Reading

** Don’t Forget Granny by Michael Dugan ** Penny can read the title ‘Don’t Forget Granny” and can identify the author by sounding out the last name. From a previous discussion she was able to recall the significance of the second name (being that of the illustrator). Penny can explain what she can see on the front cover. “A big bad wolf in clothes and a table, door, read jacket, picture…" She could identify that the book was about Little Read Riding Hood and the lady in the picture was her grandmother. She thought it was strange that Little Red Riding Hood was holding hands with the wolf and when I asked what Penny thought the books could be about she said that they “could like each other, maybe”. She thought this because "they are holding hands and looking at each other, they both have a smile”. We read the story together and Penny enjoyment was evident through her laughing.

 By observing the illustration, Penny identified the character, Jack from the story "Jack and the beanstalk" but read that text as “Jack and the Beanstalk” instead of “Jack the Beanstalk climber”. She used visual cues of the first letter in the text to predict the following words. She also had difficulty with the word “climber” and when asked what the character was doing in the picture, Penny said “climb” however was unable to pick up that he is a “climb/er/” without assistance. Penny did the same for the text “Someone had stolen” by saying “Someone had stole”. This may be a result of having little experience with grapheme. She doesn't grasp the /er/ sound of a word.

 The word “jewelry” was difficult for Penny, however by looking back at the sentence and giving her semantic clues such as "things that are valuable", she would predict the words such as “money, etc” until she was prompted to look at the letter "J" and confirm her guess that the word was "jewelry".

 From looking at the Reading Fluency Rubric (Hill: 170) I would say that Penny is at Level 2 for her rate, phrasing and pausing when reading a text. She reads at an appropriate pace to suit the text and has awareness of punctuation and layout of print. In terms of stress (emphasis on appropriate words) and intonation (expression), Penny is at level 1. She puts very little emphasis on appropriate words, and unless modeled by an accompanying reader, she only shows little expressive interpretation.

 Penny is at point 1.25 of progressing towards level 2 in standards for English (Victorian Essential Learning Standards, 2009), although she shows some characteristics of progression point 1.5. Penny can read simple print (including high frequency words) with moderate accuracy and fluency. She is able to predict what a text will be about based on the illustrations and known words and can retell a story. She shows characteristics of progression point 1.5 by using the sentence context and initial letters when attempting to read unfamiliar words. She also self-corrects when reading does not make sense. In order to move fully to progression point 1.5, Penny needs work on some common sounds of grouped letters.

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