We're almost at the end of the first term of 2021. We've already had two lockdowns, one three days, and the other a week. Our young learners (I teach 5 year-olds) have had a rough start to their learning. We hope the rest of the year will be more stable for their learning, and our teaching.
As a team, we have discussed some of the issues we see our children face around literacy, and we have chosen to focus on three important areas in the hope of improving reading and writing skills. Khismira Lal, Deb Shirley, and I will be working together throughout our inquiry journey.
1. We will be focussing on developing phonetic knowledge - with explicit teaching of phonemes (the smallest units of sounds that are put together to make words) and graphemes (the way of writing down the phoneme - can be 1 letter, 2 letters, 3 or 4 letters ough). We'll begin by focussing on just 1 or 2 letters.
2. Increasing working memory through a variety of games and challenges.
3. Strengthening Oral language skills.
I hope to gather some useful data throughout the remainder of the year, to show that what I did made a positive impact on the learning of a few children in particular, and has flowed onto the whole class. Watch this space!
