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 childs 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
Presentation
Controlled practice
Guided writing
Independent activity

ACTIVITY
Reading aloud
Shared reading
Guided reading
Independent reading