EDLA264

Literacy Education 1

Paige Soper

The growth of literacy skills in an early years setting is a vital

part of any childs overall development. Its the basis for every child
to flourish at school, socialize with others, develop independence
and shape their future. While its crucial that children learn to read
and write, before this they need to develop the building blocks for
literacy such as the ability to speak, listen, understand, interact and
draw (Raising Children Network, 2016).
The early literacy skills vital to the overall development of a
childs literacy foundation are such skills as phonological awareness,
comprehension, vocabulary, phonemic awareness and/or fluency.
Phonological awareness is the ability to detect, manipulate, or
analyse auditory aspects of spoken language, including the ability to
distinguish or segment words, syllables or phonemes (The National
Early Literacy Panel, 2009). Comprehension is simply the ability to
read texts, process it and understand its meaning. Comprehension
is an essential part of successfully developing 21st century literacies
and is a vital tool for reading in our modern age (Miller, C P. 2016).
Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work
with the individual sounds in words. A childs skill in phonemic
awareness is a good predictor of later reading success or difficulty
(National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2016).
In order to affectively facilitate and enhance these early
literacy-learning skills, teachers need to embed the use of
technology into their classroom. Technology is everywhere,
entwined in almost every part of our lives and it affects how the
children of today socialize, connect, play and most importantly
learn. As Moss (2001) states, children pay more attention to visual
presentation of information; therefore, the benefits of using
technology in the classroom are infinite. Integrating technology into
the classroom is not only a fantastic way to reach diversity in
learning styles, it prepares children for their future careers which

EDLA264

Literacy Education 1

Paige Soper

will inevitably involve the use of technology, it encourages students

to interact collaboratively with their classmates and technology
allows students to take more control over their own learning
(Wainwright, A. 2016).
Henceforth, the reason this digital resource assessment is so
imperative in helping pre-service teachers practice creating and
implementing technology into their future classrooms and
embedding it into their pedagogy.
For this assessment, the Rhyming Queen Bee resource that
was made is a visual power point that uses visual cues that can be
utilised by a professional in a whole class collaboration, in order to
support students in the first stages of learning rhyme. This digital
resource was aimed at children in the foundation year of school;
because the earliest phonological awareness that children begin to
develop is an understanding of the concept of rhyme (QKLG, 2014).
Rhyme is a precursor to learning how to read and write and is known
to benefit children in prep year who are showing signs of reading
readiness. When children learn to recognise, match and then
produce rhyming words they are demonstrating initial phonemic
awareness because to produce words that rhyme, they are actually
deleting the first sound in a word (the onset) and replacing it with
another (QKLG, 2014). Rhyming isnt only demonstrating initial
phonemic awareness it is also an aspect of phonological awareness.
Rhyme is an aspect of phonological awareness because it reflects
the ability to focus on the sounds of speech, such as the rhythm, the
patterns of intonation and most importantly on the individual sounds
of each word. Which, evidently links to phonemics awareness
because it is the ability to segment words or as mentioned
previously, in relation to rhyme, it is the ability to delete the onset of
a word and replace it with another. Rhyming also lays the
groundwork for written language and on top of that, helps children

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Literacy Education 1

Paige Soper

improve their oral language skills. (Catherine, M. 2013) believes

that, children have more ownership over their language when
theyre encouraged to manipulate it and play with how they speak.
This resource embeds the top-down reading model approach
which teachers students to read by introducing them to literature
as a whole.
This reading model theory encourages students to focus more on
understanding the main ideas of a passage than understanding
every word (Seely Flint, A., Kitson, L., Lowe, K., & Shaw, K. 2014).
Even if students do not understand each word, they are likely to
grasp the meaning of a text as a whole. For example, if the student
doesnt understand the song as a whole in this resource they are
still likely to grasp the words that rhyme and the concept of rhyme.
This resource accommodates for all diverse learners,
especially EAL/D students whose first language isnt English. It gives
them the additional support to assist them in developing more
proficiency in English. It does this by providing visual cues and
recordings of all the rhyming words and rhyming songs throughout
the power point. The visual cues throughout the resource are also
important in the chance there is an illiterate student in the
classroom who is struggling to read the material. Cultural inclusion
can be a further development once the professional teacher is
conversant with their students, and appropriate adjustments can
then be made such as incorporating nature, story telling or
dreamtime characters into the setting.
According to the Australian Curriculum achievement standards
for foundation year, students are predicted to read short decodable
and predictable texts with familiar vocabulary and supportive
images, drawing on their developing knowledge of concepts of print,
sounds and letters and decoding and self-monitoring strategies

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Literacy Education 1

Paige Soper

(Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority

[ACARA], 2014). They also know how to recognise rhyme, letter
patterns and sounds in words. The power point resource created for
this digital assessment was influenced directly by the examining
and creating literature content descriptions, that are both found
under the literature strand. Examining literature means students are
able to Recognise some different types of literary texts and identify
some characteristic features of literary texts (ACARA, 2014,
ACELT1785). It also means students are capable of Replicating the
rhythms and sound patterns in stories, rhymes, songs and poems
from a range of cultures (ACARA, 2014, ACELT1579). Creating
literature means students are able to Retell familiar literary texts
through performance, use of illustrations and images (ACARA, 2014,
ACELT1580) and Innovate on familiar texts through play (ACARA,
2014, ACELT1831).
In conclusion, this resource will productively help to support
and develop emergent or early literacy skills in an early years
setting. It has successfully grounded some early phonemic and
phonological awareness of rhyme, rhythm and repetition with the
use of technology and visual prompts. Both interactive activities
created from this resource will also help to monitor assessment and
reporting by allowing the students to show what theyve learnt
through group interaction and personal achievement. This resource
is a building block for literacy and the development of childrens
reading, writing, understanding and interaction skills.

EDLA264

Literacy Education 1

Paige Soper

References
Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority. (2014).
Foundation to Year 10 Curriculum: Examining Literature
(ACELT1579). Retrieved

from

http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/curriculum/f-10?
layout=1
Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority. (2014).
Foundation to Year 10 Curriculum: Creating Literature (ACELT1580).
Retrieved from
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/curriculum/f10?layout=1
Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority. (2014).
Foundation to Year 10 Curriculum: Creating Literature (ACELT1831).

EDLA264

Literacy Education 1

Paige Soper

Retrieved from
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/curriculum/f-10?
layout=1
Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority. (2014).
Foundation to Year 10 Curriculum: Examining Literature
(ACELT1785). Retrieved

from

http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/curriculum/f-10?
layout=1

Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority. (2014).

Foundation to Year 10 Curriculum: Receptive modes listening,
reading and viewing.

Retrieved from

http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/Curriculum/F10
Catherine, M (2013). Fun and meaningful learning every day. Why is
teaching

rhyme important in early years education: Introducing

rhyme to children.

Updated: July 15th, 2013

Excerpted from National Early Literacy Panel. (2009). Developing

Early Literacy:

Report of the National Early Literacy Panel,

Executive Summary.

Washington, DC: National Institute for

Literacy.
(Miller, C P. 2016). Promoting literacy and a love for reading,
Literacy

connections: What is comprehension? Retrieved from

http://www.literacyconnections.com/whatiscomprehensionphp/
Moss, G. (2001) To Work or Play? Junior Age Non-fiction as Objects
of Design, Reading Literacy and Language, 35 (3), 10610.

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Literacy Education 1

Paige Soper

National Association for the Education of Young Children, (2016).

Reading

Rockets: Phonemic awareness. Retrieved from

http://www.readingrockets.org/reading-topics/phonemicawareness
Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guidelines (2014). Supporting
language and

early literacy practices in kindergarten:

Phonological Awareness. Pg. 10-11

Seely Flint, A., Kitson, L., Lowe, K., & Shaw, K. (2014). Literacy in
Australia:

Pedagogies for engagement. Milton, Qld: John Wiley &

Sons Australia Ltd.

Wainwright, A. 2016) Todays students need technology in the

classroom. Future of education: Social media and technology in the
classroom. Retrieved

from

http://www.securedgenetworks.com/blog/10-Reasons-Today-sStudents-NEED-Technology-in-the-Classroom