Literacy

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The observation is flawed in that it does not reveal how accurate N.B. was in her telling of the story because there is no record of what was actually written on each page as she was telling it. Unless of course, we had the book to hand. The same can be said of the illustrations. It is therefore difficult to gage how much of the story was told from memory and how much was inferred by reading the pictures.

One indication that the story was told from imaginatively reading the pictures is the fact that both Callum and L.L. made the same error(37-38) and N.B. didn't correct them until after she had turned the page and saw their mistake.

N.B. role-play of the teacher was delightful, her attention to detail is noted straight away in the way she held the book (17) facing L.L. She turned to L.L. and Callum when asking 'What's That?' then would give them positive reinforcement when they got the right answer.(18, 24, 33) At the end of the story she even thanked the children for being 'good listeners'(48)


part2

I think I observed reasonably well, however I noticed that in my evaluation I state that N.B. turned to L.L. and Callum for a response. This is not documented in the observation, it was remembered when writing the evaluation. I should be more careful to note this body language, the observation seems a bit lob sided in favour of 'Vocalisations' over 'Actions'. The children were sitting quietly, not moving extensively, but I have a feeling that I skimmed over a lot of what I saw in favour of noting down what I heard.


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I was impressed with the fluency in which the story was created from pictures. I thought of taking this a step further by facilitating the children in writing and illustrating their own story-book. I will take 2 sheets of paper and give the child 2 sheets of paper. We each draw 2 scenes and then the child may construct a narrative to fit the drawings which I will write on the page. The pages are then stapled together to form a book.

The opportunities offered by this exercise are as follows,

1.May increase confidence and self-esteem as the child realises that they can make up stories from their own drawings just like they do when reading the pictures of other books.
2.The book is created by the child, so every word that is written in the book by an adult should be taken directly from the child. Subsequently the child should know every word on each page which will help when it comes to recognition of these words
3.Gives the imagination a good work-out, firstly when the child is drawing scenes for the book and then when relating these picture scenes to each other while creating the narrative.










Features of Learning:
1.develop confidence and self-esteem; make and express choices, plans and decisions. (E,P,SD)
2.have fun with language and making stories; pay attention to instructions from an adult; use own drawings to express ideas and feelings. (C, L)
3.drawing with pens and pencils; express thoughts and feelings in pictures; recreate/invent situations (E, AD)
4.drawing and colouring in increases control over fine movements of hands and fingers. (PD, M)