3: KNOWLEDGE ABOUT PRINT

The teacher: Shows children that we read English from left to right / top to bottom

I attended read aloud lesson KG 2, and the teacher showed children and pointed from

left to right as texts are written in the story.

Identifies features of a book, such as the author, title, table of contents etc

In the beginning, the teacher asked students to find the book title when they find it she

said let's read it together. Then, said what does 'pet' mean? What do you think the

story is about? How many monsters there? However, after discussing the cover

picture, she asked for the author name and turned the cover page to read the author

information. Like he is from Canada, do you know it? Is it cold or hot country?

Points to words, labels, letters and reads or names them

While reading, the teacher pointed at each word and asked for some words that end

with –oat like (boat, coat..etc). According to Crawford and his group (2011), print

awareness includes alphabet knowledge and being able to recognize and produce

bountiful letters of alphabet. Moreover, she asked questions about picture like what

does this animal name? What do you think he is doing? Look at the picture, is that a

good habit or bad?

Helps children to recognize and write words

While reading the teacher asked learners to define 'supper' and students thought it was

the same of 'super', but she helped students to distinguish between super and supper

by saying it means dinner and we eat it in the evening. In addition, she told them to

read the word 'yet' while students read it as 'yes', she explained that they start with the

same letters, but they are different. In fact, she asked the TS to say the meaning in

Arabic to allow Arabic students recognize the differences. Finally, the teacher asked

them to write the word supper on the board to ensure they recognize it.

Draws children’s attention to uppercase and lowercase letters, punctuation,

and other print features

The teacher stopped and pointed at some punctuation marks like comma and full stop,

she asked students to call out the mark name. But, she did not pay attention to letter

cases, I think maybe because they are in KG 2, and they are familiar with letters.

Others

There were some other strategies that I liked in this lesson, such as the transition, the

teacher said for students "when I look at you, you can go back to your place." I was

amazed because students followed her instructions without confusion and could tell

without a verbal sign. Moreover, the teacher used questioning method while reading

to make them predict and to catch students attention at the same time. In fact, asking

predicting questions could be teachers tool to check students' interest and thinking

abilities ( Entwislte, Judge, Murdouch & Procter, 1995).

References list:

Crawford, A. Freppon, P. Olge, D. & Temple, C. (2011). All Children Read: Teaching

for Literacy in Today's Diverse Classrooms. United States Of America: Pearson

Education.

Entwislte, M. Judge, B. Murdouch, S. & Procter, A. (1995). Learning to Teach in the

Primary Classroom. New York: Routledge.

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