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Innovative teaching and vocabulary development

Ensuring reading and writing success in the Early Years is our most important responsibility.

One of the things that fascinates me most about being an Early Years educator is watching as our students acquire new skills, skills which enable them to read and write.

During this week, I have seen two innovative approaches used to engage students in Kindergarten in the writing process.

Both involved using drawing and writing to encourage students to convey their messages, but each used a very different process for this to happen.

Writing in Kindergarten

Since the beginning of this Term, Kinder Bears students have been encouraged to use a writing journal to record happenings in their lives.

Mr Voss calls this “leaving a trace”. The students have been encouraged to draw and write about their experiences and then share them with each other.

Looking through their journals, it is easy to see the development of each student’s writing ability. They move from random marks on a page to the use of known letters of the alphabet, usually their name, they then attempt to use the words from their Kinder environment to convey their message, often with supporting details contained in their drawings.

Every student is now actively engaged in the drawing/writing process and they have achieved the intended outcome- that our drawings and writing conveys a message or story that others can read.

On Wednesday in Kinder Mice, I watched as the students used two beautiful stick insects from Owen’s terrarium as stimulus for drawing. It quickly became an opportunity for Mrs Douglas to develop a deeper understanding for some in how their drawings could convey more information and evidence of their knowledge by adding words and labelling their drawings.

One student began to point to and name the various images he had drawn, so Linda quietly challenged him to add words to his drawing.

He asked for more information and Mrs Douglas then demonstrated how he could record this by showing him what an arrow was.

He used this arrow and sounds to represent words clearly showing which section of his drawing he was referring to.

As you can see from the photo, he used many arrows and words to label his drawing, developing a comprehensive story.

Developing Reading

Reading is also an important part of a child’s life and it’s really important for us to understand that it all starts from talking. Reading begins from birth.

This may sound like an unusual statement, but the more we speak to our children as babies, the more they learn the mechanics of how to read.

They listen to words, look at faces to read emotions and hear the different tones in the sounds they are hearing.

They then internalise all of these and begin to communicate with each other, to read and write.

Vocabulary Development

Reading is vital to every subject area, and every time we speak to a child, we are developing their vocabulary and therefore their capacity to become successful readers.

I found an interesting quote from the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which asks “Did you know?

Research shows that the more words parents used when speaking to an eight month old infant, the greater the size of the child’s vocabulary at age 3.

Reading aloud is an effective, rewarding and fun way to introduce language.”

Reading aloud introduces new words, grammar and concepts that you may not use during regular talking.

Picture books can have as many as 500 words. Imagine the difference in a child’s vocabulary if they heard two books every day from birth as well as their parents and siblings constantly talking to them.

Mrs Jane Doyle - Coordinator of Teaching & Learning K-2