Collins Introducing English to Young Children: Reading and Writing

Collins HarperCollins Publishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith London W6 8JB

© Opal Dunn 2014

The right of Opal Dunn to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

eBook ISBN 978-0-00-755686-1

Source ISBN 978-0-00-752254-5

Version: 2014-07-14

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Cover

Copyright

Title Page

About the author

About this book

List of figures

1 Acquiring language – The Playful Approach

1.1 Absorbing another language

1.2 Transitions

1.3 Play as a form of learning

1.4 The Playful Approach

1.5 Free-choice time

2 Tuned-in teaching

2.1 Acquiring English

2.2 Tuning in

2.3 The child’s expectations of the teacher

2.4 Enabling learning

2.5 Motivation and emotional literacy

2.6 Monitoring and assessing

2.7 Teacher input

3 Listening to the maturing child

3.1 Self-educators

3.2 Motivation

3.3 Evaluating success

3.4 Autonomy

4 Cooperating with parents

4.1 Tuning in

4.2 Parents’ involvement

4.3 Teaching for a test

4.4 Bringing English into the home

4.5 Assessments for parents

5 Planning, managing and assessing

5.1 Planning lessons

5.2 Managing the autonomous learner

5.3 Self-assessment

6 Extending spoken ability

6.1 Developing autonomy in the classroom

6.2 English input

6.3 Extending vocabulary

7 Introducing reading English

7.1 Reading as a skill

7.2 A multi-strategy English reading scheme

7.3 Finding out about words

7.4 Teacher’s role

8 Introducing handwriting

8.1 The role of handwriting

8.2 Beginning handwriting

8.3 Initial assessment

8.4 Stimulating children to handwrite

8.5 Style

8.6 Materials

8.7 Handwriting size

8.8 Handwriting programme

8.9 Beginning handwriting for L1 non-handwriters

9 Learning to spell

9.1 Spelling (encoding)

9.2 Introducing spelling

9.3 Assessing spelling

9.4 Introducing syllables

9.5 Recognising patterns of ‘onset and rime’

9.6 Developing analogy strategies

9.7 Learning new spellings

9.8 Involving parents

9.9 Fun facts

9.10 Introducing first grammar concepts

9.11 Word origins

10 Projects and activities

10.1 Why projects and activities?

10.2 Selecting projects and activities

10.3 Parents’ involvement

10.4 Suggested projects or activities

10.5 Assessing

11 Enjoying reading and writing creatively

11.1 Attitudes to creative writing and reading

11.2 Starting from the child’s ideas

11.3 Modelling and scaffolding

11.4 Types of books children can make

11.5 Towards fluent reading

Final thoughts

List of terminology

References and further reading

Appendix

Searchable Terms

About the Publisher

About the author

Award-winning author Opal Dunn has many years of experience in teaching children aged up to 8 years, and has trained teachers all over the world. She has also authored picture books for nursery and young primary children, organised Bunko (mini-libraries) for bilingual, multilingual and double children (children growing up with two languages and two cultures) and has written information books and articles for parents. Opal is the co-founder of IATEFL YLT SIG (Young Learners & Teenagers Special Interest Group of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language).

About this book

In the evolution of man spoken language preceded written language.

(Anon)

Introducing English to Young Children: Reading and Writing gives guidance for the transition period from pre-school English experiences to the more formal first years of written literacy in lower-primary education, up to the age of 8 or 9.

At this lower-primary age there are noticeable holistic and developmental changes, not only physical, but in attitude. Children start to feel they are more grown up. They want to be independent doers and learners. They are beginning to be aware of themselves and what they can do, and how, with effort, they can achieve and make progress. They need help to progress and to develop their own autonomy and we, as teachers, need to tune in to them and listen to their needs if they are to mature holistically and feel good.

For the child, English is still not a school subject; it’s another way of communicating and talking within the class, school and beyond. Young children continue to pick up English in the same way as they learned their first language (L1), if the adult helping inserts the Playful Approach to motivate them. However, language content and enabling activities, although more advanced, are still linked to self-discovery.

The teacher’s role remains important, as the teacher is still the main source of new input of English. However, teacher-talk has broadened to introduce a wider vocabulary through mediating and modelling situations. Direct teaching is now included in quick, focused tutor-talks that give explanations about language. Young children need help to develop their self-learning strategies if they are to become independent learners.

Young readers, who have developed their own multi-strategies to read, spell and write in L1, are impatient to do the same in English. Since they already understand the mechanics of reading, there is no need to teach them in the same way as non-reader English children. Readers only need help to find out how to transfer and reuse their existing reading strategies to read a new content. Once introduced to a multi-strategy approach to decoding English that they can speak, these children teach themselves to read. They have no need to start, like English-speaking non-readers, from the very beginning of the Synthetic Phonics Method.

Learning language continues to depend on the triangle (consisting of child, teacher and parent) for interactive support and motivation. Suggestions are made for how to involve parents’ innate language-teaching skills in the home to consolidate children’s learning. The window of opportunity to help children absorb English with enthusiasm is limited. By the age of 10, with the onset of puberty and the influence of peer-group pressures, their learning environment changes.

This book is about helping children acquire a good grounding in the basics of reading and writing English – and enjoying it. The many explanations and practical suggestions can be used to support a textbook or a teacher planning a school programme. What I have written is what I have observed, experienced and enjoyed with young children.

There is no substitute for caring human interaction and adult help for learning at this stage. However, as teachers we have to be aware of the increasing appeal of screens. To keep children’s interest, we need to fire up and then stoke children’s curiosity about the world in which they will need English.

Help me to do it myself.

(Montessori)

List of figures

Figure 1 A class framework

Figure 2 A suggested Hidden Syllabus

Figure 3 Recognising whole words

Figure 4 High-frequency words

Figure 5 Classroom labels

Figure 6 Writing a rhyme with cards

Figure 7 Little books

Figure 8 Storyboard for a mini-book

Figure 9 The 37 rimes which make up nearly 500 words

Figure 10 37 Basic phonograms

Figure 11 A class newsletter

Figure 12 Letter Faces

Figure 13 Handwriting positions for right- and left-handers

Figure 14 Ball and stick handwriting method (not encouraged)

Figure 15 Chinese Characters

Figure 16 Writing on tracks

Figure 17 Structured programme for introducing small letters in simple print style

Figure 18 Structured programme for introducing capital letters

Figure 19 A child’s signature

Figure 20 A note to parents

Figure 21 A writing pattern

Figure 22 Writing patterns for young non-readers

Figure 23 A spelling sheet

Figure 24 My map

Figure 25 A class exhibition poster

Figure 26 A storyboard

1

Acquiring language – The Playful Approach

1.1 Absorbing another language

1.2 Transitions

1.3 Play as a form of learning

1.4 The Playful Approach

1.5 Free-choice time

1.1 Absorbing another language

A young child’s ability to absorb language unconsciously, and seemingly effortlessly, is quite remarkable. It is even more astounding that the same young child, if given the right opportunities, can absorb two or three languages at more or less the same time, and use them with his or her different co-speakers correctly.

When I was 3 years old, I spoke three different languages to three different people. I am told I never mixed up the speakers. I just talked, but I didn’t know I was speaking different languages until I was much older and my family told me. I can still speak these languages.

(Japanese lady, aged 45)

Young children, if circumstances are right for them, are innate, unconscious language learners. They are conscious of learning about the content of an activity, but not the language (or languages) they are using. At 5 or 6 years old they may tell you how many languages they speak and give examples, but they are not conscious of actually learning them in the way an adult is.

Children refine their language-learning strategies as they mature, depending on the type and quality of language support within their experiences. They then have the ability to reuse their language-learning strategies unconsciously, if motivated to learn another language – such as English. Most do this with confidence if they are shepherded by adults to take part in enabling activities, and are exposed to a similar quality of language support to that of their L1 acquisition.

By the age of 6, young children are familiar with most of the structures of their L1, although they are still absorbing new words and phrases. During pre-school children may have been introduced to different forms of spoken English or they may start an English programme during the first years of lower primary school. In all cases they innately expect to reuse their language-learning strategies to absorb spoken English through listening to it, as they take part in meaningful, playful activities. To young children learning language is not a task – it is not instructed, even if it is adult led. Young children have not yet developed the cognitive maturity to understand and use English taught as an abstract, grammar-based subject. Most of them cannot yet recognise the difference between a verb and a noun in their L1!

1.2 Transitions

Teaching methods in the first years of compulsory schooling depend on local society and cultural expectations. Parents and extended families often have culturally influenced opinions about how and when children should learn another language – in this case English.

Transitions (by which we mean the changes incurred by moving between schooling levels throughout compulsory education) alter the child’s administrative status as a student. Transition is based on the child’s date of birth rather than his or her level of maturity and readiness for change in methodological approach. There are few examples of free-flow schooling, where status and individual development are coordinated, making transition smoother for the child.

Transition from one school level to another generally entails an immediate adjustment to a more abstract style of learning, with teacher-led instruction and new expectations – even though there may be no change in the child’s cognitive maturity, which continues to develop at its own rate following well-researched milestones.

The challenges in transitioning from home to pre-school are not likely to be great due to the close collaboration between family and pre-school staff. Both use similar supportive language patterns which are understood and expected by a young child. There is, however, in many societies, often a more marked difference between educational methods used in pre-school and those used in primary school (the first year of more formal compulsory education). This change is felt, if not verbalised, by the child in:

 teacher–child relationships

 types and use of language

 types of teacher instruction.

There is a new distance between the teacher and child, which young children feel. Gone are the many opportunities for caring, intimate, one-to-one dialogues with the teacher.

Although there may be a change in teaching style when a child enters primary school, teachers still have to focus on increasing the level of spoken English in preparation for the introduction of formal literacy, reading, spelling and writing. To do this successfully, teachers need to continue planning enabling activities in which children can use their existing language-learning strategies. Without these opportunities children find it difficult to pick up language to their full potential.

Parents virtualise start of normal school by uniform and a school bag. Play is seen as recreation and children are not sent to school to play.

(Stewart)

Transition to compulsory schooling is ritualised within many societies through material possessions like a uniform and a school bag, as well as in daily language within the extended family. Family discussions and expectations have changed to match the entry into formal schooling. Family members might say You are going to big school now. Listen to what the teacher says. Put your hand up if you want to ask a question.

Parents’ comments about their young child’s changed status are often influenced by their own school experience. Some parents support their children through transition by talking about their new English experiences with them in L1. Parents’ understanding and mediation during transition to compulsory schooling is important as parents know, intimately, how their child learns as they have shepherded their language development since birth.

1.3 Play as a form of learning

Play is the highest form of learning and helps children to apply what they learn in an integrated way.

(Bruce)

Incorporating opportunities for play within new activities helps children become more confident, as well as leading them to become more divergent, reflective, inventive and persistent thinkers.

As the teacher’s role is to provide a selection of enabling opportunities in which to acquire English, the atmosphere and teaching style in English lessons may be different from content-based lessons like Maths or Science. Some parents feel that since their children are now in compulsory education with a timetable divided into major subjects, instruction should now be more formal and should begin to resemble secondary school methods. Their reaction when their child refers to ‘playing’ in the English lesson can be of annoyance and they may openly criticise the teacher for not ‘teaching’, saying something like I did not send my child to primary school to play! Play is for break time. I expect my child to learn English.

‘Play’ is an umbrella term. In English the word play is broad and the meaning can be confusing. It can be used to talk about participating in a wide range of activities:

 play football (fixed rules and expectations)

 play time (free choice recreation at pre-school and primary school)

 play ‘Snakes and Ladders’ or ‘Grandmother’s Footsteps’ (culture-based children’s games with a set of known rules)

 play the piano (the formalised learning of a musical instrument, following music rules)

  play on a games console / tablet / smartphone

The concept of play and its role in childhood differs from culture to culture; it can also differ between boys and girls. In some societies individual play is not valued as a way of learning, so some young children may not have developed skills to play by themselves and may wait for instructions from parents, teachers or other adults.

In a child’s mind, the physical activity of play is like adults’ work – children are intrinsically motivated to physically try out things, to find out how they work. However; to adults play can be seen as frivolous since it has no obvious aim, and in some cases has no adult presence.

Play is learning through doing: taking part in shared activities with a supportive adult or older child whose language the child can absorb unconsciously. A division between play and work only exists in the minds of adults who think in terms of formal teaching and instruction. For young children the two are blurred until the age of 5 or 6, when children begin to become aware of actually ‘learning’. Any distinction made by children might arise from external symbols of a formal approach (such as sitting at a desk or using a textbook) but not from the content of an activity. Even if the content is more formal (such as a spelling test), playful use of voice and language by the teacher can make children feel that the experience is fun and they may even describe it to others as playing a game.

The main characteristic of play — whether of child or adult — is not its content but its mode. Play is an approach to action, not a form of activity.

(Bruner in Moyles)

A skilled teacher, like a young child’s mother, regularly turns routine activities into what children think of as play, simply by using playful language. Furthermore, the playful nature of many language-learning activities is accentuated when contrasted with the more formal teacher-led instruction of other school subjects. This approach may account for the popularity of English teachers in primary schools.

1.4 The Playful Approach

To teach using the Playful Approach is demanding and tiring. The playfulness results in teacher–child bonding, but in a more mature and respectful way than in the pre-school years. This teacher–child relationship can contribute to the beginning of life-long attitudes to English, and such attitudes are formed early – before the age of 8 or 9. Later in life, adults often recall the name of their first English teacher.

The Playful Approach needs to be underpinned by:

 a hidden syllabus, influencing programme planning (including tutor-talk)

 assessments (short within the lesson, and longer after the lesson)

 flexibility (to respond to individual children’s interests)

 knowledge about words and language

 modelling the use of new language and how to interact socially

 enthusiasm for discovery and learning language.

Language needs action as an accompaniment or the situation has no meaning for the children.

(Krashen)

Motivation is vital for all learning, whether it involves new or familiar content. Through the Playful Approach teachers can motivate and remotivate – although remotivation should be monitored as it can have a negative effect if overused.