My prompted response for ECL210.

1. ECL210 Weekly Prompts

2. Read Chapters 2 and 3 of Developing Early Literacy: Assessment and Teaching by Susan Hill (textbook) Reflect and respond to these questions based on the reading, lecture and your classmates responses: 1. Who or what influenced your oral language development as a child? Use your memories of your childhood or ask a parent or sibling. 2. Who or what do you think will influence the students you will teach in regard to their oral language? Is this different from who/what influenced you? 3. What influence, if any, does the community have on the development of a child? See examples in Hill text Chapter 3. How can you address this in your classroom? Date: 25 February 2007 10:19 PM Author: Holly Hill Topic: BURWOOD-TUESDAY 12:00 TUTORIAL Subject: First Tutorial Discussion Prompt

3. Reflecting on my early childhood I can see a vast range of influence on my language development. First of all from the ages of about 2 until I was 5 years old my family lived in Papua New Guinea. My early exposure to oral language was within a minority that spoke English (Unfortunately I can’t speak pidgin). My parents and my older sister were a huge influence on my language acquisition. We had no TV but my parents were big on reading books to me and I can recall a lot of role-playing games with my sister and friends in which I would have practiced and enhanced my oral language. I also remember seeing and hearing tapes from stereos and video cameras that I used to explore language i.e. creating a radio program or movie. I agree with the idea that family are going to be the biggest influence on a child’s development of both spoken and written language, as Dora, Anastasia and others have stated. A child’s family determines their socioeconomic background, their culture and their exposure to all the different mediums of text and oral language. I feel that although technology is playing an ever increasing role in language development, it is only one more medium in which children will use to develop language skills. Similar, in some ways, to what stereos were in my generation. I believe my students will still have acquired most of their language understanding from their home life, which is will most likely be very different to my own in a diverse classroom. The community in which a child is surrounded will have an enormous effect on a child’s development. From the varying pronunciations used in their oral language to the values they put upon literacy. Children model members of their community in many ways such as how to behave society. The best way, as a teacher, to incorporate and include this diversity of culture and upbringing is, as stressed to us in our first lecture, to know our students and where they are coming from. Asking questions and engaging in general conversation with both the students and their parents will give the greatest insight into a child’s home life, community and culture. Response

4. Please Read Chapters 1, 6, and 10 of Developing Early Literacy: Assessment and Teaching by Susan Hill (textbook) Please reflect on the lecture, readings, and classmates' postings in responding to these questions: 1. Do you remember learning to read? Or how you learned to read? Reflect on your memories! Do you have any? Or does someone in your family have memories of you learning to read? 2. How do children learn the alphabet? How did you learn your "letters?" As a teacher in training do you think you should teach a letter a week? Why or why not? 3. How can you expand on a child's letter-sound knowledge when he/she can already read? Is it necessary? Why or why not? Date: 2 March 2007 10:14 PM Author: Holly Hill Topic: BURWOOD-TUESDAY 12:00 TUTORIAL Subject: Second Tutorial Discussion Prompt

5. My early memories of learning to read are very vague, I can clearly remember being read to but I’m not sure when it changed from my parents reading to me, to my parent reading with me, to me reading. I can vaguely remember reading little books that concentrated on high frequency words, as stated in hill and early by Claire and Nikola. However the books that stand out in my childhood are the Little Golden books, which I couldn’t read at first but kind of remember beginning to be able to read them myself. I can also recall books with lots of little pictures, and single words such as tall and small, most likely gaining visual and semantic cues to link the text to meaning and full words. Children often learn the alphabet through the same process, linking the letters to visual cues and the initial phoneme or sound that the word begins with. Hill mentions that familiarity with letters is vital to both letter recognition and phonemic awareness. I recall having posters and books of all the letters and pictures for each sound. Teaching children a letter a week is a great way of building awareness of letters and phonemes. On my last rounds show and tell was based on the letter of the week, it was a great way to engage children to not only familiarize themselves with the alphabet and it also got them actively seeking and exploring objects and theirs letters and sounds. A child may be able to read well using methods such as predicting text, recognizing words and using syntax to complete sentences. Strong letter-sound knowledge will enable the student to figure out more complex words, as has been mentioned by many tonight. Building child’s knowledge of the alphabet and all its phonemes, rules and rule exceptions is an on-going development and, as Stephanie discussed, is directly linked with improving vocabulary, comprehension, spelling and reading competency. Response

6. Please read Chapters 12, 13 and 14 of your set text and respond to ONE of the following prompts. * Reflect on the writing you do on a daily basis....think about getting ready to do this post.....if you had to explain to someone else the process of writing/composing...how would you explain it? * How would you describe the relationship between talking, listening, reading and writing? * What do you think is important in teaching children how to write? Date: 8 March 2007 5:24 PM Author: Simone White Topic: BURWOOD-TUESDAY 12:00 TUTORIAL Subject: Third Tutorial Discussion Prompt

8. Please read Chapters 7 and 8 of your text. Respond to BOTH questions by reflecting on your reading and your classmates' posts. 1. Why do we assess students in the early years in literacy? 2. How does assessment inform our teaching? Date: 15 March 2007 9:51 AM Author: Holly Hill Topic: BURWOOD-TUESDAY 12:00 TUTORIAL Subject: Fourth Tutorial Discussion Prompt

10. Dear ECL210ers It is time to go multimodal. For this week’s prompt design a space for yourself online with Google page’s website creator. Why? It is a great place to house your multimodal artefact that you will be working on over the next three years at Deakin. We have chosen Google Pages because it the easiest way for you to get online in seconds (maybe minutes). 1. Design a space for yourself online: i. Sign up for a Gmail account at www.gmail.google.com/ ii. Design your webpage at www.pages.google.com/ (login) iii. Tick “I have read and agree to these Terms and Conditions” (after you read it) iv. Click “I am ready to create my pages” v. Design away… vi. At then end, after you publish, copy and paste your url into the message board on DSO as your prompt for this week. 2. Experiment with one of the following (“how to instructions organized below): i. Podcasts (voice) ii. Podcasts (voice & video) (Try www.youtube.com they have a function when you go to “upload new video” that lets your record videos directly from your desktop camera.) iii. Blogging (my favourites are Xanga, Myspace & Blogger) iv. Wikis 3. Try and upload one of the above to your website on Google! 4. On the message board: i. Post your URL ii.  Comment on at least two of your classmates websites Date: 22 March 2007 9:26 AM Author: Christopher Walsh Topic: BURWOOD-TUESDAY 12:00 TUTORIAL Subject: 5th Tutorial Prompt

12. Please read Chapters 11 and 12 in your text and respond to BOTH questions. 1. Critique the website: http://www.education.tas.gov.au/english/strategy.htm for spelling and handwriting strategies. Give the strengths and weaknesses of the website. 2. Find one website that you like for either spelling or handwriting strategies to use in the primary classroom. Please state why you liked this particular website and give its url. Date: 29 March 2007 10:59 AM Author: Holly Hill Topic: BURWOOD-TUESDAY 12:00 TUTORIAL Subject: Prompt #6

14. Teaching reading and reading comprehension Read Chapter 8 and 9 Your response this week requires you to discuss what you understand about how to teach reading from Chapters 8 and 9 of your set text. Ensure this week that you also include in your response a short direct quote that supports what you have discussed and ensure you reference the page number in the standard format. Date: 11 April 2007 6:54 PM Author: Simone White Topic: BURWOOD-TUESDAY 12:00 TUTORIAL Subject: Prompt 7

16. There are no tutorials this week, but the lecture is still on. Reading: Read the chapter on Multiliteracies in the Hill (Chapter 16) text and “Using multiliteracies to teach” (http://www.stenhouse.com/pdfs/8207-P1_ch05.pdf) by Jennifer Roswell (2006). Prompt: How does the term “multiliteracies” and the idea of “design” change how you think about teaching literacy education in the primary years? Self-Directed Activity: (1-2 hours) Because there is no tutorial this week, we expect this activity will take you between one and two hours to complete. Drawing on the Roswell reading, design one literacy activity for students that incorporates—or draws on—their family literacies or out of school literacies. For this activity you want to strategically come up with ways you can get students’ families involved in the literacy activity to make teaching and learning relevant to students’ lifeworlds. Be creative and think of all of the different ideas covered so far in this course (multimodality, multisensory learning, pod casting, web design, etc.) The Roswell text gives some great ideas you can use as a model (Multimodality for a day, Documenting literacy practices, new and old technologies, interviews, surveys, etc.) You might even want to upload this activity or make it an activity that happens online via your multimodal portfolio. The idea is to make the literacy activity relevant, interesting and enjoyable for students. Date: 18 April 2007 11:48 PM Author: Christopher Walsh Topic: BURWOOD-TUESDAY 12:00 TUTORIAL Subject: Prompt 8