The very noisy bear literacy activities

Assessment

The Task: Focus on Reading and Viewing

Create a package of resources for use with K-2 students that develops emergent or early Reading and Viewing skills with Rationale.

This package has 7 sections and includes:

1. Selecting a book:

Identify a year level (from K to Year 2) to focus on. Select one picture book (THE BOOK OF THE YEAR: EARLY CHILDHOOD) to be used in the Modelled Reading strategy from The Children’s Book Council of Australia’s 2018 or 2019 or 2020 notable list for use in the classroom.

The book I have chosen to use as a resource for teaching Reading and Viewing in a Stage 1, Year 2 classroom is The Very Cranky Bear, by Nick Bland, published in 201X… It was selected in the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s 201X... notable list. This book has been chosen due to its language and visual features as well as its relatable theme.

2. Potential teaching content and justification of the book choice: (Approx. 800 words)

To justify your selection, you will need to:

a) Describe the themes (i.e. topics and moral messages) of the book

The Very Cranky Bear is a narrative. The setting of the story is…, the main characters are…. The problem arises when …. The resolution started when …. The problem is resolved by…

The central theme of The Very Cranky Bear is the importance of listening to others to understand them and not just assuming we know what others need. This is seen as sheep listens carefully to Bear’s need for sleep and her making him a pillow to help

b) Analyse and identify in the book suitable language and visual features that the teacher can use to model decoding and comprehension to students of the selected year level with reference to:

· LANGUAGE features:

· Phonological awareness (i.e. phonemic awareness or phonics. See suggestions in section 4)

The Very Cranky Bear assists students in their development of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness can be developed through the rhyme within the text. E.g.

Day –play

There –bear

Roar –door

· Language for comprehension (i.e. vocabulary and grammar features. See suggestions in sections 1 & 4)

The vocabulary in the text extends students use of language through its range of tier 2 words that allow for the exploration of synonyms e.g.

Cranky

Gnashed

Stormed

A range of grammatical features to explore experiential and interpersonal meanings are also included in the text.

Extended noun groups

Verb groups

Clauses

Emotive language

Attitude

· VISUAL:

· Different types of visual meanings

· The convergent and divergent relations between language and image

Note: Provide 3 examples of each of language and visual features that you identify.

The images in the VCB depict many types of processes including Action and Reaction as in the image below. Provide a screenshot of one image and label the types of Processes you can see in the image.

c) Argue for the suitability of the book for the intended Year level (Refer to Hill 2012, chapter 7 and the NESA syllabus Stage Statement and syllabus Learning Outcomes or the Australian Curriculum: English).

According to Hill (2012) this text would be a level 4 where there is a clear goal of the characters and there is a cause and effect in the narrative sequence. It could also be classed as an early text (Hill, 2012).

The book fits within texts described in the Stage 1 NESA syllabus Stage Statement because ….

The book fits within texts described the Year 2 Level Description of the Australian Curriculum: English

3. Modelled Book Orientation (Approx. 200 words)

Write a transcript of a series of focused statements and questions indicating how you could get students engaged and interested in the book and prepare them well before reading it aloud to them.

Book Orientation

I’m going to read The Very Cranky Bear written and illustrated by Nick Bland. Have you ever seen a bear? What do they look like? What are they like? Are they friendly or aggressive?

I don’t know much about bears, but I know that there are Polar bears, they’re white, there are brown bears and black bears. I know that black bears don’t live in Australia, I think they are in parts of Northern America, Europe and Asia. I know that they can be very aggressive and territorial. They don’t interact with humans and people tend to leave them alone. I think that they eat berries and roots, eggs and fish. In winter when those foods aren’t available because it gets extremely cold and even snows where they live, they go into a very deep sleep called hibernation. They slow their bodies right down so that they don’t need to eat during those months when food is less available.

That’s real bears, though. Nick Bland hasn’t drawn this bear realistically. The shape is softer, gentler and with his hands on his hips, Nick Bland has drawn him through lower modality, looking a bit human. So maybe some aspects of real bears will be included in this story, maybe others won’t. If it’s not a factual text, it’s likely to be imaginative and entertaining.

Thinking about other stories by Nick Bland might help me predict what this story will be about. I have read The Very Noisy Bear it has some rhyming sentences, so does The Very Itchy Bear. Both of these stories have the same character of the bear. He is a bit grumpy and very focussed on himself. I wonder if we will learn more about the Bear character in The Very Cranky Bear?

4. Working with the text: (Equivalent to 400 words)

After reading the book aloud, in the Working with the text stage, you are going to use the book again to develop students’ decoding and comprehension skills. Specifically, you are going to design activities to teach ONE of the three contents: Phonological Awareness for decoding, Vocabulary and Visual Literacy for comprehension using the examples of the language features you identified in section 2.

a) Select one aspect of each of the three contents that your book can be used to model to your students:

(1) Phonological awareness: select ONE from the followings: phonemes, onset-rime, blends, and phonics.

Onset -rime

(2) Vocabulary: select ONE from the followings: synonyms, antonyms, homophones, tier 2 literary words (e.g. emotive words, descriptive words, onomatopoeia) and compound words.

Synonyms and tier 2 words

(3) Visual Literacy: select ONE from the followings: visual for expressing ideas, visual for interacting with others, language-image relations.

Power – visual for interacting with others

b) Specify the relevant NESA syllabus learning outcome and one indicator (not counted towards the 600 words) that the teaching content addresses. Underline the specific aspect of the indicator that matches the content.

c) Using dot points, outline 1 activity sequence that includes 3 activities: Modelled-Guided-Independent) to teach ONE of the 3 contents above.

[See W7 lecture slides for examples of a Vocabulary and Phonological Awareness activity sequences)

Below is an example of ONE content: teaching Vocabulary

Once concept of Vocabulary: Synonyms

Outcome:

Modelled: When reading VCB we can see a range of descriptive words have been used to add emphasis to how the bear was feeling. Some of these words we may not have heard before but may know words that have similar meanings. These are called synonyms.

(Read title): “The Very Cranky Bear”. The word cranky isn’t one that we see a lot but we know other words that mean the same thing.

Synonyms for cranky are: mad, angry, furious and frustrated. If we replace “cranky” in the title with each of the synonyms we can check if the meaning is the same. Let’s try. “The Very Mad Bear”, “The Very Angry Bear”, “The Very Frustrated Bear”, “The Very Furious Bear”

Guided: Together let’s search for the words in the following list and find those that mean the same as fetched. (Word list: got, looked, said, obtained, swam, discovered, brought, carried, ate, retrieved, dropped, took)

Independent: students play https://www.abcya.com/games/synonyms_antonyms and explore synonyms for the given words. Record the words that you received and find five more words that are synonyms for the given word and create a word cloud

Create a word cloud on https://www.wordclouds.com/ for one of the following words from VCB

· gnashed

· stormed

· complained

Note: The activity sequence needs to include the use of technology. Extra teaching and learning resources can be provided in the Appendix.

5. Teaching and assessing comprehension: (Approx. 400 words)

a) Design three questions, each to assess one level of comprehension (i.e. literal, interpretive and inferential) that you could use to develop and monitor students’ comprehension of the picture book. Provide a copy of the sections of the text you used to design the questions in the Appendix (not counted towards word limit)

Literal: Who was cranky?

Interpretive: How did the sheep feel entering the cave?

Inferential: What would you do if you were one of the animals in the cave?

(include pages where the questions are from)

b) Provide possible answers to the questions.

Literal: the bear

Interpretive: apprehensive, scared, afraid, timid as the cave was dark

Inferential: be kind to the bear, be quiet and listen to him, suggest comforting things for sleep

d) Using dot points, briefly outline how you could model the working out of the answers of the literal and interpretive questions from the text. Make sure you model relevant comprehension strategies and language features to the students.

Comprehension strategies that could be modelled include visualising, summarising, predicting

· Write 1 activity sequence to teach literal comprehension (including modelling comprehension strategies and language features): Modelled-Guided-Independent

· Write 1 activity sequence to teach interpretive comprehension (including modelling comprehension strategies and language features)

· Please use Carroll 2020 to help with the interpretive comprehension activity sequence. In Carroll 2020, she used the term ‘inferential’ for interpretive.

6. Supporting struggling readers: (Approx. 200 words)

Include a paragraph here that includes strategies for supporting struggling readers, a strategy that is school focussed and a strategy that is home or community focussed. Remember to include relevant literature and literacy theory. Look closely at the readings suggested in Week 5 tutorial slides.

7. A reference list using the current APA referencing style (not included in the word count).

Please ensure that you refer to the APA style guide to assist with your writing