Vivian Phan (25955691)

EDF1030 Literacy Learning and the Young Child

Denise Chapman 1pm Monday

Vivian Phan (25955691)

EDF1030 Literacy Learning and the Young Child
Denise Chapman 1pm Monday

Assessment 2 Portrait of a Literacy Learner

I was placed at a childcare centre for my placement, and was allocated into the 4-5
year old kinder room. During my placement I was able to observe the children in this
play-based environment interact with each other, draw pictures, create new things
and slowly learn how to read and write each day. My mentor teacher encouraged the
children to read and write in many ways which included reading a new story to them
during group time every day and encouraging them to try and learn to write their
names when drawing pictures. I was able to observe and interact with one specific
child who was slowly building onto her literacy levels in kinder before transitioning
into primary the next year.
Observation One:
Date: Friday 23rd May 2014
Student: 'Meredith'
Setting: Drawing Table (Kinder Room)
Activity: Drawing
Time: 2:10 - 2:25
As Meredith sat on the drawing table, a paper was placed in front of her by the
teacher. The first thing she does is pulls the bowl of pencils closer towards herself.
She picks out all the different colours, one pencil of each colour, then proceeds to
use them one by one. The first colour she uses is the green pencil, she places the
pencil in her left hand and uses the correct grip and draws a circle and places the
pencil back down.
She then proceeds to pick up the brown pencil with her left hand and draws another
circle next to the previous green one. Meredith continues to draw circles next to each
other using the different coloured pencils.
After drawing these circles, she turns around to me and asks "Can I please use
that?" and points at my pen. I answer her and hand her my pen. She places the pen
in her left hand and draws what she describes as a boat, then moves down below
the boat and starts drawing a butterfly balloon. After drawing these two pictures I ask
her what they are and she names them for me, a butterfly balloon and a boat."
After discovering what she has drawn I ask if she would like to write the words
butterfly and boat down and she agrees. At first I thought she was going to try and
write the word herself; however she asks "how do you write it?" So I start naming the
letters and she starts writing them down with the pen.
Meredith writes in the opposite direction, from right to left. With the word 'butterfly'
she writes the letters B, E, R, F and L backwards, however with the remaining letters
U, T and Y she writes them correctly with the right strokes. As we proceed to write

Vivian Phan (25955691)

EDF1030 Literacy Learning and the Young Child
Denise Chapman 1pm Monday

the word 'boat, she writes the letter B the same way as she wrote it in the word
'butterfly'. She writes it backwards and again starts writing the remaining letters O, A
and T from right to left.

Interpretation
Merediths writing has shown stages of the early emergent and emergent writing
levels. During this stage of writing, she is able to explore the use of symbolsto
represent words (Hill, 2012, p.316). These symbols that she uses to represent the
words are the pictures that she draws which she is able to identify and recognise
clearly, but she is still unable to use letters to represent the words that she knows.
This can be seen when she asks me how to write the words that she has drawn on
the paper. This shows that she may be inexperienced in writing as children will
simply make use of what they know...[and so it is her] inexperience that determines
[her] ability to write conventionally (Pahl, 1999 as cited in Bradford & Wyse 2012,
p.253).

Vivian Phan (25955691)

EDF1030 Literacy Learning and the Young Child
Denise Chapman 1pm Monday

Her writing shows that she needs to learn more writing skills in order to be prepared
for primary school the next year. It can be seen that Meredith may not have a lot of
knowledge on the concept of print but just the basic knowledge because it is
generally believed that children must have some understanding about print in order
to begin writing at all (Puranik, Lonigan & Kim, 2011). Furthermore, Meredith writes
the words from right to left, rather than left to right which shows that she has no
understanding of the linear principle. This could be because of how much
concentration she puts into writing the letters which consequently leads her to writing
the letters all over the page and in the opposite direction (Hill, 2012).
Observation Two:
Date: Friday 23rd May 2014
Student: 'Meredith'
Setting: Reading Corner (Kinder Room)
Activity: Reading
Time: 2:30 - 2:45
After drawing together on the drawing table, Meredith pulls my hand along and asks
me to go to the reading corner with her to read a book together. As the mentor
teacher hands us a range of books to choose from, she chooses "Maisy goes to the
library." I ask her why she chose this book and she replies by saying that it was her
favourite book at the kinder and she really likes Maisy.
As I open the book and ask her to read to me, she says "No, you read first, and then
I'll read." So I agree and proceed to read the story. After reading it, she says my turn
and turns the book back to the first page where she begins to read.
As she reads through the book, she points out to all the pictures on every page and
creates a story using the pictures rather than the words. She does not know how to
read the words or recognise them; however she is able to recall some lines of the
story from memory.
Meredith also occasionally stopped throughout the book when she was reading, to
point out to the speech bubbles in the pictures asking me what they said.

Vivian Phan (25955691)

EDF1030 Literacy Learning and the Young Child
Denise Chapman 1pm Monday

Interpretation
When Meredith reads she shows signs of early-emergent book reading as she tells
the story using the picture rather than reading the words. She is also slowly starting
to pay attention to the print in the book and link it to the pictures in the story (Hill,
2012). Because Meredith is not fully able to decode the concepts of print, she may
not be able to further her reading skills as novice readers must successfully acquire
the literacy knowledge needed to decode print if they are to proceed to the
subsequent phases of reading development (Clay, 2001 as quoted in Dooley &
Matthews, 2009).
Furthermore, Meredith has not yet developed the skills to decipher the words on the
page. She must be able to fully understand the methods of writing a language,
(which she has not as seen in the observation above) and in order to do this she
must be conscious of the correspondence between visual letters and the sounds that
they make (Stevens et al., 2008).
When Meredith reads she seems to be drawing upon memory as well as the pictures
to create the story and retell it back to me after I had read it. These are also signs of
early-emergent reading as studied by Elster (1994). She pointed out that earlyemergent readers use multiple sources of information concurrently: pictures, print,
social interaction, memory of teacher-led discussions, attention to text language, and
understanding of oral and written language conventions (Elster, 1994 as quoted in
Hill, 2012, p.169). It seems that Meredith may have combined a range of these
different sources of information which she chose in response to reading the book
which she had chosen.

Goals and Objectives

Literacy Goal 1: Handwriting
Objectives: Formation of Letters
Literacy Goal 2: Concepts of Print
Objective: Mechanics (Punctuation Marks)
Literacy Goal 3: Characteristics of Letters
Objective: Sounding Out Letters

Vivian Phan (25955691)

EDF1030 Literacy Learning and the Young Child
Denise Chapman 1pm Monday

Lesson Plan:
Activity 1 Rainbow Coloured Letters

This activity was chosen to help Meredith learn how to write the letters the right way
rather than backwards and to help her practice her handwriting skills. Writing
rainbow coloured letters would be an activity that Meredith may like as she enjoys
using many colours when drawing, as seen in the observation.
Before starting the activity with Meredith, I will show her what we will be creating first.
I will show her the finished product, which will be a letter traced over using the
colours of the rainbow to create a rainbow letter.
After doing that I will demonstrate to Meredith how to create the final product. With a
piece of paper and pencils of all of the colours of the rainbow, I will trace a certain
letter using the correct formation with one colour. I will then proceed to repeat the
formation of the letter with the remaining colours encouraging Meredith to do the
same.
I will hand a piece of paper to Meredith and draw with a pencil the letters which she
had written backwards in the observation above, then hand her all the coloured
pencils to use to trace the letter. She must trace the letter using the correct
formations which I had demonstrated previously.
After having Meredith write all the letters, she must name all the letters to me then
demonstrate in the air with her finger how to write the letter that she had just learnt. I
will then name all the letters one by one to her in random order and test her again.
After doing so, I will hand Meredith another piece of paper and ask her to write all the
letters down using the correct formations with a pencil. I will assess to see if the
literacy goal has been met by seeing if Meredith is now able to write the letters the
right way with the correct formations.

Vivian Phan (25955691)

EDF1030 Literacy Learning and the Young Child
Denise Chapman 1pm Monday

Activity 2 Punctuation Paddle Sticks

This activity will help Meredith distinguish the different punctuation marks which she
could come across whilst reading a book. She didnt seem to pay attention to any of
them whilst reading Maisy goes to the library.
Before doing this activity, I will ask Meredith to read the Maisy book again and have
her notice the different punctuation marks. I will then have a little discussion with her
to see if she knows what they are, or what they mean.
I will further explain to Meredith what the punctuation marks are. Going through the
book again, I will point out the different ones and explain to her what they mean and
how to use them whilst reading a book.
I will hand Meredith a piece of paper to draw whatever animal/insect shed like and
then cut it out for her. After doing so, she must draw another three pictures of the
same thing and I will again cut them out for her. She will then proceed to glue them
together around a paddle pop stick then draw different punctuation marks on them
(full stop, comma, exclamation mark, question mark).
I will then name the different punctuation marks and she must show them to me on
her paddle pop stick. She must twirl the stick to the correct punctuation mark and
show me.
At the end, Meredith must twirl the stick to the different punctuation marks herself,
name them, and then explain to me how they are used in a book, demonstrating
what she has learnt from my explanations. I will then see if she has met her goal of
learning different punctuation marks.

Vivian Phan (25955691)

EDF1030 Literacy Learning and the Young Child
Denise Chapman 1pm Monday

Activity 3 Letter Sound Cards

I have chosen this activity to help enhance Merediths reading skills as well as draw
upon her interest in drawing.
Before proceeding with the activity, I will show Meredith a Youtube video called the
Phonics Song. It will help her here the sounds that letters make as well as act to
engage her into the activity.
I will demonstrate to Meredith what to do before she starts the activity. Using a
random letter that I ask her to provide for me, I will draw up something simple which
starts with the letter and write the letter out on top. I will then show her what sound
that the letter makes and explain how my drawing starts with the sound of the letter.
E.G. The letter B makes the b sound, like the word boat does, and my paper will
have a drawing of a boat.
I will hand Meredith a piece of paper and provide her with a different letter to make
another letter sound card. I will also tell Meredith what sound the letter makes in
order to help her come up with a picture to draw.
After making the letter sound card, I will ask Meredith to explain to me what she has
made. She will have to explain what letter it is, what sound it makes and what word
she has drawn which starts with that sound. We can then continue to discuss that
sound and I can ask her to name more words which start with that letter.
At the end of the activity, I will name more letters to Meredith and discuss the
different sounds that the letters make and ask to name some things which start with
the letter. I will discuss a various number of different letters with her to see if she has
understood the concept of sounding out letters.

Vivian Phan (25955691)

EDF1030 Literacy Learning and the Young Child
Denise Chapman 1pm Monday

REFERENCES
Bradford, H., & Wyse, D. (2012). Writing and writers: The perceptions of young
children and their parents. Early Years, 33(3), 252-265. doi:
10.1080/09575146.2012.744957
Dooley, C.M., & Matthews, M.W. (2009). Emergent comprehension: Understanding
comprehension development among young literacy learners. Journal of Early
Childhood Literacy, 9(3), 269-294. doi: 10.1177/1468798409345110
Hill, S. (2012). Developing early literacy: assessment and teaching. (2nd ed.). South
Yarra, VIC: Eleanor Curtain Publishing.
Puranik, C. S., Lonigan, C. J., & Kim, Y. S. (2011). Contributions of emergent literacy
skills to name writing, letter writing, and spelling in preschool children. Early
Childhood Research Quarterly, 26(4), 465-474. doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2011.03.002
Stevens, R. J., Meter, P. N. V., Garner, J., Warcholak, N., Bochna, C., & Hall, T.
(2008). Reading and integrated literacy strategies (RAILS): An integrated approach
to early reading. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 13(4), 357-380.
doi: 10.1080/10824660802427611