1. Early Behaviours and What to Look For EARLY READING BEHAVIOURS…
How to Look at Print…..
and What to Look For
English K-6 Syllabus Outcomes
for Early Reading Behaviours
Learning to Read ES1.5 ES1.6
Learning About Reading ES1.8
Teacher registration :

2. Early Behaviours Syllabus Indicators Learning about Direction
shows an awareness of the horizontal nature of print
knows basic book conventions
begins reading front of book
can hold book in correct way to look at pictures
can open a book
can turn pages in correct order
Locating Responses
points to and reads text of familiar big book
recognises that a series of words makes up a text
distinguishes print from drawing
identifies sentences in printed texts
copies print from models
uses charts and resources as model for own writing
assists other children to locate print from class models

3. Early Behaviours Syllabus Indicators Spatial layout
identifies word, space, letter groups letters into words
recognises that words are units of print with spaces on either side
know letters are written from left to right
knows and demonstrates that letters are proportional to each other
Looking at Print
automatically recognises whole common words by sight
discriminates between letters
knows the alphabet names of letters
recognises upper and lower case forms
recognised that words are made up of letters
identifies letters beyond those in own name

4. Early Reading Behaviours
What are these and what do they do?
Through these the child begins to control his visual attention to print
They give the child a way of checking that he is attending to the correct part of the page.

5. Early Reading Behaviours
1. Directional Movement
2. One to one matching
3. Locating one or two known words
4. Locating an unknown word
5.Prompt ways to remember words

6. TASK
Consider these aspects
in relation to the following text

7. Early Reading Behaviours
TASK :Teachers read script
WHY?
Connecting theory and experience:
Through the experience of attempting to read another script teachers discuss their perspectives and challenges about viewing script in another language.
What are these challenges?
“the child must learn to attend to some features of print,
the child must learn to follow rules about direction
the child must attend to words in a line of sequence, and
the child must attend to letters in a word left to right in sequence.”
P3Literacy Lessons

8. Early Reading Behaviours
Think Pair Share
How do I explore this?
What am I looking for?
What processing am I doing?
Can I describe how I perceive the symbols?
How can I remember 4 of them?
Would it help to write them?
How did my looking change on the second or third attempt?
What other kinds of changes occur as the symbols become familiar?
Is there an understanding of the difficulty and the challenge young children have?
Record these
Teachers link these observations to the process of learning to drive a car
Discuss
It is useful for teachers in early literacy intervention programs to briefly but seriously explore learning another script.
Noting our own reactions to a new script and how we overcome the problems can help us understand more about how children come to grips with a symbol system.
Teachers are such expert readers and writers it makes it difficult for them to understand a child’s challenge.

9. Directional Movement “This is as serious as driving on the right side
of the road!”
Clay 2005 p105

10. 1. Directional Movement Left page before right page
Top of the page downwards
Left to right across a line
Return sweep to the left of the next line
Left to right across a word
The use one can make of spaces
What is the ‘first letter’

11. Suggestions for teaching
Careful text selection
Accept either hand(finger pointing)
Demonstrate (model) the correct starting position
Give opportunities for over-learning
Starting signals

12. 2. One-to-one matching Finger pointing
Clear precise pointing with one finger, not ‘fluffy’ pointing

13. Suggestions for teaching
Clear precise modelling
Say:
Read it with your finger
Did that match
Were there enough words
Did you run out of words

14. Issues When to remove the finger?
As correct directional responding becomes more consistent the teacher can begin to discourage pointing with the finger
When left to right is becoming consistent at levels 1 and 2 Reading Recovery levels

15. Why is it important
If finger pointing is allowed to persist it can get in the way of fluent reading
Children focus on visual information in print and stop using meaning and structure
Before long the student needs to read groups of words together (phrasing)
‘he said’..‘mother bear’..’here I am’..

16. 3. Locating one or two known words
Encourage child’s attention on early books by focussing on words he knows
Prompt the child to use a special cue that he knows eg. its like your name, (hill), like the nursery rhyme we just learned, sheep
Build up high frequency words by finding the same word on every page
Use the known word to help monitor finger pointing 1:1
Use known beginning sounds to anticipate next word.

17. 4. Locating an unknown word
Now look at new words.
That is: the word which changed on every page (interest word or context word)
How did you know that was horse? ( because of the picture and/or the beginning letter)
If child reads a new structure such as ‘here is the ‘ then he can probably find whichever of these words was a new word.

18. 5.Prompt ways to remember words
Encourage the child to become active about ‘knowing something next time he sees it’.
Say : “You need to know that word tomorrow.”
“Have you got it in your head?”
“Use your eyes and think about it”

19. Video Teachers view ‘Rachel’ video. The student is ‘reading’
and Early Behaviours are established.
Teachers identify these behaviours
Can teachers identify students, in their class, who do not exhibit these characteristics?
Reflection: What can teachers demonstrate to these students?

21. TEXTS to teach EARLY BEHAVIOURS
Text Features
• focus on a single idea
• have a simple story line
• direct correspondence between text and pictures
• topics relate to a child’s personal experience
• include naturally occurring syntactic structures
• format is consistent
• layout is easy to follow
• print clearly separated from pictures
• print is regular clear and easy to see
• ample space between words
• frequently encountered words are repeated often
• have one to four lines of text per page

22. TEXTS to teach EARLY BEHAVIOURS
Level 1
texts
PM pubn.

23. TEXTS to teach EARLY BEHAVIOURSPM
Texts
Are
Great!
These
Level 2

24. Selecting texts Task: Using this criteria as a guide
Teachers examine books from their classroom & using a selection of level 1 and level 2 texts determine the suitability of these texts for teaching
Early Reading Behaviours
• Discussion:
What makes these texts suitable?
Why are some unsuitable?

25. Suitable texts See Reading Recovery text level guide.
Published in 2006 by the Victorian Department of Education and Training.
This are available from the Reading Recovery Tutor in your region.

26. Important Behaviours to notice and Support Early Reading
• handling books-moving text from front to back, turning pages
• controlling left to right movement and return sweep
• noticing and interpreting detail in pictures
• using oral language in relation to pictures
• matching word by word
• noticing some features of letters and words

27. Important Behaviours to notice and Support early reading
• locating familiar and new words
• remembering and using language patterns
• using knowledge of syntax as a source of information
• using oral language with pointing -voice pointing
• predicting what makes sense
• self-monitoring - checking by w-b-w matching, noticing sight words, mismatches in meaning or language

28. Evaluation
Teachers read and discuss the article
“Mother is Baking”