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Welcome to Ready to Read Phonics Plus - The start of the pathway to reading.
Poipoia te kākano kia puāwaiNurture the seed and it will blossom
Ready to Read Phonics Plus is organised in four phases From kākano the seed, through tupu the seedling, māhuri the saplingto rākau the tree.
Your young readers enter at the phase they are ready for.
They will progress to the next phase at the right pace for them before moving onto the familiar Ready to Read Colour Wheel books.
Ready to Read Phonics Plus emphasises word recognition. They give young readers the tools to “crack the code” as they move into increasing reading comprehension.
Each Ready to Read Phonics Plus book adds new phonic knowledge.
They will give children the chance to practise what has already been learnt.
Here is a Kākano, or first phase story – “Get to the Vet”.
I’ll quickly read through the story for you, before we look at the teaching moments in more detail.
Nat’s cat has a bad leg. His leg is cut.
“Let’s get him to the vet,” says Dad.
The cat sits in the van.
“The cut is bad,” says the vet.
“He needs a jab.”
The cat licks his leg.
“Ka pai,” says Nat.
Now let’s look at “Get to the Vet” more closely, and see the learning opportunities along the way.
Before starting, children will be taught target sounds. In “Get to the Vet” these are:
(enunciates "v" sound)
(enunciates "j" sound)
and (enunciates "l" sound)
Children can also practise reading the letter sound patterns they have already learned.
Read the story aloud together and point to each word as it is read.
There are two types of word in this story.
Regular decodable words like “cat” and “bad”. Support the children to sound these words out and then blend the sounds to form the word.
(enunciates "c" sound)
(enunciates "a" sound)
(enunciates "t" sound)
Sounding the words out like this builds phonological awareness and decoding knowledge.
The other type are high use non-decodable words – such as “has” and “is” – and these you can simply pre-teach.
Continue to focus on decoding through the rest of the book.
After reading the book, there are other activities you can do to support vocabulary, phonological awareness and spelling.
For example “bad” – ask them to think of other words with a similar meaning (like “sore”) and have them use the words in the sentence.
You can also draw attention to words that can be changed – for example “cut” can change to “cuts” or “cutting”. Show the part of the word that stays the same and the bit that is different. Have them use the different words in a sentence.
“Let’s get him to the vet,” says Dad. Support children to listen and spot where the sound changes in words. Use the letters here to spell and read the words.
“If this word spells “vet”, can you spell “pet”?
If this word spells “pet”, can you spell “pat”?”
These are great stories to help generate discussion. “How do you think the cat may have hurt his leg?” Maybe the reader has a pet and has taken it to the vet. Talk about what a vet does to help animals.
Also, draw attention to words that are part of the picture. Discuss how these help tell the story.
Finally ask the children to retell the story to friends or family. Use the picture cues to prompt if necessary.
Give them plenty of praise and encouragement.
Each Ready to Read Phonics Plus book comes with great teaching notes. These have heaps of ideas about how you can use the books to engage your children with word recognition and language comprehension.
Mā te manaakitanga a te whānau e puāwai ai te tangata
With the aroha and support of the collective, the potential of the individual will be realised
Mā te wā
<< Return to Ready to Read Phonics Plus
Welcome to Ready to Read Phonics Plus – the start of the pathway to reading.
Poipoia te kākano kia puāwai
Nurture the seed and it will blossom
Ready to Read Phonics Plus is organised in four phases – From kākano the seed, through tupu the seedling, māhuri the sapling,to rākau the tree.
Your young readers enter at the phase they are ready for. They will progress to the next phases at the right pace for them, before moving onto the familiar Ready to Read Colour Wheel books.
Each Ready to Read Phonics Plus book adds new phonic knowledge. They will give children the chance to practise what has already been learnt.
Here is another Kākano, or first phase story – “Nan in a Net”.
I will quickly read through the story for you, before we look at the teaching moments in more detail.
Nan is in bed.
“Get up” says Tāne.
“Let’s go!”
Can Nan nap?
No! Nan is up.
Nan and Tāne go to the awa.
Tāne gets the net.
Nan cuts a bun.
Nan naps.
The net tips onto Nan!
“Let me out!” says Nan.
Tāne tugs the net.
Nan is out.
Now let’s look at “Nan in a Net” more closely.
There are quite a few target sounds in this book to practise together first:
"c" "l" "n" "b" "s" "i" "u"
Read the story aloud together and point out each word as you read.
Sound out the regular decodable words like “Nan” and “bed”. Support children to sound these words out and then blend the sounds to form the word
N–a–n "Nan"
Give plenty of praise and encourage re-reading to build fluency.
Simply say the high use non-decodable words – such as “says” and “is”.
After reading, there are other activities you can do to support vocabulary, phonological awareness and spelling.
For example, the start of this story provides a great discussion point once the book has been read.
Why do you think Tāne was so keen to get an early start? Has there been a time when you were really excited and you had to get up early?
As children read, practise segmenting and blending the sounds to make a word. Say “Let’s say the sounds together in each word I say”
c–a–n "can"
n–a–p "nap"
Help children find the words you are segmenting.
"Can Nan nap?" Draw attention to the question mark and how it changes the way the sentence is said. “Can you hear the way my voice goes up at the end?”
"Nan and Tāne go to the awa." After children have read the book, talk about the word awa, and how to say it. Find out the name of an awa that may be close to home or school, or that children associate with.
"Tāne gets the net." If you need to, help children see where the sound changes in the word. Using “net”, have them sound out b–e–t, g–e–t and l–e–t by changing the first letter. Prompt with 'if this word spells “net” can you spell “get”?'
Nan cuts a bun. After reading the book you can talk about how words can change – “cut” to “cuts” or “cutting”. Try to make different sentences using these different words.
"Nan naps" Talk about the word “nap” and what it means. “What other words mean the same thing?" "Can you put them into a sentence?"
Finally, after reading, ask children to retell the story to friends or family. Use the picture cues to prompt if necessary. Give them plenty of praise and encouragement.
Information to support teachers in implementing a range of approaches that will help students to develop the knowledge, strategies, and awareness required to become effective readers.
Reading aloud from the best of children’s literature should be a daily part of every classroom programme at all levels. Listening to a story told or read aloud well is a captivating experience.
Reading aloud to children frees them from the labour of decoding and supports them in becoming active listeners, totally engaged and immersed in the text. As children create meaning from a text by making connections between what they already know and what they hear, they develop new knowledge and awareness. They enrich their vocabulary by hearing new words in context and familiar words used in new ways, and they develop new insights into the way language works (for example, how words can be ordered and how imagery can be used) and into the different text forms. A great deal of implicit learning occurs when children are read to.
Reading aloud is appropriate for all students, including those who already read accurately and fluently. This teaching approach can be used effectively with both large and small groups. Students who have had limited experiences with books, or who are receptive rather than active learners, can benefit when they are read to in small groups and the teacher can encourage them to engage with the text and respond to it actively.
We’d been studying tales and myths of Aotearoa and Pasifika countries. I chose Maui and the Sun for this group because I thought they would like a superhero who overcomes the forces of nature. The elements of the traditional tale are all here – the cunning plot, the brothers-in-arms, the struggle. It’s short but full of action, so I was able to read it twice in one session. The style of illustration sets the Maori context well, and when we looked at the detail after they had heard the story, the children were intrigued by the changing expressions on the face of the sun. The strong narrative has suspense and action, and it kept the children engaged. I dramatised the reading by heightening the different voices of the characters – Maui, the brothers, and the sun. I emphasised the repetition of some phrases – “and plenty of …”, for instance – and when I read it again, Aaron and Tu both chimed in on the second “Let me go!” I’ll follow this up with another Maui story soon.
Teacher, year 2 class
Reading to children is an approach that can be used strategically in order to:
When selecting texts for reading to children, teachers are guided by their own instructional objectives and by the students’ interests and cultural values. Refer to page 114 in chapter 5 for discussion about the importance of using a range and variety of texts.
The way the teacher reads aloud is very important. Teachers may need to practise so that they know the story well and can relax and concentrate on reading expressively. Such reading provides a good model for students and conveys many implicit messages about literacy learning. Above all, it demonstrates in the best possible way that reading is important and that books are a source of delight.
Depending on their teaching objectives, the nature of the text, and the students’ interest, the teacher may encourage the students’ responses and their predictions or conversations about the text (without interrupting the flow of the text and the listeners’ enjoyment). Effective teachers enable their students to savour the experience, share their enthusiasm, and reflect on new words, expressions, or ideas.
I read to the class every day, and it’s a special time for us. The emphasis is on enjoyment, but I’ve become more focused in selecting texts. Recently I read The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, a nice reversal of the traditional tale. We’d been looking at the great themes of conflict and resolution in traditional literature. I also wanted to develop the students’ listening comprehension. In addition, about one-third of my class are NESB students who need to encounter many literary texts in English.
We all enjoyed the fun of the story, and all tuned in and became engaged with the narrative. Then we got into a debate about what made the big bad pig become friends with the little wolves and whether this was a good thing to happen. What I’m finding is that rich conversations around texts show what thinkers these students really are – and it’s got nothing to do with whether they are the more able readers in the class or not. It’s a matter of giving the students the opportunity to process ideas and share their views. I also notice increasing participation by those from diverse cultural backgrounds, who may not be used to expressing a point of view.
Teacher, years 3 to 4
Shared reading is an essential component of the daily literacy programme. It allows for a high degree of interaction and is a great way for teachers to help students to increase their understanding of themselves as text users. It’s an effective approach, which can be used with both large groups and small groups to develop students’ strategies and their knowledge of how written texts work (see page 27).
When a teacher reads to students, the students participate as active listeners. In shared reading, the teacher and the students read a text together. The teacher leads the reading, and the students follow with their eyes, actively listening, and join in as they become familiar with words, phrases, or concepts. All the participants need to be able to see the text, which is usually enlarged. The teacher’s support enables the students to behave like readers and enjoy the text even though they may not yet be able to read it comfortably on their own.
Shared reading conveys messages about the joys of reading. It also provides a supportive instructional setting in which teachers can systematically and purposefully:
The same text can be used several times in successive shared reading sessions, with a different focus each time to meet new goals. As the students become familiar with the text, they gradually take more responsibility for reading it themselves.
Students for whom English is a new language can participate confidently in shared reading. They attend to the illustrations, diagrams, and photographs while hearing the language used in an enjoyable and authentic context.
Shared reading provides opportunities for teachers to observe how their students interact with texts. It also allows teachers to plan purposeful ways to develop students’ use of the sources of information in text (see pages 28–31) in a supportive context. It’s an ideal setting in which to introduce and reinforce information about the conventions of print (see page 33), about strategies for solving unknown words, and about sound patterns in spoken language (see pages 32–37) or spelling patterns in written language (see pages 144–148). Refer also to the sections on shared reading in the Ministry of Education’s Ready to Read Teacher Support Material).
A wide range of different types of text should be selected for shared reading. Each text should be chosen to suit one or more specific instructional purposes. From the beginning years, the range should include non-fiction. Shared reading can also incorporate handmade texts, poems, songs, pieces from magazines, and articles from newspapers – perhaps enlarged for use on the overhead projector. An overhead projector can also be used to display the menus, web pages, and icons that enable readers to navigate electronic texts on the Internet.
A shared reading session may last as long as twenty minutes, depending on the purposes, the time of day, and the students’ interest. Alternatively, it may be a brief session, simply to savour a favourite text or to reread something that captures the moment.
A text should be introduced in a way that builds eagerness and a sense of anticipation. Keeping the introduction brief helps the students to relate the text to their experience and to predict something of its meaning and structure. The purpose for reading the text should be shared with the students.
The first reading should focus on the students’ enjoyment and understanding of the text. With texts that have a catchy rhythm and repetitive pattern, the students can be encouraged to join in on the first reading. Teachers often engage learners by pausing and asking them to predict what may happen next or to share their responses briefly.
In subsequent readings, the teacher can focus on specific features or learning strategies that they have identified for teaching or reinforcement with the group. This could involve writing words on the whiteboard to explore spelling patterns or letter-sound relationships. (A masking device may be used to isolate letters, words, or parts of words.) Or the focus could be on features of layout, such as bold headings, and on helping the students to find out how to use these features in their reading and their writing. Another focus could be on close reading of a particular passage to help the students identify the main points or the words that indicate a particular character’s point of view.
All the children loved Clickety-Clack Cicada. They recognised the insect as soon as I put the poem card on the easel, and they shuddered and giggled about the way cicadas cling to you. The alliteration and rhythm helped my two newly arrived children to join in the reading.
I used the mask to reinforce the contraction of “don’t”, to teach the letter blend “cl”, and to demonstrate the different sounds of “c” within the word “cicada”. The children thought of other examples of the blend “cl”, including “class”, “clean”, “clap”, and “clever”. I’ll draw the children’s attention to the spelling of “circle” and “centre” when we’re doing maths and look for opportunities in guided and shared reading to draw children’s attention to the different sounds of “c”.
We also focused on the difference, in the poem, between the quiet night and the noisy day. We’ll read and talk about other insect and animal poems, and we’ll build up a collection of words and phrases for the children to use in their own writing.
Teacher, year 1 class
Shared reading texts should be made available after the reading so that the students can enjoy them independently. Small groups can use enlarged texts and charts (or audio versions if these are available) to replicate the shared reading experience. The students can take turns to lead the group in reading, using a pointer.
Some texts lend themselves to further activities, depending on the teacher’s objectives. Activities might include:
In any literacy programme, guided reading has a central role in leading students towards independence in reading. The focused group setting enables the teacher to provide strategic instruction in decoding, making meaning, and thinking critically.
During guided reading, the teacher works with a small group of students who have similar instructional needs so that they are supported in reading a text successfully by themselves. Each student has a copy of the text. It should contain some challenges, which should be at a level that the students can manage as they individually read the text in the supportive situation.
Guided reading provides a framework in which teachers can use instructional strategies to:
Students gain most from guided reading when they have developed a number of understandings about text. These are usually best gained through shared reading and oral language activities. Observation and monitoring of what the student knows and can do will guide the teacher’s decision about when to begin the more intensive guided reading approach.
Forming groups for guided reading demands thought and judgment. Each group should be small enough for intensive support, but there should not be so many groups that class management becomes unwieldy. Since students progress at different rates, guided reading groups will change as the students’ competencies change.
Both the teacher and the students need to be clear about the purpose for reading the text. The focus for instruction could be, for example, on:
Given the central role of texts in literacy development, text selection is a crucial step. Teachers base their selection on their instructional objectives and on their knowledge of the learners, ensuring that the texts are appropriate to the students’ learning needs and relate to their interests and experiences. Generally, the text will be new to the students, although beginning readers may have met it before in shared reading. (Sometimes, though, it is appropriate to select familiar material in order to focus on a specific language or literary feature.) As a general rule, texts for guided reading should be at a level where students have no more than five to ten difficulties in every hundred words. See chapter 5 for discussion of text features and of the supports and challenges in texts.
Planning for the session involves:
The introduction to the session should be brief and build a sense of expectancy. It should share the purpose for the reading and focus on relating the text to the students’ experiences and interests. The teacher may discuss or explain particular features or potential challenges that the students may need help with, such as names of characters, captions for diagrams, or technical terms.
The teacher then sets the reading task by directing the group to read the text or a section of it and telling them what they are to think about or find out.
“Round robin” reading, where each student takes a turn at reading aloud, is never appropriate in guided reading. It prevents each student from processing the text and constructing meaning independently, distracts and bores other children, and obscures meaning.
The students take responsibility for reading the text themselves individually. With longer texts, where more complex challenges may arise, the reading can be “chunked” into two or more sections, with a brief discussion between sections to sustain comprehension. As they become more fluent, the students may be encouraged to read silently.
During the reading, as they monitor each member of the group, the teacher can encourage the students by prompting them to use the strategies that they have learned. The teacher may move alongside a student to check how they are processing the text. But, during the reading, the teacher should intervene only when necessary. A short, purposeful task for those who are likely to finish earlier than others is useful.
Generating purposeful, stimulating discussion around a text is perhaps the greatest challenge in guided reading. Focused discussion is central to this approach, because a fundamental purpose of guided reading is to enhance each student’s understanding of what they are reading. The focus and length of the discussion will reflect the shared goal for the session, the level of the students’ interest and engagement, and the demands of the text.
The teacher’s role is to:
For beginning readers, the focus is on getting through the reading successfully. As students become more fluent, more time will be spent in discussion and comparatively less in reading. But, from the beginning, students should expect to think and talk about what they are reading. The discussion should be enjoyable and engaging for both students and teachers.
Using an easel or whiteboard gives a visual focus, for example, when:
See also the section about classroom conversations on pages 88–89 and refer to Guided Reading: Years 1–4, pages 45–49.
At the end of a guided reading session, it’s important to review, with the group, the original purpose of the session and to ensure that it has been met. It’s also valuable to encourage the students to reflect on their learning and talk about it so that they develop awareness of how to use and control what they know and can do. This will enable them to increasingly monitor their own progress.
I had read A Quilt for Kiri to the children last term, and I retold the story last week. As a class, we had talked then about customs of giving gifts – what we give people and when – and the idea that gifts we’ve made ourselves have extra value. Three of the children are from the Cook Islands and were able to tell us more about quilts, so we talked about that and other traditions for showing appreciation for kindness or hospitality. I chose A Gift for Aunty Nga for guided reading with my fluent readers. I wanted to focus on critical thinking and inference, and they found a great deal to consider in this moving story about family relationships and separations. I asked them to read just the first two pages, and then we talked about what they could infer. They anticipated the forthcoming trip and also realised that the “tapes” showed that the family rarely saw Aunty Nga. They then read on to the end of page 7, and we talked again about the trip and what they thought about the relationship between Kiri and her aunt. When they had finished their reading, there was rich discussion about the characters, the children’s own experiences, the meaning of gifts, and the way we celebrate big occasions. All the children wanted to reread the text to savour it for themselves.
Teacher, year 3 class
Most teachers make the book available for the students to reread to a buddy or by themselves. Often, children also take the book home to share with their family. These repeated readings give the students opportunities to enjoy the text personally, practise newly acquired strategies, absorb new information, and develop fluency.
It is valuable to jot down observations on individual students’ progress and to note teaching points for the future.
The text may lend itself to further activities. These may be planned beforehand to help meet the teacher’s objectives, but others may arise as result of monitoring during the session. Such activities may include:
However, often the reading is sufficient in itself, and the best follow-up activity is simply lots more reading.
Reading at home and at school should be relaxed and enjoyable. Parents and teachers demonstrate that they value reading when they read themselves and also make sure that students have time to enjoy reading.
For students, independent reading of material they choose themselves:
Studies have documented evidence linking children’s access to books, and the amount of reading that they do, to their achievement in reading. Choosing to read recreationally is also associated with high rates of achievement.
A set time in the daily routine for independent reading by individual students is an essential part of the classroom literacy programme. If they are to become lifelong readers, students need to choose to read, select their own texts, and share what they have read. Ready access to a wide range of interesting materials that they can read by themselves is also important because it enables the students to choose to read independently whenever an opportunity arises. Teachers need to make it clear that students benefit greatly when they engage in recreational reading, both in and out of school.
The teacher needs to establish routines and expectations so that all students move naturally from reading aloud to silent reading. Silent, independent reading has proven benefits and is associated with student achievement. As their students gain fluency and independence, teachers should plan to model and teach silent and attentive reading. Students also achieve better when they see their teacher reading independently for pleasure.
During independent reading, teachers should observe the students’ reading behaviour and monitor their interest and enthusiasm, their selection of texts, their understanding of what they read, and the amount of reading they do. This will inform the teacher’s future guidance of each student’s reading.
Informal, focused individual or small-group conferences can yield valuable information about what the students are reading, whether they are setting themselves new challenges, and how they are enjoying the books they choose. The teacher may use a student’s reading log, for example, when prompting and questioning, to draw the student’s attention to their patterns of reading and to ways of extending these patterns. However, it’s important at all times to avoid being intrusive – independent reading is intensely personal and should focus on enjoyment.
Reciprocal teaching and literature circles are not usually thought of as approaches to reading but provide useful contexts for developing literacy learning.
Reciprocal teaching is a useful small-group procedure to help improve the comprehension and critical thinking of fluent readers. Studies have shown that when students take part in reciprocal teaching of reading, their comprehension improves (including their listening comprehension) and they transfer the learning into other reading contexts. Reciprocal teaching has been found to be effective in improving the achievement of learners from diverse backgrounds. It involves four explicit strategies for reading comprehension:
The teacher initially leads the group, explaining and modelling the strategies to show how the reader actively constructs meaning. The students gradually take over more and more of the responsibility by taking turns to lead the group and generate discussion as the group members jointly examine and interpret a text.
Many teachers use literature circles as a way of encouraging their students to think and talk about a wide range of texts. As students develop their skills in reading and in expressing ideas, they can join in these groups. In a literature circle, the students generate the discussion, which is based on their own interpretations of the text. Small groups of students read the same book independently and share their personal responses and interpretations with others in the group. Having the students mark parts of the book helps to focus their discussion of a text, for example, where they:
Instructional strategies are the tools of effective practice. They are the deliberate acts of teaching that focus learning in order to meet a particular purpose. Instructional strategies are effective only when they impact positively on students’ learning.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8, p. 78
Teachers need to be able to use a range of deliberate acts of teaching in flexible and integrated ways within literacy-learning activities to meet the diverse literacy learning needs of our students.
These deliberate acts include modelling, prompting, questioning, giving feedback, telling, explaining, and directing.
Modelling, or “showing how”, is perhaps the most powerful and pervasive form of instruction. Almost everything the teacher does and says in the course of the school day provides a potential model to the students in the classroom. Much of this modelling is implicit and occurs without either teacher or students being conscious of it. However, deliberate, goal-directed modelling is an essential teaching tool.
By articulating how they arrived at a solution – thinking aloud as they go through the process – the teacher provides a model of how a good reader or writer works. This sort of modelling makes the thinking “visible”. It is a strategy used to great effect in shared reading and writing, where students are learning to use the sources of information in print along with their own prior knowledge. Modelling often involves providing the language that the learner needs. This may be language for encoding or decoding text, for making meaning, or for discussing texts and thinking analytically about them.
In these examples, teachers are modelling how good readers and writers work (and are also using strategies such as questioning, prompting, and giving feedback).
“This is a new sentence. I start with a … yes, a capital letter. My first word is ‘on’. What sounds can you hear? What is the first letter I write? … Let’s read this sentence. Is it finished – does it make sense? Can I put in the full stop?”
“Is this how we thought Mum would feel? I’m going to read the first paragraph again. Let’s list on the chart some words that might describe how Mum is feeling.”
“We need some help here. We can look at the list on the wall … let’s look down this list. Yes, here it tells you what to do when …”
“What word would make sense here? In the picture, we can see … Let’s look at the word. It begins with a … yes, a ‘t’. And I can see a chunk in it …”
“That’s a new word for us! We can add it to our word tree. Let’s read the sentence again to see if we can find out what it means.”
Sometimes modelling alone is not enough. A combination of modelling and directing (or explaining) may be necessary at times. Using modelling along with other instructional strategies to convey a teaching point is especially useful for those students who are not yet fully familiar with the literacy practices of the school and for any who are experiencing difficulties in reading or writing.
Prompting means encouraging the learner to use what they already know and can do. It is an effective strategy to focus students’ attention and to build their metacognitive awareness and their confidence. In order to prompt effectively, the teacher needs a detailed knowledge of the learner. Prompting may take the form of a strong hint, a clue, or a gentle “nudge” to help students use their existing knowledge and literacy strategies to make connections and reach a solution. A prompt often takes the form of a question and involves allowing “wait time” to give students the opportunity to develop and express their own ideas.
These are examples of teachers using prompting strategically. Other deliberate acts of teaching can easily be identified.
Teacher I think you could work out how to write the word “tooth”.
Student I could write down all the sounds I can hear.
Teacher Good! Then how could you check whether you were right?
“You might need to check your conclusion again – if you look at the success criteria you may see that there’s something more you need to do.”
“Josh, you said ‘shop’, then you changed it to ‘stop’. You knew something was wrong …”
“I know you know the sound for ___. Let me see you write it.”
“I wonder why Dad thought Jack wasn’t telling the truth. There could be a clue on this page that you just read.”
“You could make those words stand out. Remember the story in guided reading yesterday. What did the words look like in the part where the farmer shouted?”
Questioning is perhaps the instructional tool used most commonly by teachers. Strategic and purposeful questioning is crucial to students’ literacy learning.
Questions may be directed towards building a particular aspect of students’ knowledge, such as a strategy for encoding or decoding. At a metacognitive level, questions can help to build students’ awareness. Questioning can be an ideal way to generate thoughtful discussion and help students to develop the habit of being critically reflective, for example, “How do you think …?” “I wonder why …?” “What have you noticed …?” “How will your audience feel …?” One or two well-thoughtout questions can be powerful in helping students to get beyond the surface features of a text they are reading or writing. It is important that teachers ask a range of questions and know why they are asking them.
Questions become effective teaching tools when:
Such questions are a highly productive way of bringing out what students know and can do, so that they can apply their expertise to their tasks. Effective teachers extend questioning well beyond the kinds of questions that only require students to feed back factual content or to make predictions that are purely speculative.
Patterns of “teacher question, student answer, and teacher reaction” can inhibit learning. For example, if the students become more occupied with finding out what is in the teacher’s head than with their own learning, they are much less likely to show creativity in composing texts or to explore deeper features of texts.
Attending to the answers that students give is as important as planning and asking the questions. Students’ responses yield valuable information that can be used to evaluate their learning and to identify their next learning steps.
Teachers often categorise the kinds of questions to be used. For example, they describe questions as literal, inferential, or interpretive, as open or closed, or as questions for clarification, justification, and so on. The kinds of question and the forms they take will depend on the teacher’s objective and the learning goal of the task. Sometimes closed questions will achieve the purpose, for example, when the goal is to measure students’ ability to recall facts in a text, describe a process in the correct sequence, or identify a letter of the alphabet. It’s not necessary or even useful to plan activities based on categories of questions. The aim is to ask questions that reveal the students’ thinking, including any misconceptions or inappropriate assumptions that they may have.
Like prompting, questioning may unlock the understanding of a student who is struggling with an aspect of their reading or writing by giving them clear guidance towards what they need to do.
A teacher who uses questions effectively provides a good model to students and shows them how to develop their own questioning strategies. This helps them to bring a critical perspective to texts by asking purposeful questions of themselves as they engage with a reading or writing task. In a classroom environment of critical reflection, thought-provoking questions are not seen as threatening, they are welcomed as a highly valued part of learning.
This example shows strategic questioning to support a year 4 student in meeting the goal of a task. The context is an activity after a year 4 guided reading session using Whale Tales, by Kim Westerskov. The shared goals are (1) to locate specific information and (2) to infer from the text and write their conclusions in their own words.
Teacher What information have you located?
Student (reads) “Humpbacks swim slowly, and they are the most interesting of all whales to watch.”
Teacher OK. Do we need to take any notes there? Did you learn anything about the population or the habitat?
Student Yeah. They have huge flippers.
Teacher OK. So will that help us with our question?
Student Yeah … (uncertainly) maybe.
Teacher (drawing student’s attention to questions on whiteboard) Will that information help you to answer the question about where humpback whales live or the question on why there are only a few thousand humpbacks now?
Student No …
Teacher Well, let’s read the text in this box. You read it.
Student (reading from the text) “Once, there were over 100 000 humpbacks in the southern seas alone. But the humpback was a favourite of the whalers – now there are only a few thousand humpbacks left.” … Oh. I’ve learned something. It says “But the humpback was a favourite of the whalers”. That means that they, like, killed them, and … that’s why there aren’t many living any more.
Teacher OK. So do you think that’s important information?
Student Yes.
Teacher Now are you going to copy that straight from the book? What are you going to do?
Student Um, I’m going to put it in my own words.
Teacher Good! Let me see you begin.
The impact of effective feedback on student outcomes has been established through a number of studies (for example, Hattie, 1999, and Crooks, 1988). Hattie, on the basis of extensive research, describes feedback as the most powerful single factor that enhances achievement. Like modelling, feedback pervades the school day: most interactions between teachers and students involve some element of feedback.
The purposes of feedback are:
Feedback can be defined as “… providing information how and why the child understands and misunderstands, and what directions the student must take to improve” (Hattie, 1999, page 9). Like all the teaching strategies, feedback is most effective when it relates to specific learning goals and to the ultimate goal of enabling students to monitor and regulate their own learning.
Effective feedback motivates students to learn. The way that students feel about and perceive themselves affects their expectations and consequently their performance. A simple comment can have a major impact – positive or negative – on a student’s motivation. It is important to consider cultural appropriateness when giving feedback (and when using any other teaching strategy).
Feedback may be thought of as either evaluative or descriptive. Evaluative feedback involves making a judgment about what the learner is doing or has done and carries the idea of approval or disapproval. Descriptive feedback means describing or explaining what has or has not been achieved and why. It also involves giving information on how to learn further or what to do next in order to succeed. Interactions involving feedback can yield valuable knowledge of learners as well as enabling them to move forward.
The primary purpose of feedback is not to indicate whether learners are right or wrong but to enable them to reflect on their use of strategies for reading and writing and on their learning. Feedback involves conveying information to learners about where and when to use their knowledge and strategies. Effective feedback can provide a model of how good readers and writers think. Feedback should be honest and specific so that learners know how they are doing. An important message for teachers to convey to students is that using effective strategies in their reading and writing is what caused their success; this is crucial to building students’ metacognition. It’s especially useful to encourage students themselves to suggest what they could do. This is a great way to build their awareness of how they can take control of their learning.
Feedback may be verbal or non-verbal, spoken or written. The quality of the teacher’s written feedback on a student’s writing is especially important, both for providing further guidance and for the student’s confidence.
The teacher should not allow their feedback to take over the ownership of the learning task. For example, a teacher may be tempted to “improve” a student’s piece of writing, with the result that the student’s voice or sense of ownership may be lost (even though the teacher may feel that the work is better crafted).
Success criteria that arise from shared goals give valuable focus to teachers’ conversations with students and to the feedback that they provide. It is essential to ensure that the students understand the information conveyed through feedback and to provide time and opportunity for them to act on it.
These examples show effective use of feedback in several literacy contexts. In giving such feedback, teachers are also providing good models to the students.
“Well done. You have seen that from another point of view. What reasons can you give to back up your opinion?”
“I like the way you’ve started your sentences in different ways – it makes it more interesting for the reader. I can imagine what your grandma is like by reading your story.”
“That was good thinking. I could see you used the pictures and the title to help you make that prediction.”
“I noticed that you went to our reference texts to help you find the information. That’s good use of research skills. Next time, you could try the websites listed for our topic study.”
“You looked at the end of the word carefully – you fixed it yourself.”
Teacher What else could you tell us about the big storm? You’ve told us where you were and how you felt.
Jane I could say how it sounded.
Teacher That’s a great idea – storms are always noisy. What words can you think of?
Jane Roaring … howling …?
Teacher Oh, I can hear it! You need to think about where to put this new information in.
At its simplest level, telling means supplying what the student needs, such as an unknown word or a topic for a literacy-learning task. The idea is to fill a gap at that moment to enable the student to move on.
A strategic use of telling may involve providing the language needed to participate in an activity. The teacher tells the students how to spell the word they need for a piece of writing or, at the beginning of a reading task, tells them the theme of the text. This may be the most effective way to work with some students who do not have the background knowledge on which to base productive prediction. Simply providing a label or definition may be the most efficient way to move a student’s learning on.
Telling can also mean providing information about when to use a particular literacy strategy in a given task – making explicit the fact that the students can apply their existing knowledge at this point and so building their awareness of when to apply that knowledge in future situations. Telling students when to apply their expertise is particularly useful for students who are experiencing difficulties in reading or writing.
Examples of a teacher making a strategic decision to supply what the students need atthat moment may be:
“Today we’re going to focus on …”
“That word is________. It means_______. Now read on.”
“This book that we are going to read tells us about all the ...”
“When you write ‘stopping’, you need two p’s.”
“This is a new idea. You need to start a new paragraph.”
Explaining can be thought of as an extension of telling. Teachers may explain the task itself, or they may explain the content of a text or learning activity. For example, the teacher may explain:
Teachers also use explanations in the context of classroom management (for example, when they explain what is involved in an activity such as paired reading) so that all the students can participate confidently.
The following examples show explanation in relation to text content and a text feature.
In a shared reading session, the teacher and children read together until the word “thistles”, which the teacher reads.
Ethan What are thistles?
Sally Flowers?
Teacher Thistles are like prickles. They have a pretty flower on the top, but if you touch thistles, they feel like prickles. They are a problem for farmers. But goats are great on farms because goats will eat anything. Even prickles.
“Look at the text in the blue box. It tells you what equipment the men needed to help move the building. This information is not part of the main story, so it is shown in a different way so that the reader can see that it’s something separate.”
A characteristic of explanations is that they are verbally explicit. Careful explanations enable students to develop their own understandings. Throughout the many interactions that occur during the school day, the teacher needs to be alert and ready to explain things, picking up cues from the students and adapting their use of this teaching strategy to supply what each learner needs. Sometimes a direct approach is best (“Let me explain this to you”), especially for students who are not yet familiar with the established classroom literacy activities.
Directing is simply giving a specific instruction. Like all these instructional strategies, it is used deliberately, for a purpose.
Everyday classroom examples of directing are:
“Put your finger on …”
“Write the letter for that sound.”
“Find the part in your piece of writing that …”
“Turn to your buddy and discuss why …”
“Look at the checklist on the wall if you’re stuck.”
Helping students to make connections between what they know and what they are reading improves their comprehension. Teachers can model making such connections, and prompt students to make links with their own knowledge and experience, when they are introducing and discussing texts for reading and in writing and oral-language activities. When activating students’ prior knowledge for a particular purpose, teachers can help the students to predict, infer, and build their own interpretations as they read.
A hypothesis about a text is an expectation or opinion that the reader forms about the text before reading it. The reader then tests and revises this as they encounter and act upon new information. Hypotheses are formed on the basis of what can be discovered about the text before the content reading begins: this may include the cover, the title, the opening section, and the illustrations, and it also includes what the reader brings to the text. Depending on the goal for the task, a hypothesis may relate to the plot or character development (in a narrative) or to the conclusion of an argument. The hypothesis often takes the form of a question. The teacher can usefully model hypothesising when introducing a text and can encourage the students to seek and give feedback about their own hypotheses.
As in any activity, formulating questions should be directed towards a goal or intended outcome. In comprehension development, questioning helps to reinforce the habit of reading for a purpose. The teacher needs to help the students to formulate appropriate questions, for example, by modelling such questions during shared reading or writing. Asking questions helps readers to engage with the ideas in the text and with the author and gives focus to the reading task. After their reading, it’s useful to help the students to evaluate the effectiveness of the questions they posed for themselves and to give them feedback for further learning.
The ability to visualise or picture what is happening within a text draws readers into the text and helps them to achieve greater understanding. Studies have indicated that creating an image in the memory helps the reader to retain what is read and use it later on.
Readers experiencing difficulties often need help with creating mental images and may not realise how this can help their comprehension. Asking questions such as ”What picture do you see in your head?” and sharing responses will support students. It sometimes helps to have students make a sketch.
Inferring means using content in a text, together with existing knowledge, to come to a personal conclusion about something that is not stated explicitly in the text. When the author provides clues but not all the information, we read “between the lines” to make predictions, revise these, understand underlying themes, hypothesise, make critical judgments, and draw conclusions. Inferring involves synthesising information, sometimes quite simply and sometimes at complex levels.
Teachers can help students to make inferences by asking inferential questions during shared reading or during discussion in guided reading. Or teachers may pause, when reading a text with students, to draw out clues from the text and prompt the students to make connections between different parts of the text in order to reach a conclusion.
It is important for readers to recognise that behind every text is an author, that the author has a reason for writing, and that the reader has a reason for reading.
The purpose of the author may be to:
By supporting students in discussing the purpose and point of view of a text, teachers can help them to recognise that writers bring their own experiences and concerns to their writing. Such activities contribute richly to students’ awareness of the functions of texts and of how authors position readers; they also help students to build the habit of responding thoughtfully to what they read. Students then carry their new awareness to their own writing and learn to plan and articulate their specific purposes for writing as they consider purpose and point of view.
Identifying and summarising main ideas can help students build knowledge and awareness of how texts are structured and how ideas within a text are related. Identifying the main idea or ideas in a text can present a challenge for readers. Not every text provides a neat hierarchy or clear sequence of ideas. To identify a text’s most significant points, students often need to retrieve information and summarise it. They may also need to use other strategies, such as inferring the text’s purpose. Teachers can show students how to identify and clarify the main points in a text by modelling how to formulate questions – for example, during in-depth discussion of a text in guided reading or when helping students to form intentions in their writing.
When students take apart a text they have read, examine it from their own viewpoint, and put it back together again, they make it their own. This helps them to remember what they have read and transfer what they have learned. They may feel empathy towards a character, be excited by events or information, or enjoy the style of the writing. They integrate or synthesise their newly acquired understandings and attitudes with their existing view of the world to make a new and slightly different world picture. The ways in which a reader analyses and interprets text and synthesises ideas are affected by that reader’s prior knowledge, experiences, and cultural values.
Good readers make a personal, informed response to a text. They not only understand the information in the text but can also generalise from it and make judgments about it in the light of what they already know. They examine and evaluate the ideas in the text and may consequently go on to confirm, extend, or change their personal views; or they may disagree with the content of a text or find an argument unconvincing.
I was discussing “Swallowed by the Sea” with a group of students. We had read and discussed it for meaning the previous day – now we were reading and discussing it for the impact of its language. I wanted to link it closely to the students’ own pieces of mood writing. I posed the question: “How does the author convey the atmosphere of the storm to the reader?”
Teacher: Read the first section of the story again, to see if you can create an image of the storm in your mind. What does the storm look and sound like?
Andrew: (after reading) I think it’s really rough and nasty and cold.
Teacher: I agree. Let’s see if we can all work out why Andrew thinks this. What clues does the author give us?
Amanda: She uses strong words in the paragraph – like “creaks” and “slap” and “pelting”. They’re exactly the sounds I can hear when I’m snuggled up in my bed, listening to the wind and rain outside.
Teacher: Good. Just like the main character in this story lies snuggled up in her bed. I’m pleased you’ve picked up on strong verbs because we’ve noticed them in other stories, haven’t we?
Andrew: I think the author is conveying the atmosphere earlier than that. I think the first clue is when it says that the girl’s breath makes a ghost on the window. I get a really cold picture in my mind from that.
Teacher: What gives you that?
Andrew: Because ghosts are all white and that makes me think of freezing cold.
Teacher: I can see some strong clues in the second paragraph as well. I can feel the wind really strongly in that paragraph. What part do you think gives me this feeling?
Hana: “The house is being sucked up and spat out.”
Teacher: You’re right. But what picture does that sentence create?
Hana: The wind is so strong that it can suck up something as big as a house.
Amanda: And it spits it out, just like really heavy rain spits out water all over the place.
Teacher: Great. I hope you’re picking up lots of ideas for your own writing.
Teacher, year 4 class
With a group of six children, I read Island to Island as a shared text. I wanted the children to think more deeply about their responses to text, and so the focus was higher-order thinking – hypothesising, inferring, synthesising, evaluating. I posed this question: “What are the good points and bad points about travelling to school by bus and boat?” After initially thinking this would be a fun thing to do, the children engaged in a focused discussion about some of the possible issues. The children set and maintained the initiative in the following discussion.
Emeli: What would happen if James was sick at school and wanted to go home?
Tayla: His dad might have to take the boat all the way around the other island. You couldn’t just sail over unless you had a car somewhere on the other side.
Grayson: You couldn’t be late in the morning. The bus has to go a long way. It’s much too far to walk. If your dad dropped you off in the boat and thought the bus was coming but it had gone, you’d have to wait all day. I can’t see any other cars or buses or houses or people by the wharf.
Jack: What if a storm came and the dad couldn’t get the boat across the channel – where would James go then?
Emma: He might be able to go to those people where he waits each day, but what if they were away?
Emeli: You couldn’t take other kids home to play or go to other kids’ houses after school. It might be lonely.
Tayla: And you couldn’t ring your mum if you forgot your lunch or your gym money – because they couldn’t come.
Grayson: It would be good if they had a special machine that could go in the sea and on the road too. One that had wheels that would come down out of the water – then the dad could come any time.
Jack: We could design one!
Teacher: What an interesting idea! You could do this as a language response. You could sketch one and describe to the class how it would work.
Teacher, years 1 to 2
When we read, we construct meaning by making connections between the text we read and what we already know and can do. Proficient readers at any stage operate in this way. They bring to their reading their knowledge of language and of the world and their knowledge of how to use sources of information in text, and they make sense of the ideas and information in the text accordingly.
Competent readers develop knowledge, a repertoire of strategies, and awareness that enable them to:
The terms reading strategies and processing strategies are often used interchangeably in the context of learning to read. However, in this book, the term reading strategies has been extended to cover comprehension strategies and the term processing strategies is consistently used to describe the in-the-head ways by which readers make use of the sources of information in text.
Reading for meaning is paramount in school literacy programmes. In order to be able to read for meaning, students need to become accurate and efficient decoders. Through instruction in word identification, teachers ensure that their students become proficient in using visual and grapho-phonic sources of information (see page 30) so that when they encounter an unfamiliar word, they attend to the word itself as a primary source of information. It is important to be explicit when teaching students how to make links between letters (or letter clusters) and their sounds.
Students need to become increasingly fast, automatic decoders of unfamiliar words. In reading, efficient decoding is not an end in itself; it is a means to constructing meaning. Rapid, accurate word recognition frees up the reader’s cognitive resources to focus on meaning – not only on surface meanings but also on the deeper messages of a text. The reader then approaches the reading task in a more thoughtful and analytical way and can be encouraged to make their own personal response to the text.
As learners spend more time reading, they encounter commonly used words more often, and these words become familiar to them. Increasingly rapid word recognition has a direct and cumulative effect on a learner’s progress. Effective teachers, therefore, provide many, many opportunities for their students to read and write.
Very often, the reader decodes and constructs meaning by drawing on only some of the available information. Children learn to select the best source or sources to focus on. For example, in the sentence “The ducks are going to the river”, certain words allow the reader to pay less attention to others. The fact that “ducks” is plural dictates “are”. The structure of the English sentence determines the use of “going” and requires a noun at the end of the sentence. These sorts of factors make a text predictable. Children may not be able to explain such rules, but their experience with spoken language means that they come to know them and apply them in their reading and writing. A key role of the teacher is to develop their students’ awareness of how to apply and control the rules. (See Developing awareness as a reader and writer, on pages 43–45.)
Strategies for reading include comprehension strategies as well as processing strategies (which are the in-the-head ways by which readers make use of the sources of information described on pages 28–31). Readers apply the processing strategies in combination with strategies for comprehending and thinking critically about what they read.
All readers use processing strategies, but they do so at different levels, depending on factors such as the reader’s proficiency, the difficulty of the text, and the purpose for reading.
The processing strategies that readers use are:
Reading can be thought of as a constantly repeated process of attending and searching, predicting, crosschecking, and confirming or self-correcting. These strategies are not discrete stages; they constantly interact and support one another. They are used in complex combinations, and experienced readers usually apply them automatically. See pages 127–131 in chapter 5 for further detail about teaching students to use processing strategies in the context of text-based experiences.
The ways in which children learn and apply the processing strategies illustrate the importance of metacognition in literacy learning. Beginning readers need to be taught to recognise when to use each strategy; they need to be shown how to apply them deliberately and how to integrate them. Children whose control of the strategies is limited may process text in inappropriate ways – for example, by relying on their memory, by trying to sound out every single word, or by making guesses without appropriate use of the sources of information in the text or their own prior knowledge. Chapter 5 provides examples of how teachers can encourage students to develop metacognition so that they become increasingly able to choose reading strategies for themselves.
Comprehension is both a pathway to reading and its end product. Whether we are reading aloud, reading silently, writing, or listening to someone talk, we enter into a mental dialogue with the author, audience, or speaker and explore their ideas or our own in order to make connections. Children begin these explorations when they first set out on their literacy journey, and they continue with further explorations in the instructional settings of classrooms.
Comprehension strategies cannot be separated from processing strategies; the teacher’s instruction should ensure that their students develop both. Comprehension strategies enable students not only to make sense of the text but also to think about what they are reading. Effective teachers encourage their students to develop strategies that lead to deeper understandings of text.
Comprehension involves:
Learners’ comprehension is promoted by:
Writing helps to develop comprehension. The discussion involved in, say, shared writing builds students’ listening vocabulary and helps them to clarify their ideas. Writers need to attend to the making of meaning – to consider their purpose for writing and how their audience will comprehend what they are writing. Applying this learning helps to develop awareness of how to use comprehension strategies.
Comprehension teaching includes both implicit and explicit instruction. In shared reading, for example, the teacher conveys many messages about literacy implicitly as they lead the reading and model what good readers do. Explicit instruction in the context of shared reading often focuses on a particular text feature, such as the use of adjectives to convey a viewpoint. The teacher creates the instructional contexts; the learning may be embedded (implicit), directed (explicit), or both.
Comprehension strategies, like the processing strategies described on pages 38–39, are tools that the reader uses with a purpose in view.
Comprehension strategies may be described as:
Like the strategies for processing text, comprehension strategies are not discrete processes to be used one at a time. They are used together: for example, hypothesising involves making connections. They are employed in complex combinations, according to the text itself, the purpose for reading, and the individual learner’s pathway of development.
Comprehension strategies are necessary and useful tools for all students – including students who are making rapid progress and need to be extended, those who are struggling to master aspects of literacy learning, and those whose home and community literacy practices differ from the conventional practices in schools. Chapter 4 outlines a number of strategies that teachers can use to help their students to develop these important tools for literacy learning. Chapter 5 describes the comprehension strategies and gives examples of how to engage learners with texts to build their comprehension strategies (see pages 131–135).
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.
Predicting is a strategy that readers use not only to identify words but also to anticipate what might come next. It involves forming an expectation on the basis of the information acquired so far, so it is strongly related to meaning and is more than speculation. Predictions draw on readers’ prior knowledge and their use of syntactic, semantic, and visual and grapho-phonic information in the text.
For beginning readers, predicting is usually at the level of individual words. For example, learners use their knowledge of letter-sound relationships to identify the initial sound of a word, or they draw on the pattern of a repetitive text to support them in working out what might happen next. Beginning readers often rely a great deal on the illustrations.
For fluent readers, predicting involves using prior knowledge and information in the text quickly, and usually automatically, to decide (at least initially) on the meaning of unknown words or difficult passages or to anticipate, for example, the next event in a narrative or the next step in an argument.
As learners become familiar with patterns of sentences, book language, and basic text structures, they build their ability to use prediction.
Teachers need to explicitly teach beginning readers to predict unknown words and show them exactly how to predict what will come next in a text. Predicting may involve the learner in doing some or all of the following.
Teachers need to show beginning readers how to monitor their own reading. The reader needs to cross-check predictions to ensure that they make sense and fit with other information already processed. When children detect or suspect an error, they need to have strategies to fix it. For example, a beginning reader may notice that there is a mismatch between what they have read and what is in the picture or in the print. Noticing the problem is the first step; knowing what to do to fix it is the next. Readers cross-check by drawing on their prior knowledge and on the syntactic, semantic, and visual and grapho-phonic information in the text. Cross-checking often involves turning a partially correct response into a correct one.
For beginning readers, cross-checking usually involves checking that their prediction of an individual word fits and makes sense. Their checking and confirming often take time and are quite deliberate.
For fluent readers, cross-checking usually involves further searching for information to confirm their initial understanding. In skilled reading, predictions are usually checked swiftly and automatically.
As readers progress, they learn that cross-checking, confirming, and self-correcting are among the habits of a good reader and take responsibility for using these strategies. Cross-checking, confirming, and self-correcting may involve the learner in doing some or all of the following.
This example features Let’s Go by Feana Tu’akoi, photographs by Mark Round, Ready to Read series, Learning Media, 2001.
This example features The Praying Mantis by Pauline Cartwright, photographs by Nic Bishop, Ready to Read series, Learning Media, 1993.
This example features The Hole in the King’s Sock by Dot Meharry, illustrated by Philip Webb, Ready to Read series, Learning Media, 2001.
Becoming a strategic writer
Like reading, writing involves creating meaning through text. The reader integrates prior knowledge with sources of information in the text to decode and to gain meaning. The writer starts with meaning and integrates prior knowledge and an understanding of how language works to encode and create a text.
Learners need to develop knowledge and a repertoire of strategies for writing across the three aspects of the framework so that they can:
The first of these points can be described as attending to surface features of written text and the second and third as attending to its deeper features.
The sources of information in text that are used for reading are also used when writing. Like readers, writers use semantic, syntactic, and visual and grapho-phonic sources and integrate these with their own prior knowledge and experience to create meaningful text (see pages 30–31).
Just as young readers need to become efficient in decoding, so young writers need to learn to encode effectively – to match sounds to letters in the actual business of writing words. Students need explicit instruction to ensure that they learn to form as well as recognise letters and words rapidly and accurately. They need to master phonological processing strategies, such as distinguishing the phonemes within words and making accurate links between sounds and letters, and to develop a visual memory for printed words (see pages 32–37).
Students need to build an ever-increasing writing vocabulary (that is, a bank of words that they can write automatically). This frees up the writer’s resources to focus on meaning and on other aspects of writing, such as developing an author’s perspective and planning the impact on the intended audience. It enables writers to experiment with language and to analyse their work and review it critically.
Students also need to become familiar with the rules of syntax that apply to written English.
Many of the reading comprehension strategies can be related to writing. Good writers, like good readers, synthesise ideas and information. They bring together previous learning and experiences, make connections, visualise, and go on to create imaginative pieces or clear descriptive accounts. They also analyse and evaluate ideas and information as they clarify their intentions, choose vocabulary, begin to compose, and revise their work.
The four main stages common to most writing are:
It’s important to recognise that these four stages are not discrete but are closely interrelated. The writer does not necessarily move through them in a simple sequence. The writer’s movement from one step to the next is influenced by what has gone before and what is anticipated. For example:
The aim of writing instruction is to build students’ accuracy, their fluency, and their ability to create meaningful text. The instructional strategies teachers can use to help students achieve this aim are described in chapter 4. Chapter 5 describes the four stages of the writing process in more detail and discusses what it means to engage learners in rich writing experiences. Young writers need many opportunities to practise, to meet new challenges, and simply to enjoy being a writer.
At this stage, the writer gets an idea, thinks about it in terms of the purpose and audience, and gives it time to grow. As the teacher supports students in forming intentions for their writing, the students will become aware that writing, like reading, is for a purpose.
Depending on the children’s age and ability, forming intentions may take some time or may hardly feature at all. For example, beginning writers are usually not so concerned with a target audience and generally work from a model that the teacher provides. Forming intentions may involve the learner in doing some or all of the following.
Composing a text involves the writer in translating their thoughts, ideas, intentions, and understandings into a written form. This stage is often described as “getting something down on paper” (even when it involves using a computer). Depending on the focus or shared goal of the activity, the learner may do some or all of the following.
Beginning writers need lots of modelling and support from the teacher, for example, through shared writing. For them, composing may be painstaking and slow as they:
At the same time, teachers need to help these students to focus on meaning and think about what they are writing.Teachers should provide explicit instruction to ensure that their students develop the ability to form letters and words rapidly and accurately. Beginning writers need to:
For more fluent writers, words, phrases, and sentences may appear to flow almost automatically. But, as the text develops, the writer will reread it and may find that they need (with the teacher’s support) to modify their initial plan. Depending on the focus of the writing task, they may correct details of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. However, at this stage it is important that attention to surface features does not detract from the important focus of giving expression to the writer’s intentions.
Revising generally involves reordering, deleting, and adding text in order to represent an intended meaning more clearly. The writer may search for a more accurate word or expression to capture an idea. At the revising stage, students of all ages reflect critically on what they have written and think about how the audience may respond. At more advanced levels, revision often involves substantial changes to content and structure. Revising may involve the learner in doing some or all of the following.
Students often need encouragement to give careful attention to their writing and to spend time revising it, but it is important that they do so. Learning to revise their writing is essential if they are to become skilled, accurate writers, whether their writing is for personal use or is intended for publishing. The term “editing” is often used for this stage of writing.
Publishing or presenting means making a text available for others to read. This stage may involve completing a number of tasks in preparation for presenting, or it may mean simply sharing a piece with the class by reading it aloud. Publishing or presenting may involve the learner in doing some or all of the following.
Proof-reading and correcting are part of preparing an accurate text for others to read: they involve spelling, punctuation, grammar, and legibility. Beginning writers need lots of support from the teacher when proofreading. Often it’s best to identify just one or two features for them to check and correct. But all young writers should expect to check their work for accuracy.
By publishing or presenting, writers find out how well they have met their intentions for writing. Warm responses enhance the writer’s confidence, and informative feedback from the teacher and their peers gives them guidance for further writing.
Not all pieces of writing are developed to the stage of readiness for sharing with an audience. The purpose of the writing may be very personal, or it may be appropriate that the piece remains a rough draft.
Case study: How Tamyka wrote "My Mum Gives Me a Hug'
The teacher of this year 1 to 2 class worked with her students for three weeks on exploring characterisation in writing. She began by reading and discussing lots of picture books and talking about the concept of “characters” with them. Favourite books included My Dad by Anthony Browne, The Kuia and the Spider by Patricia Grace, and The Best-loved Bear by Diana Noonan. Eventually her students started to think about characters as people, animals, or objects.
The teacher particularly wanted her students to focus on real people in their writing, especially people who were close to them. She began to promote this focus by getting the students to talk about the mother in the picture book The Lion in the Meadow, by Margaret Mahy. They used both visual and text clues in the story to talk about what the mother looked like, what sort of person she was, and how she might have talked. As the students discussed their ideas, the teacher recorded them on the board.
The teacher then asked the students to focus on their own mothers. They had to visualise them in their minds and think about what they were like and what they did. She used the five senses to encourage this thinking – for example, “What does her hair look like?”, “How does her voice sound?”, and “How does she smell when she hugs you?”
After the discussion, the teacher wrote about her own mother as a model for the students. She particularly reminded them that she was trying to:
In addition, she reminded the students that she was trying to:
The students now understood what they needed to do. Tamyka, the writer of this text, had a clear purpose for writing: to tell what her mother did and show how she felt about her. She also knew that her teacher expected her to try some new words in her writing and to use capital letters, full stops, and finger spacing well.
She was excited about writing because she had now clearly visualised all the relevant things about her mother and knew what she wanted to say. Her teacher had helped her visualise these images through conversation: Teacher: I see your mum drop you off at school sometimes. What does she do when she says goodbye? Tamyka: She gives me a hug.Teacher: What a lovely mum. I like it when my mum hugs me.
Tamyka drafted her piece of writing. To begin with, she drew a picture of her mum. This helped her to focus on her main message: “My mum always gives me a hug when she drops me off at school.”
As Tamyka wrote, she used her prior knowledge of sound, letter, word, and sentence formation. In particular, she:
The teacher helped Tamyka to revise her story. While roving, she realised that Tamyka could add more to her story because she had not yet met the second purpose for writing (“Show how you feel about your mother”). So she asked Tamyka focused questions that led her to add a second sentence. Teacher: How do you feel when your mum hugs you? Tamyka: It feels warm. She goes like this (demonstrates by hugging herself).Teacher: Her arms wrap around you and make you feel warm. Can you write that?
Tamyka not only used the teacher’s modelled sentence structure and vocabulary to help her; she also used her own knowledge of key content and high-frequency words (“and”, “with”, “two”) and her sounding-out skills (“ams”, “wom”, “hods”). She read her story again and was pleased because she knew that she had now met the purposes for writing. This also gave her the confidence to feel that her audience – the teacher and the other students – would enjoy her writing and respond positively to it.
Tamyka wanted to present her writing in two ways.
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