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Literacy Online. Every child literate - a shared responsibility.

Attending and searching

Learners need to attend to details of text in order to decode and determine meaning. The learner looks purposefully for particular information, for known letters, clusters, or words, for familiar text features and patterns of syntax, and for information in pictures and diagrams.

For beginning readers, this usually involves attending closely to every word (especially to the initial letters of words) and to the illustrations.

For fluent readers, this usually involves taking in larger chunks of text (phrases rather than words) and slowing down to identify and focus on specific words or features only when necessary to clarify meaning.

With instruction from the teacher, learners begin to acquire a sight vocabulary and to develop understandings about text. They learn to focus more effectively, attending to what is relevant at the time in order to get the message. Teachers provide specific instruction to help them to draw on what they know and can do. Attending and searching may involve the learner in doing some or all of the following.

What learners do

  • focus attention on particular letters or letter clusters and draw on what they know about letter-sound relationships
  • identify the words they already know
  • look for information in illustrations and diagrams
  • use analogies – that is, use their knowledge of familiar words (can, get) to work out new words (man, ran, pan; let, set, pet).

How teachers prompt and support

  • Tell me the first sound of this word. (“sunhat”, page 6)
  • What letter does this word start with? (“dad”, page 7)
  • What do you notice about the last letter in “dad”?
  • That’s right. It’s the same as the first letter.
  • Which words do you know on this page?
  • Who can you see in this picture? (page 7)
  • Which word is different on this page?
  • What do you notice about this word? (“sunhat”, page 6 – a compound word)

This example features Let’s Go by Feana Tu’akoi, photographs by Mark Round, Ready to Read series, Learning Media, 2001.




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