Literacy Hour And Language Knowledge

This text on implementing the Literacy Hour in primary schools includes: a demonstration of how to meet the teaching objectives through well-chosen fiction and poetic texts; appropriate activities at whole text, sentence and word level; and practical ideas to aid the planning of the Literacy Hour.

This practical text offers guidance on how to provide explicit, systematic instruction on language and literacy to English learners.

The National Literacy Strategy is at the heart of the government drive to raise the standards in literacy in schools. Based on a research project conducted in classrooms during the first year of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS), this book provides a practical analysis of the ways in which successful teachers have implemented the Literacy Hour. Taking a reflective approach, it chronicles how teachers have changed their attitudes and practice over the first year, and questions why these changes have occurred. With various descriptions of teachers' practice and examples of children's writing throughout, this is an in-depth, yet down-to-earth reflective analysis of effective literacy teaching. Ros Fisher looks in detail at issues such as; improving the teaching of literacy; researching classroom practice; children's learning in the Literacy Hour; changing practice at Key Stage One and Two and mixed age classes and literacy for four-year-olds.

Teaching children to develop as language users is an important task of the primary teacher, since it is through the use of language skills that children gain access to and communicate thoughts and ideas across the curriculum. By exploring the relationship between text types, syntax, vocabulary and phonics, the author of this work illustrates how language is used for different purposes.

This fully updated second edition of Teaching English, Language and Literacy is an essential introduction for anyone learning to teach English at primary school level. Designed for students on initial teacher training courses, but also of great use to those teachers wanting to keep pace with the latest developments in their specialist subject. The book covers the theory and practice of teaching English, language and literacy and includes comprehensive analysis of the Primary National Strategy (PNS) Literacy Framework. Each chapter has a specific glossary to explain terms and gives suggestions for further reading. This second edition covers key areas that students, teachers and English co-ordinators have to manage, and includes advice on: developing reading, including advice on choosing texts, and the role of phonics improving writing skills, including advice on grammar and punctuation planning and assessing speaking and listening lessons working effectively with pupils who are multilingual understanding historical developments in the subject the latest thinking in educational policy and practice, the use of multimedia maintaining good home-school links. gender and the teaching of English language and literacy All these chapters include clear examples of practice, coverage of key issues, analysis of research, and reflections on national policy to encourage the best possible response to the demands of the National Curriculum.

Recognizing the characteristics of children with learning disabilities and deciding how to help them is a problem faced by schools all over the world. Although some disorders are fairly easily recognizable (e.g., mental retardation) or very specific to single components of performance and quite rare (e.g., developmental dyscalculia), schools must consider much larger populations of children with learning difficulties who cannot always be readily classified. These children present high-level learning difficulties that affect their performance on a variety of school tasks, but the underlying problem is often their difficulty in understanding written text. In many instances, despite good intellectual abilities and a superficial ability to cope with written texts and to use language appropriately, some children do not seem to grasp the most important elements, or cannot find the pieces of information they are looking for. Sometimes these difficulties are not immediately detected by the teacher in the early school years. They may be hidden because the most obvious early indicators of reading progress in the teacher's eyes do not involve comprehension of written texts or because the first texts a child encounters are quite simple and reflect only the difficulty level of the oral messages (sentences, short stories, etc.) with which the child is already familiar. However, as years go by and texts get more complex, comprehension difficulties will become increasingly apparent and increasingly detrimental to effective school learning. In turn, studying, assimilating new information, and many other situations requiring text comprehension -- from problem solving to reasoning with linguistic contents -- could be affected. Problems with decoding, dyslexia, and language disorders have attracted more interest from researchers than have specific comprehension problems and have occupied more room in specialized journals. Normal reading comprehension has also been a favorite with researchers. However, scarce interest has been paid to subjects who have comprehension difficulties. This book is an attempt to remedy this situation. In so doing, this volume answers the following questions: * Does a reading comprehension problem exist in schools? * How important and widespread is the problem? * Is the problem specific? * How can a reading comprehension difficulty be defined and identified? * Does the "syndrome" have a single pattern or can different subtypes be identified? * What are the main characteristics associated with a reading comprehension difficulty? * When can other well-identified problems add to our understanding of reading comprehension difficulties? * Which educational strategies are effective in preventing and treating reading comprehension difficulties? * What supplementary information can we get from an international perspective?

This book provides a unique description of teacher-pupil interaction during the Literacy Hour in good schools. It is based on detailed observations in inner-city primary schools that were recognised as effective and improving. The analysis is informed by contemporary research into the development and teaching of early literacy. The book provides practice-based examples of how teachers and schools might adapt their delivery for literacy as they move to greater creativity in their teaching of reading and writing. The analysis begins within the classrooms of three expert Key Stage 1 teachers and broadens out in to the wider setting of the schools and their senior management teams. An important theme running throughout the book is how the three teachers were able to make exceptional provision for their pupils, who were largely second language speakers and from socio-economically disadvantaged groups. The teachers’ successful practice grew from their understanding of both early literacy development and planning for individual need. The information in this book will enable student teachers, recently qualified teachers, and teachers interested in enhancing their literacy teaching to develop their practice in a similarly successful way.

Updated to introduce topics within the context of the new Primary Strategy and the National Literacy Strategy, this edited collection provides sound advice and practical suggestions about the teaching of literacy.

Raising Standards in Literacy represents the best current thinking and research about literacy. The book is the outcome of a high-profile series of seminars on raising standards in literacy, and includes contributions from an impressive group of international researchers and policymakers. By offering a rich and unique mix of contemporary perspectives on literacy education, this book provides an invaluable source of study and insight into the latest research and developments in the teaching of literacy. It includes sections on: * how research into literacy teaching can inform new approaches found in England, the USA and Australia * the ways in which literacy education is developing in England, the USA and Australia * the issues involved in assessing progress in literacy and the validity of research claims made about standards of attainment. The book celebrates the apparent success of current literacy initiatives at the same time as raising questions about the feasibility and relevance of such initiatives to the literacy co-ordinators and consultants and for all those undertaking further study or research in literacy education.