C&Pa Te Tiriti o Waitangi: Literacy 4

 Ted Glynn (2021) notes the importance of listening as Tiriti partners. Listening to the stories, and lived experiences bring understanding, and hearing in authentic ways demonstrates a commitment to seeing learning as a reciprocal partnership where ākonga and whānau are active participants and contributors to the learning process.  

Specific Disciplinary Knowledge and Skills

• learn about pedagogical approaches to teaching reading and writing (approaches are not the same as strategies, as you will see)
• acquire a wider range of effective pedagogies
• Plan for reading and writing using the different pedagogical approaches and genres

Effective Literacy Practice suggests that modelling is “perhaps the most powerful and pervasive form of instruction” (p. 80).

Guided Approach

Guided reading and writing are a central part of our literacy programme.  These are focused group sessions for ākonga with similar instructional needs – not necessarily the same level.  Kaiako facilitates and guide ākonga in decoding, making meaning, and thinking critically (levels of comprehension – revisit comprehension strategies Tompkins et al., p. 297, 2019).  Children will each have a copy of the text and in an ideal setting, all children will be reading this text at their pace, as opposed to round-robin reading (see Tompkins et al. p. 254, 2019; Literacy Now) with the kaiako checking in with each frequently. 

Guided reading is delivered at the child’s instructional level or the appropriate decodable stage.  This means that they are able to read the text at a 90-94% accuracy (and 80% comprehension).

Each guided reading session involves a follow-up task or focus – guided by the kaiako.  This could be a decoding strategy e.g. semantics, syntactic, graphophonic or paralinguistics, or other forms of word work such as phonological awareness tasks. Comprehension is also another important follow-up task. I suggest the use of a modelling book for this is invaluable (one per group), it is a great way to record word maps, chains, graphic organisers etc.  Make sure these are available for ākonga to revisit.   

We suggest the following framework for guided reading:

• Select text or short passages that ākonga can make connections to (the Instructional Series are an excellent example of this – and you dived in here with Module Three)
• Ākonga understands the focus of the guided session e.g. identifying the main idea; practising our fluency; vocabulary; accurate decoding (choose only only one focus)
• Connect to prior learning and lived experience – listening, and hearing
• Make connections using – text to text; text to self; text to world (ano, choose one or have ākonga make their choice of which best connects for them)
• Front-load unfamiliar vocabulary (pop these in your modelling book)
• Silently read (fluent readers) or quietly out loud at their pace
• Monitor – check in with each reader, you can have them read out loud for parts of the text to check automaticity, prosody, and fluency
• Content of text
• Strategies used to decode tricky words or gain understanding (ano, record in modelling book)
• Draw of Tompkins et al. (2019, p. 299) comprehension strategies (include in modelling book)
• Close – return to your purpose, how do you and ākonga know you have achieved this?

Ākonga will understand and engage in the:

• Purpose
• Background
• Reading
• Discussing
• Questioning
• Answers proved (justifying) – ask “what was the clue in the text?”

Guided Writing Approach

Just like guided reading, the learner takes progressively more control of the writing process.  Again, writing is delivered in a small group with the same instructional focus.  The kaiako knows:

• what ākonga already knows (for scaffolding purposes)
• where ākonga is currently (what they know)
• what the next step is (attached to learning goals quite often; Literacy Learning Progressions are also a useful tool in determining next steps – NB these are currently being updated in the Curriculum Review but now the LLP will guide you).

It is important to remember that your focus as kaiako is on what the key learning is for this session (purpose/learning intention/learning outcome).  This means that you emphasise this and not other features of writing e.g. surface features such as spelling or punctuation – unless this is the focus of your lesson. 

Shared Approach

Shared reading is a teaching approach that enables you to teach reading to a group of students with a range of needs and abilities.  It requires knowledge about ākonga in the class/group, and knowledge of how to use questioning to effectively focus on the purpose of your lesson, how to use questioning to elicit the understandings of ākonga and scaffold their learning. 

The key feature of shared reading is that all ākonga can view the text together.  In junior classrooms, this might be reading a big book.  In more senior classrooms, the source text is often projected on a screen, devices.  You can also include a range of more sophisticated texts including media, news articles, and song lyrics, for example. 

This next mahi applies your understanding of the principles of effective instruction to the understanding the craft of ‘questioning’ for teaching, for scaffolding, and as a comprehension strategy (also see Tompkins et al. p. 303).  Lawrence (2017) refers to the Question-Answer-Relationship (QAR) to strengthen text comprehension for ākonga.  QAR begins with a three-way relationship between questions, text, and reader knowledge.  Importantly, the responsibility lies with ākonga to determine where the answer will come from – that is, directly from the text, from their own knowledge (and experiences) or by combining knowledge and text clues.  QAR supports earlier comprehension mahi with the different levels of comprehension (see Module Two).  Four question types are asked:

• ‘Right there’ – the answer is directly in the text (literal)
• ‘Think and search’ – the answer can be found in the text, e.g. clues in text (inferential)
• ‘Author and me’ – combining the information in the text and own knowledge
• ‘On my own’ – based on the reader’s own opinions and experiences

QAR builds on ‘Making Connections’ (Tompkins et al., 2019). 

The Shared Writing Approach

The shared writing approach provides a scaffold between a modelled and guided approach.  Key factors that distinguish these are:

• Modelled approach
  • Kaiako hold share their own thinking and ideas as a model for ākonga
  • The pen remains in the hand of kaiako
• Shared approach
  • Kaiako share their thinking and ideas AND call on ākonga to contribute
  • Prompts such as ‘I wonder’, ‘what might happen next?’
  • The pen remains in the hand of kaiako who acts as a scribe for ākonga
• Guided approach
  • Kaiako shifts to facilitator and guides ākonga, often in a small group
  • Modelling books, planning tools such as graphic organiser often support the writing process
  • The pen shifts to the hand of ākonga

Tompkins et al. (2019) emphasises the importance of honouring the language of ākonga.  Therefore, when ākonga are dictating to kaiako it is important to resist changing or ‘improving’ their language. 

2.3. Languages Experience Approach

We’ve met Modelled, Guided, and Shared, three of the six approaches to teaching literacy that are fundamental and visible in most NZ schools. To recap, the approaches are –

• Modelled
• Shared
• Interactive
• Guided
• Independent
• Language experience

 We now turn to the Language Experience Approach (LEA), whose roots can be traced to New Zealand literacy innovator Sylvia Ashton Warner (1965) who used it so young ākonga could generate and read materials that were relevant to them.

The steps are simplified on the Victorian Schools website as:

1. Provide the experience
2. Oral language
3. Create text
4. Read*

See also Tompkins et al. pp. 415-6 for a similar but more detailed explanation of the LEA