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Developing Literacy in Early Childhood

Early childhood setting – ages 3 – 5 years old

The purpose of this folio assessment is for you to gather information to demonstrate your ability to identify, evaluate and communicate ideas about effective teaching strategies for developing literacy within early childhood settings, in particular for children aged between 3 to 5 years.
Creating time and space for independent exploration and creation of texts allows children to experiment with emergent reading and writing behaviours without adult support. Independent reading and writing can help develop children’s sense of ownership over their skills and provide some quiet time where children can work and explore
uninterrupted, at their own pace.

• The importance of children’s independent exploration and creation of texts is supported by the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF, 2019) and the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF, 2016):
• Texts: things that we read, view and listen to and that we create in order to share meaning. Texts can be print-based, such as books, magazines and posters or screen-based, for example internet sites and DVDs. Many texts are multimodal, integrating images, written words and/or sound. – EYLF (2019)
• They become aware of the relationships between oral and visual representations, and recognise patterns and relationships. They learn to recognise how sounds are represented alphabetically and identify some letter sounds, symbols, characters and signs. – VEYLDF (2016)
• Young children begin to explore written communication by scribbling, drawing and producing approximations of writing… They create and display their own information in a way that suits different audiences and purposes. – VEYLDF (2016)

This folio will allow you to demonstrate your understanding of pedagogical practices that can encourage children in early childhood settings independently engage in reading and writing experiences, based on their interests, and at their own pace.

In addition, this folio will allow you to demonstrate your understanding of literacy programs that are designed to assess children’s communication skills, particularly oral language, reading, writing, grammar skills and phonemic awareness.

This task is assessing your ability to demonstrate that you meet the following unit learning outcomes:

2. Evaluate reading and writing processes and their relationship to curriculum and policy.
3. Develop and evaluate a range of learning experiences and resources to engage children in learning appropriate to their strengths, interests and needs.
4. Review and compare literacy programs and resources designed to assess children’s communication skills, particularly oral language, reading, writing, grammar skills and phonemic awareness.
5. Evaluate methods and tools that support children with a wide range of skills in literacy.
6. Develop and evaluate a range of strategies using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to enhance literacy teaching.

There are two parts to this folio assessment; Part A and Part B. You are required to complete both parts of this folio assessment. The assessment details are explained as follows.

Part A of the folio assessment (approximately 1100 words)

Scenario:

You are a newly appointed room leader for a pre-kinder years class. In this room, you have 10 children aged from 3 to 4 years. 5 out of 10 students come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds whose English language is either the second or third language spoken at home. Furthermore, 2 out of 10 students have limited spoken English
skills.

1. a description of the importance of developing children’s emergent reading comprehension skills
2. a description of the learning experience which includes:
3. the aim of the learning experience
4. the expected learning outcome of the learning experience which includes a link to a specific sub-outcome under Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators from the Early Years Learning Framework or a relevant learning framework (e.g. Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework)
5. a description of a teaching strategy that will support the development of children’s emergent reading comprehension within this learning experience
6. a description of a teaching strategy that will support teaching children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds within this learning
   experience
7. the inclusion of ICT either as a teaching tool or as a tool that children can use to help aid their learning and development
8. a description of how you would assess children’s learning.
9. an evaluation of the learning experience

You must justify your work by making links to a learning framework – such as the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) or the Australian Curriculum (or state/territory equivalents), academic research and other relevant education sources. All references must be cited using the APA 7th edition style. Please note that there is a minimum of 10
references required for the folio.

Part B of the folio assessment (approximately 1100 words)

Scenario: You are an early childhood educator within a Kindergarten room at an early learning centre. Through your observations, 5 children in your room have displayed excellent emergent writing behaviours which include combinations of multimodal communication systems, including speech, drawing, music, and dance. More specifically, the group of children have confidently displayed the following:

• they are aware of the relationships between oral, written and visual
• they use symbols in play to represent and make meaning
• they use creative arts (e.g. drawing, painting and storytelling) to express ideas and make meaning.

Using the scenario presented above, develop and evaluate a learning experience that could support and extend children’s emergent writing development. This should include:

1. a description of the importance of supporting and extending children’s emergent writing development.
2. a description of the learning experience which includes:

• the aim of the learning experience
• a description of how this learning experience will build on what children already know and what they have demonstrated
• the expected learning outcome of the learning experience which includes a link to a specific sub-outcome under Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators from the Early Years Learning Framework or a relevant learning framework (e.g. Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework)
• a description of a teaching strategy that will support the development of children’s emergent writing development within this learning experience
• the inclusion of ICT either as a teaching tool or as a tool that children can use to help aid their learning and development
• a description of how you would assess children’s learning

3. an evaluation of the learning experience

You must justify your work by making links to a learning framework – such as the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) or Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework, scholarly sources and other relevant sources. All references must be cited using the APA 7th edition style. Please note that there is a minimum of 10 references required for the folio.