It is in Standard One that we lay the foundations of a child’s educational future. It is in Standard One that children start to think of themselves as being good, or bad at reading. It is during Standard One that teaching in schools is frequently found to be inconsistent and the basic components of instruction are frequently neglected and patchy.
The most important thing that Standard One children need to learn is how to blend sounds into words; this will follow on into their writing. Children need to know how to break up words into their component sounds. If children in Standard One have not mastered this basic concept, they are already remedial readers.
In Standard One, instruction needs to be explicit and with plenty of over-learning exercises that lead to understanding of spelling-sound conventions and their use in identifying a word. The main point here is that children need to learn to sound out words, as their main strategy to get the meaning, rather than rely on context and pictures.
Children’s progress needs to be continually monitored to allow those children who progress quickly, to move ahead before boredom sinks in and to ensure that those who are struggling, get the help they need, at the right time.
Materials chosen for Standard One need to have a high proportion of new words that can be sounded out. The Reading Scheme should follow a phonic approach. There are a great many expensive reading schemes on the market which do not follow the phonic approach. These impress parents, but do not meet the needs of the children.
Match a book to a child, but always be aware of frustration level. (Where a child finds the level of the words in the book too difficult and the process of reading is a frustrating experience.) Independent reading is an excellent way that children become confident – though saying that, the reading level of the independent reader should be below the frustration level of the child. The child should be comfortable with the level of reading and decoding.
Phonic Readers do not have to be boring. There are a great many phonic books that can be downloaded from the internet and are interesting and provide the opportunity for extension work. Give pupils many little books to read – the child who reads the most, becomes the better reader. If a teacher wants to write an early phonic book with very few words, use pictures to represent those words that the child cannot decode. Have text on one page and a picture on the opposite page.
From the early stages comprehension can be taught at the same time as reading. Before reading, teachers need to establish the purpose of the reading and review the vocabulary the child will face. The teacher further needs to activate the imagination of the child, so that the child will try to predict what the story will be about. During the reading, the teacher should direct the children into asking questions about the story. After reading, the teacher needs to ask the children about the story – in that way deepening understanding and comprehension.
Use materials like outlines, comic strips, to show sequence. Write up some questions, like WHY and WHO and then point to these on a regular basis to enable deeper understanding.
Writing in Standard One follows on from the instruction in UKG. Writing is very important because it enables the children to use their reading competence. Children internalise phonemics by writing their own spellings.
Assessment needs to be continuous in Standard One and informal assessment should be carried out every day.
Everything the child does is feedback to the teacher - who then, uses the information to adjust the rate of teaching for the individual child, or for the whole class. Remember that curriculum based assessment is used to find out how the child is coping with the curriculum being used in the classroom; not to show how the children are doing on national norms. Assessment should focus on all the major components of early reading: phonic analysis, regular words, lists of Sight Word Vocabulary (Dolch Lists), comprehension, writing, memorisation, ability to rhyme etc.
So how does the teacher cope in effectively dividing her class into groups? It needs to be remembered that at this level children enter the class at very different stages in their reading development. Some may be able to read, whilst others do not even know their alphabet sounds. Whatever strategy a teacher uses, it must be understood that all methods have advantages and disadvantages.
The most used method in classrooms today, is to divide the children into reading groups, which take turns with the teacher. There is a problem with this strategy because whilst the teacher attends to one group, there have to be prepared activities for the other groups. We often call this busy work, when teachers give the children work to fill in time. Teachers need to ask themselves, however, if the busy work is really ‘time wasting’ work! This we want to avoid, so teachers must carefully plan and structure their reading groups. An assistant is always a bonus. If a school is equipped with computers, a small group working under supervision, doing productive work on computers, as part of the curriculum, might be one answer.
If a child in Standard One is not making as much progress as expected, they might need more assistance. Small groups, withdrawn into a resources room, have been successful for many years. However, certified teachers need to take these groups, not classroom assistants.
Reading is time consuming and at school there is not always as much time available for reading as is necessary for adequate development. Children should read on a regular basis for about 20 minutes each evening, at home; parents should be involved. It is good for a child to read aloud to parents or guardians and then, when they have finished their portion, read the same portion silently. The parent or guardian should be asked to sign a form showing that the child has done their home reading.
The one magic ingredient in Standard One is the passionate teacher who understands completely how their children are learning. The great Standard One teacher is born, not made! They are often not appreciated and thought to be lowly, because of the Standard they teach. They are in fact, the foundation of a school and need to be treasured. It is they who plant the seeds of learning in a child. It is they who create and show the way to the unlocking of text and the dawn of understanding in children.
Class size
Class size in Standard One should not exceed 25 students. Class size has a huge impact on achievement in reading. Children need individual attention in small groups, to enable success. Schools should use tutors and assistants to help in Standard One, to enable their pupils to become competent.
Phonemic awareness
In addition to the phonemic awareness, the children need to know their letters and have an understanding that the letters of words go from left to right and that they represent sounds. The Standard One classroom needs to be designed around this basic foundation.
There needs to be a balance between phonics in Standard One. Some teachers teach a little phonics on the side, using special resources for this purpose, while the classroom will use basal reading programmes that do not follow a sequence of phonic instruction. Other teachers teach phonics in context – this means they stop and start during reading and talk about the phonic focus of a particular word. These strategies are enough for some pupils, whilst others fall by the wayside and become ‘at risk’ readers.
