New+Literacies+Practices

__** New Literacies Practices: **__
> media type="youtube" key="A9ua_RwRv7c" height="315" width="420" align="center" > > > > **__ Other examples of technology and digital media used for literacy development: __** > > > **__ Use of digital technologies at home: __** > > **__ How early learners can begin to critically analyse text when using and creating text: __**
 * **__ Teachers use of technology and digital media in early years (Level 1 focus) classrooms for enhancing literacy teaching: __**
 * Through discussion with student teachers placed in Level 1 learning centres it was discovered that many schools used ‘Letterland’, a systematic and explicit phonic literacy resource in assisting children to learn to read and write (EdSource 2012)
 * Letterland can be used as a digital resource at the beginning of each literacy lesson via whole group approach to help with explicit teaching of letter sounds. In this instance students are using and developing multiliterate practices to interpret the visual and audial text they are witnessing either on an interactive whiteboard or through a projector.
 * The benefit of using Letterland as a digital resource is that its multi-sensory activities appeal to all learners and activate all learning channels providing strong visual clues to remember the letter shape and audial memory clues to recall the letter sound (EdSource)
 * The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1996) reports in Edsouce (2012) about the Letterland program; "In Letterland, letter shapes appear as pictographic body shapes, and take on life as people and animals. Through storytelling, the characters talk about the sounds they make, and why their sounds vary in different contexts. Teachers who have used the system report that the children themselves also begin to talk about the sound-letter correspondences, and thus make progress in their metalinguistic skills, an important step in early first language acquisition."
 * On observation of the Letterland program in action, the children thoroughly engaged in the characters, stories, songs and games for each letter, especially for the 6 English Second Language (ESL) students among the group. Through testing of high frequency words it was evident that the Letterland program had influenced their learning as one child used her visual memory in trying to read the word ‘for’ stating that the letter ‘F’ is ‘Fireman Fred.’
 * In contrast, a Level 1 teacher expressed that the Letterland program is a slow process at her school as children only learn a new letter each week. Consequently, this effects their ability to read and write words towards the end of the alphabet in the first half of the year as they are yet to recognise them.
 * Below is example of the activities students are engaged in on Letterland.
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 * At one Level 1 class observed, students had to write in their write journals, for example ‘Today I made a…’ The teacher then corrected and wrote up a good copy of their writing sample so they could then type up their work on the computer. Using technology to transfer written text to electronic text enabled students to further develop their form of language; syntax, morphology & phonology in an interactive and easy to visualise practice. It further developed letter recognition and basic keyboard and fine motor skills. Students also had to find a picture from clip art to represent some portion of their writing piece.
 * In some early years classes, teachers used digital media, short narrative movies via the projector as a different mode of text to a standard print text narrative book. Providing visual and audial clues aids the students to critically analyse their understanding and comprehension of a different text type. Teachers then pose a variety of Literal, Interpretive and Inferential questions to the class to confirm their understanding and comprehension.
 * Students in one Level 1 class had a stuffed horse called ‘Lucky’ and a writing book that one child had to take home each night. At home they had to take photos with a camera of themselves with Lucky, and then write about what is happening in that photo. In this instance students are using visual text, photos, to interpret and use then transfer this to paper text, thus developing multiliterate behaviours.
 * In order for students to become more critically aware when using text, they must start to ask a range of questions when engaging with the variety of forms of text such as; what type of text is it? What is the texts purpose? Who is the author of the text? Why did the author choose to make this text? When students begin to start creating their own text, they need to ask what are they trying to achieve, and similar questions to those when they are using text.

__**Group Comments**__
==== When observing an early years literacy class i noticed that they used the interactive white board with the children. The children were able to play literacy games that required them to select a word (multiple choice) to fill in the blank of a sentence to ensure it made sense. Children were able to do this in pairs and appeared to enjoy the learning experience. ====

(Libby Salter)
In my classroom, heavy use of the interactive whiteboard was used. YouTube clips, word docs and books were all projected up. Also the children had daily use of the iPads which they loved and were able to learn quickly when they were handling the technology. Children were often grouped together with the tech projects so as to help one another if one was better than the other. (Ethan Tartaglia)

The preps in my classroom also used Letterland and other programs on the interactive whiteboard on a daily basis, focusing on a different letter every day. They also used youtube clips to cement their learning about 'The Lorax', after they had read it as a class. The grade 1 class observed for assignment 1 also used storylineonline.net as a nothing way to access texts, rather than the teacher using Modelled Reading every day. (Sarah Mcilroy)

My classroom was fantastic facilities. There was a dark room with a projector, an interactive whiteboard, many computers and laptops, itouches etc, all within the one prep unit. These were all used mainly during Learning Agreement, to facilitate the learning through play philosophy in a modern environment. (Hayley Gleeson)