Oral Vocabulary and Visual Literacy in the Teaching of the Alphabetic Principle

The below extract is taken from PETAA Paper 214, Explicit Teaching of the Alphabetic Principle: Snapshots of best practice, written by Jennifer Asha.

Introduction

The act of teaching reading is far more complex and demanding of expertise than most people outside our profession realise. One important part of becoming literate is learning the alphabetic principle, and there are many and varied approaches to teaching this important component of reading and writing. But what is certain is there is no single way to teach the alphabetic principle, just as there is no single way to teach any aspect of literacy. In this PETAA paper I examine the practice of four experienced teachers – Jessica, Sally, Beth and Michelle – as they respond to the needs of their students and the demands of the texts they are reading and writing, in order to shine a light on best practice for teaching the alphabetic principle.

A Snapshot of Jessica's Kindergarten Classroom

Jessica includes a lot of oral language in her literacy lessons as she and her students discuss the texts they are reading and writing. Since the beginning of the year she has been reading books in front of the class and modelling the skills of an effective reader. Each week, she introduces a focus sound or letter pattern to the class and highlights this in the book during reading-aloud time. Each day, she reinforces the new alphabetic principle focus during small-group guided reading with students (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996).

When I visit her kindergarten class, Jessica is reading a factual text with a small group of students. She begins by setting up the students to think about the structure and characteristics of the text prior to reading.

Jessica: Does this look like an informative or an imaginative text?

Kurt: Informative. It has photos and they show trees.

Jessica: Good thinking. What is the purpose of this book if it's informative? What else can we expect? Photos as illustrations - what else?

Gloria: Information on trees.

Jessica: Trees, yes. And plants more generally. See, the title is 'Plants'. We can also expect a contents page that tells us where information is in the book. Let's all turn to the contents page.

After looking at the contents page and predicting the specific vocabulary and more general facts students will encounter as they read, Jessica guides students through reading the book. Jessica prompts students to use the grammatical, semantic and visual knowledge she has modelled in the past to work out difficult words (Clay, 1977). As they read, Jessica notices that students are having difficulty interpreting the information presented visually in the diagrams included in the text.

Jessica: This picture is called a cross-section. It gives us more information about the way plants grow. What can you see in the cross-section that we don't see in the photographs of the plants?

Paul: The roots, the photos don't show the roots under the ground, but the cross-section does.

Jessica: That's right. Illustrators can choose to include diagrams like cross-sections to give the reader more information about something. What is the job of the roots? What do the roots do for the plants?

Charlie: They stabilise the plant.

Jessica: Fabulous word, Charlie, 'stabilise'. The roots stabilise the plant, that's right. How did you know that word?

Charlie: Lego. My dad and I build bridges and you have to stabilise them.

Jessica: Brilliant. Something else important that roots do is nourish, they nourish the plants by absorbing water and nutrients from the soil. Can you see the labels on the cross-section pointing to the soil?

Jessica uses the visual text to build the students’ oral vocabulary in this way and extend the written text provided in the book. Jessica encourages students to go beyond simply breaking the code of the written text (Luke & Freebody, 1999). She shows them how to use a variety of information sources as they consider how authors and illustrators choose resources in their texts to make meaning, while laying the foundations for later oral and written responses to texts.