy and helpful ways.
Focusing on gratitude – the feeling of appreciation – is also a powerful way to see the silver lining when everything seems gloomy. These Positive Mindset Affirmation Cards and I Am Me Affirmation Cards can enable the building of confidence, resilience and self-esteem by helping children to find the sunny side of any situation.
Featured Product:
Mindful & Co Kids Yoga Flash Cards
Engaging & Inspiring Spaces
It’s hard to feel motivated when you’re burnt out.
Refreshing your learning environment with a new and exciting project can go a long way in helping to reignite energy and enthusiasm. Light boxes and panels along with light box resources are wonderful tools to drive children’s motivation to explore and investigate with energy and enthusiasm. They light up the room in the most magical of ways, in turn bringing delight and wonder to learning curriculums.
Creating an engaging and inspiring learning environment ensures everyone wants to come back for more. What will happen today? The possibilities for discovery are endless!
Featured Product:
Stockholm Spaces – Round Table & Light Panel
Culturally Meaningful Spaces
Culturally meaningful curriculums in early childhood settings increase opportunities for its community members to feel connected – a place to feel safe and secure, to feel loved, appreciated and valued. A place to belong.
If you’re thinking, ‘This sounds great, but where do I begin?’, a good starting point is to have a wander through your setting. Does everything in your setting reflect the diverse backgrounds of its community members (the children and their families, the educators and service staff, as well as the wider community at large)?
There’s no end to the items that you can meaningfully interweave throughout your environment. Include dolls, figurines, pretend food, dress-ups and props from around the world. Ensure children’s books portray the diversity of the world’s peoples, perspectives, cultures and abilities in a positive light. Make sure there are truly authentic cultural and Indigenous resources for children to connect with on a daily basis. Invite educators and families to share their cultural backgrounds – learn some keywords and phrases from different languages, learn a song or dance, cook foods from around the world or engage in traditional storytelling.
Featured Product:
Fair Trade Aboriginal Ceremony Matching Game
Purposeful Spaces
Learning spaces that are set up purposefully can bring safety and comfort and a sense of calm to the environment. The physicality of the space (the size, furniture placement etc.) communicates what is to happen, providing clear boundaries and fostering behaviours of motivated and engaged learners. Create breakaway areas, book corners and home corners or simply direct foot traffic in safe and effective ways.
How can a purposeful space be created? It might be through using non-fixed furniture pieces that can be easily moved around the room to create and define predictable play spaces. Open-backed shelving also acts as a barrier while allowing for maximum supervision. Rugs and carpets define a learning space, while the number of chairs, cushions and pillows communicate how many children the area is suitable for at any one time.
The resources chosen to join the space will also encourage positive behaviours. Organised and uncluttered spaces with a considered selection of materials will invite children to develop their skills and interests while interacting in positive ways and achieving learning goals.
Featured Product:
Stockholm Spaces – Circular Low Table
Creative Spaces
With all those big feelings and emotions children are experiencing, spaces in which children can express themselves with art become even more important. The creative and expressive arts (including painting and drawing, dance, drama, music and movement) all allow children to work through their feelings and emotions by creatively expressing themselves, which is especially important when the words can’t be found.
Providing a space that includes a wide variety of creative materials ensures children have endless opportunities to process what’s happening in their world and come to terms with their experiences. A space where children’s voices and perspectives are seen and heard.
Creative spaces aren’t just for children though! A selection of art materials in the staff room can provide a creative strategy for educators to relieve stress. Drawing or colouring-in for adults can help boost positive feelings or simply take your mind off things.
Featured Product:
Storytelling Spaces
Grab a comfy cushion – it’s storytime!
Books that gently and sensitively capture the lived experience of lockdown, such as While We Can’t Hug, Share Your Rainbow and Windows are invaluable in helping children make sense of an ever-changing ‘new normal’ during the current pandemic. The Fun & Humour Book Pack is guaranteed to make children laugh with continuous joy and entertainment, while the Emotional Development Book Pack celebrates some important milestones in young children’s emotional development with just the right touch of imagination.
Whether it’s everyday shared reading with the Big Books Mixed Carton or storybooks that delve into specific topics, books are a powerful way for children to explore and process their feelings and emotions, supporting and empowering them to identify and articulate the things they are experiencing.
Multigenerational Spaces
Adult-sized furniture pieces ensure educators have places to sit safely and comfortably throughout the day, as well as provide welcoming statements for families to participate. Whether it’s reading a story from the Intergenerational Shared Reading Pack or providing a space for carers to feed their little ones before setting off, adult-sized armchairs, sofas, chairs and cushions will ensure a homelike setting where all the members of the learning community feel comfortable and welcome.
Featured Product:
Aalto – Full-Size High Back Armchair
A well thought out learning environment has the power to support the wellbeing of children & their families – and educators too! It can encourage exploration, enquiry and discovery – and can include open spaces to move about, cosy nooks to hide away and everything in between. It can respond to individuals needs and interests, provide stimulation and excitement, security and comfort, demonstrate cultural diversity and perhaps most importantly- a deep sense of belonging for all.
Thanks for joining us over here at the Modern Teaching Blog today!
About the Author
Penny Groen is an Early Childhood Teacher who has been working in Early Childhood Education and Care settings around Sydney for 17 years. She has a passion for working in meaningful partnerships with families and communities, providing a responsive and engaging curriculum where everyone feels welcome to contribute. You can see Penny’s interest in the natural world with all the weird and wonderful experiments growing both inside and outside the classroom. Penny is also known for equipping children with the tools to explore their interests and celebrate the discoveries each day brings.
LEGO® Education products are perfect for children who need a little more time to grasp STEM concepts, or who learn better hands-on. 10 primary teachers share their thoughts on the STEM solution bringing fun back into tech class.
Continue reading “10 Ways LEGO Education Will Transform Your STEM Lessons”
Has the Grinch stolen your Christmas gifting inspiration? Our teacher-approved Christmas gift guide is packed with ideas that are guaranteed to bring smiles on Christmas morning (and won’t end up stuffed in the back of the closet come January!).
When you think about the new school year, how do you feel? Motivated? Excited? Nervous? Anxious? I usually feel a combination of all of the above! On top of all these feelings, it’s easy to feel incredibly overwhelmed during this very busy time of year. I find the easiest way to beat that overwhelmed feeling is by getting organised, one step at a time. Continue reading “Getting Organised For The New School Year”
Let’s talk about learning resources and what makes some of them so popular! Is it the quality, reliability and value for money? Is it their sustainability and eco-friendly footprint on the environment? Is it the play value? Yes, absolutely! But it’s also so much more than that. Continue reading “10 Most Popular Educational Resources Of 2021”
I started my career as an occupational therapist. My job was to help people relearn how to do things in their everyday life after experiencing an illness or disability. To do this I had to do two things: firstly, I had to analyse the task to establish exactly what the person needed in order to be able to carry out the task and secondly I had to find out what they could and could not do. Only then could I develop a plan to help them master the task. I have applied this same approach – task analysis and assessment of skills and knowledge – to the process of teaching and learning literacy skills.
Mastering a skill of any sort usually involves learning strategies and techniques with lots of practice to hone the skill so that it can be used in different situations. Think about how we teach young children to play a sport. Children who want to play football for example, spend a lot of time learning the skills of ball handling, working with others and understanding the rules of the game. With those skills in place, they are then ready to start playing a game of football.
Whether children start playing football as pre-schoolers or come to the game later, they still have to master these skills and learn the rules of the game. Practice sessions continue to teach and refine these skills and budding footballers spend a lot of time honing their skills so that they can use them automatically and efficiently in a game.
This approach to teaching a sport works well when teaching literacy. Writing and reading are complex processes. Just like a game of football, they require the ‘player’ to master a range of skills and knowledge and to understand how to use them. Just like in football, some children pick up the skills effortlessly and master them with only a small amount of practice. Others take longer, and some decide that football is not for them because the skills required seem too hard to master. Being able to read and write is not like football – playing football is optional, learning to read and write is not. The way we teach children to read and write has to be successful. We need to explicitly teach the skills and knowledge they need to learn if they are to become successful readers and writers.
So what does explicit instruction mean for literacy?
It means understanding what is involved in learning to read and write. It means finding out what skills and knowledge students already have and where they have gaps. It means using assessment to drive instruction – to teach the skills and knowledge students have not mastered but need to learn. Sometimes this means whole class instruction and sometimes it means giving students the extra instruction and practice they need in small groups or individually.
Explicit instruction to close the gaps
I wrote ‘Catch Up Your Code’ and ‘Sort Out Your Syllables’ to address gaps in literacy knowledge for students in upper primary and secondary classrooms. From Year 5 and beyond, students are required to read more and more complex texts in subject areas that are often new to them. The language is more formal, and many words are multisyllabic, abstract and technical. Students who have not mastered the ability to decode automatically and efficiently will struggle. It is estimated that the average fifth year student encounters about ten thousand new words – described as an “orthographic avalanche” that overwhelms most of those without adequate decoding skills.
Teach decoding explicitly
If decoding is not automatic, the skills and knowledge needed must be taught explicitly. First and foremost, students need an in-depth knowledge of how the alphabetic code of English works. ‘Catch Up Your Code’ teaches this. To decode efficiently, students must recognise graphemes and be able to pronounce them in different ways. Once they have a conscious understanding of the diverse nature of grapheme-phoneme relationships, they can use this knowledge as a foundation for learning to decode unfamiliar multisyllabic words.
That’s where ‘Sort Out Your Syllables’ comes in. Students use their knowledge of the code for the vowel sounds of English, to find and pronounce syllables in unfamiliar words. These two areas of knowledge and skill – alphabetic code knowledge and strategies for decoding multisyllabic words – will dramatically improve decoding skills in the upper years. If decoding isn’t efficient by Year 5, it will not become so, without explicit instruction that targets gaps in knowledge and skills.
Sorting vowel spelling patterns – the key to finding syllables in words
These Year 7 and 8 students are working collaboratively to learn about the nine types of vowel spelling patterns they will find in syllables.
Teach the skills for writing explicitly
From Year 5 onwards, students are required to write longer, more complex scripts in different writing genres. The expectation is that they should have mastered the foundation skills for writing: to write speedily and legibly, to spell most high-frequency words correctly, to use spelling strategies to spell most words close to correctly, to write in paragraphs, to use punctuation correctly, to proofread their writing for spelling and punctuation errors, to revise and edit their work to improve the content. Unfortunately, many students who find handwriting and correct spelling a challenge will struggle to master the other higher-order skills of writing, regardless of their potential to write as well as they can speak.
The way to improve writing skills is to explicitly target the areas that need improvement, starting with the foundation skills. If handwriting is a major challenge by Year 5, students may be best to use a digital device to avoid illegible handwriting hindering their writing progress.
If they struggle to spell words correctly, a range of strategies are needed. Firstly, students need to be able to write every sound of English in at least one way and they also need knowledge of the diversity of the code. ‘Catch Up Your Code’ teaches this. They need to know how to write multisyllabic words they can say but not spell. ‘Sort Out Your Syllables’ teaches this.
They then need to learn about the spelling system of English – the rules and conventions that affect why words are written the way they are. Once they are fluent in getting words on the page in a form that can easily be read – even if they are not all spelt correctly – they can then be taught strategies for punctuation and paragraphing, authorship, proofreading and editing. All the skills for writing need to be taught explicitly, starting with those that build the foundation for authorship.
Summary
Explicit instruction for literacy is simply targeting the knowledge and skills that research has shown to be essential for students to learn to read and write, and ensuring they are taught in a logical, sequential and direct way. It doesn’t matter whether students have just started school or have been at school for a while – everyone benefits from explicit instruction.
Use assessments to find out what students know and can do. Teach what they need to learn.
Check they have learned it. Leave nothing to chance.
The way we teach has to ensure all students become successful readers and writers. Teaching skills and knowledge explicitly is the best way to ensure this happens.
Featured Products:
About the Author
Joy Allcock (M.Ed). Independent Literacy consultant, facilitator of teacher professional
development throughout New Zealand and internationally. Presenter at NZ and international literacy conferences (IRA, ASCD/ACEL). Author of a range of literacy resources for teachers and students (www.joyallcock.co.nz). Leader of Shine Literacy Research Project (designed and evaluated by Massey University – www.literacysuccess.org.nz)
