Throughout Term 1, there was a vast range of exciting learning taking place within the Prep classrooms – understanding routines, respecting expectations, making friends, building independence, learning about God, exploring numbers and developing foundational early literacy skills.
Educators know that good readers have oral fluency, phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, a growing vocabulary and solid comprehension skills. To support the development of these components of reading, the Prep teachers at the College have implemented a well-regarded program called PreLit, combining it with a variety of nursery rhymes. Each week, we focused on one particular nursery rhyme and explored it through a big book, books with similar themes, song and actions, visual clips, puppet play and various table top activities.
When learning to read, a child must first have the ability to hear and produce the basic sounds within the English language. We became experts at pulling words into their parts, called syllables. We learnt each nursery rhyme and even began to notice that, when the end of two words sound the same, like “dog” and “log”, they rhyme! These skills contribute to a child’s phonemic awareness.
During modelled reading, the children were introduced to an array of new vocabulary such as “bay” and “fleece”. To help us understand these new words, we acted them out, discussed them, said them in various ways, and even painted them on the board. Vocabulary is closely linked to comprehension and fluency in reading, so we want the children to be developing a flourishing vocabulary so that they understand what is happening in a story.
This term, the Prep children will begin to explore phonics where they will learn about the relationships between sounds and the letters that we write to represent them.
Reading is a complex business! Parents can help us in our all-important quest to develop good reading across the younger years. We encourage you to enjoy reading a picture book (or two!) with your child each night before bed. Not only is it a special time for you to snuggle up with your little one, but these reading opportunities, and the curious discussions that take place, allow your child to practise the five vital components of reading.
Mrs Elise Hona
Prep Purple Teacher
