Classroom set-up Kindergarten is the children’s first school experience so we like to make it as much like home as possible. We have learning centres around the classroom. There’s a writing centre, where children have facilities for doing their own writing and making books: scissors, glue and staplers as well as writing pencils and alphabet charts. There’s a library corner with class-made books, big books, literature from the library and everyday texts that we have collected and placed in books. We also have a listening post which works well for taped stories, providing another opportunity for children to be exposed to literature. Often we tape the stories ourselves because taped quality literature isn’t always available. We have a dramatic play area where we try to incorporate some type of writing activity. If we have a doctor's surgery for example, we’ll have an appointment book, Medicare forms and phone book. We’ve just had an aeroplane there so we had airline tickets, boarding passes, and travel brochures within the dramatic play and the children used them however they wanted to. These learning centres are established to challenge children in a variety of learning areas, from, ‘Can you build a shelter for the animals?’ to ‘Use the blocks to create a pattern.’ and ‘Match the words to this rhyme’. Part of the physical set-up for literacy is actually the displays around the classroom. They are always print-oriented. We have charts of the alphabet, colours, and children’s work with explanatory captions. These are captions that the children can read themselves rather than lengthy explanations. Parents benefit from them too, gaining an understanding and appreciation of the depth of what you can do in kindergarten. I guess you’d say that the physical layout is a crucial part of the program because it helps to immerse the children in the language and it is there in everything they do. In every activity there is some aspect of an English program — whether it is speaking, listening, reading and writing or viewing.

Choosing and using texts (see also ‘classroom routines’) I think that it is really important to use the things the children see in their everyday lives. It is natural for them to say things like, ‘Oh — I’ve seen that before — that says Ansett.’ When they go to the doctor they see people cross things off in the book so they see the writing in the appointment book as part of their everyday life. I find that they use texts because they have seen them used. They start to look at the words and they want to know what they say. Author focus is another aspect of English that is given a lot of attention in the program. The children learn that the author is the person who wrote the book and the illustrator illustrates the book and they can use those terms quite freely. When we looked at Jane Hissey’s books, one child picked up another book and said, "Look Jane Hissey!" The student saw the words on the cover and recognised that it said Jane Hissey. The children really love her work! The author focus forms part of the classroom display.

Activities to promote home-school literacy links

An important resource that we use for our English program has a lot to do with home - school literacies. We have devised some book bags that go home. It started off as ‘Teddy’. A lot of people know about Teddy — everyone takes Teddy home and they have a turn to have an adventure with Teddy — to the park, to McDonald’s and Teddy comes back to school with a postcard to the class about what happened. After everyone had a turn the teddy activity was changed into everyone taking Teddy home and reading a story to Teddy. The children then drew about their favourite part of the book that they read to Teddy and shared this when Teddy returned to school.

Other ‘book bags’ developed have been literature based. The latest is a zoo bag based on the book Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell with some cookie cutters and Compic cards used to play animal matching games — matching labels with the animals.

We also have a counting bag — with a book about bears counting, some Unifix blocks and big charts. The children practice counting and matching as they actually interact with the books. These bags go home overnight and are brought back the next day. The short time frame enables everyone to have a turn fairly quickly. We also have an alphabet bag going home where there’s a 'feely' alphabet letter. Children stick pictures about the letter into this alphabet book. There is also playdough for rolling and making the letter of the alphabet. The aim is to diversify and have a lot of different things going home, all encouraging speaking, listening, reading, writing and critical thinking.

‘Wrapped in reading’ — using everyday texts Another home-school initiative is ‘Wrapped in reading’. We explained the concept to the parents during one of our routine ‘coffee chats’ (see ‘Involving Parents’ below). The parents assisted their children to collect wrappers, junk mail and any familiar environmental print that the child recognised. The theory was that if you ask them to go to the fridge to get the milk and they come back with the cream you know that they are not recognising anything about the carton to say that it is milk so you wouldn’t put that into the book. Children don’t have to be able to read all of the words on the label but have just enough visual awareness to recognise it as the milk carton. These materials were collected and put into a display folder and at the beginning of third term all of the children brought them along to the school. We were surprised at how many children did! A few parents were reminded and we did offer to do it with them but they all said that they’d really like to do it — they had just forgotten. All the children have a "wrapped in reading’ book at school now and we have used those for many activities such as sorting. We might ask, ‘What did we have for breakfast?’ Everyone gets their Weetbix, Fruitloops or whatever out and talks about them. They can then record this information. We have word searches, letter searches and number searches using this material. During our unit of work on transport we had a trip to the airport. Following this excursion we had a role play day where we created an aeroplane in the classroom and assumed various roles associated with the airport. The children actually went through their ‘wrapped in reading’ book to decide what they would like to eat on the plane. This was recorded in a menu we had designed. We made boarding passes modelled on one a child had in their ‘wrapped in reading’ book. One child brought the weather map from The Mercury into the classroom in their ‘wrapped in reading’ book and everyone was fascinated. We enlarged a weather map and looked at the table with the graphics down the side and cut those out. Each day now we have a chart and the children go outside to look at what the weather is doing at that particular time. They decide if it is fine, sunny or raining and they get the appropriate picture. (Great fun in Tasmania!) I decided that the weather map was more realistic than the Compic we had been using, as it was one of the texts they were engaging with on a daily basis at home when checking the weather in The Mercury. Now the children come at only 4 years of age and say, ‘It’s going to be 16 today!’ They are probably not sure of what that concept means but they have looked it up in the paper and they enjoy putting that into our little weather map. That was just a spin off from ‘wrapped in reading’ but that sort of interaction is happening all the time. Every 'wrapped in reading' folder is different because they have been collected at home. They love sharing that — there’s lots of talk going on when they get their books out. Someone will say, ‘I haven’t got one of those!’ or ‘This is the same as that!’ or ‘Did you go to Bonorong Park?’ because they recognised the picture. Or "I’ve been on a Qantas plane" because they have their boarding passes in their book. They have these conversations about who’s been to the Casino, McDonalds, and those sorts of places. It is still new for us and we are thinking of ways of utilising it. The potential is amazing! We are a bit concerned about using them too much for writing because we do encourage the children to have a go at writing without copying. We want them to learn to listen for the sounds in words as well as use environmental print. If they only used their ‘wrapped in reading’ books they would just copy the words without thinking what they mean. We do use them for writing but we also know that we don’t want them to rely on them as the only source for their writing. We have used the ‘wrapped in reading’ book for all sorts of English activities in the classroom from finding words that have the letter ‘p’ in them to talking about what we have for breakfast to what is something we might eat on the plane. We are hoping to extend that to exploring writing on the clothes we wear, and the paper we use to wrap presents.

The teaching team

I have a kindergarten aide and a special aide and we work as a team. I like them to know why we are doing what we are doing. I also share the classroom because there are two kindergarten sessions and I only teach one of them. The other teacher and I plan together to ensure our displays and room set-up are appropriate for both sessions. Hence I work in conjunction with a lot of people. That is good because ideas bounce off each other — three brains are always more productive and creative than one.

Classroom routines

We have sustained silent reading — we call it ‘quiet reading’ in kindergarten. That’s the time after the children come in from outdoor play and they know to pack up and read quietly. As they arrive they can go in and choose a book. So it is instilling that practice that I hope will continue through their primary school life - just engaging with a book and often talking together. The children often get the big books or the books they have made from the shelves and share them.

We have a big book sharing session each day. During this time we discuss words, letters and meanings, predict what will happen, or discover new information for our fact books. The children like to revisit these books often. Every day there is some sort of modelled reading going on, whether from a big book, a chart, a rhyme or from the retelling or journal entry we might have written.

One of the highlights of the big book is its suitability to all levels of understanding. I have a child in my class with special needs and I also have a child who is gifted who comes to kinder having read newspapers before he arrives. One of our big books is about travelling around the world. In some ways contextual understanding is a bit beyond this age group but not for Nat because he has a fixation with geography. He reads encyclopedias and dictionaries all the time — he’s just turned five! So this was the perfect book for him — it had lots of rhyme and repetition in it for the other children to join in. We then innovated on the book for Nat by making a book about Tasmania. His mum was heavily involved and they collected some pamphlets about places in Tasmania Nat had been. We used a similar structure to the original but used Nat’s local experiences…

When I was travelling in Tasmania I saw the casino towering over me

When I was travelling in Tasmania I saw Bonorong Park spreading out before me…

Nat has helped construct the book so it is extending him at his own level but at the same time the other children are developing their phonemic awareness through the rhyme and repetition.

Another routine that we have in the class is the talking circle. I don’t like the idea of having ‘News’ every day. Listening to each child talk about something unfamiliar to everyone else can become monotonous for all the other participants. I structure other ways for children to use their speaking skills such as practising their talking skills through cooperative group work. I do still think that it is important to share the things that are going on at home or in a child’s life and at the same time have ways of structuring the rehearsing of good listening and speaking behaviours.

We have a ‘talking circle’ where the teacher aide takes half the children and I take the other half and they all bring something along. Sometimes we talk about specific things and they bring related objects, but often it is just something that is of interest to the child. I send a letter home to parents explaining that this is not a time for showing off a new toy but for sharing something interesting - found in the bush or garden for example - so they don’t have to bring the latest Batman or latest craze to school.

Talking circle happens on a regular basis and during that time we are looking for children giving eye contact, waiting their turn, asking questions, talking about what questions are, developing those skills of speaking and listening in an informal way in the classroom. The children like bringing things along. Usually they bring toys, unfortunately! When you question them about a toy they say, ‘I got this from……’ and that is all they want to say. It is much more purposeful when children bring along a gumnut or something. They have more to say about, ‘When we went walking on Mt Wellington and we found this ……..’. We find that if we pose a question to the children related to something we are doing in the classroom, we can all share a similar experience, such as something that happened when we went in a car. It brings some commonality and I can ask more appropriate questions to help the children with their talking. If the event has happened at home, I sometimes don’t know what it is they are trying to tell me and I can’t structure or scaffold their talking. You need to have both types of discussion in the classroom.

Phonemic Awareness

All of the big book work is helping the children develop their phonemic awareness by helping them to identify the sounds and to actually hear the sounds in words. We are not as concerned about the alphabetic principle — being able to know that a /b/ looks like this and sounds like /b/ at the beginning of ‘boat’. We need to train their ear to be able to hear a /b/ in ‘boat’ when they say the word. So when I do modelled writing I say the word really slowly and they say the sounds they can hear and I write them —for ‘boat’ one might say "I can hear /t/" and we’d write /t/ on the board - so we are actually training their ear to hear right at the beginning.

We also do this through rhyme. We use lots of nursery rhymes in the kindergarten program. We have made rhyme books, rhyme charts, rhyming word finds and so on as this is a crucial aspect in the development of phonemic awareness. It is important that they are able to identify rhyme and we explicitly teach that rhyme is when the words are the same at the end. This is different from when we talk about what starts with a /b/ sound which is at the beginning as in ‘boat and bush and bike’. That is listening to the initial sound. Rhyme is actually something that happens at the end of a word. I might say, ‘I have a pie in my ---------?’ And they have to think of something that rhymes. It’s sort of an oral cloze. So we use lots of rhymes and nursery rhymes. That develops their ear for listening to sounds in words.

Viewing

We try to incorporate viewing into the program. We use a variety of visual texts such as picture books, videos and other media. With our author focus on Jane Hissey we viewed Jolly Tall on the video and also read it in the book and even at that level talked about the differences. We discussed what differences the music makes and how they felt and reacted to the story when they viewed it compared with the reading in class. The most amazing thing was that they actually noticed the movement in the video. We read the book and then we watched the video and they were asked questions about what the differences were between the two. The children noticed that the characters moved and talked and there was music. We talked about what difference the music made and they had a basic awareness of the effect of music on mood. They realised that music did change the way that they felt about what happened. We revisited a small section of the video with the sound turned down so that it was just the action, then we listened to the sound. They were quite intrigued by that. We developed that back in the classroom by reading the story and adding our own musical instruments to make our own background.

We have taken that a step further in other areas when we have retold stories. When working with Three Billy Goats Gruff , for example, we added our musical instruments to add some interest, and then videoed it. So in a basic way we are beginning to look at the fact that you can create texts like this in different ways. This is important as children spend a lot of time in front of the television at home. The contextual understanding develops as they grow and ask their own questions about construction of texts.

Another thing we do is create a video of the kindergarten program as the year goes by and view it from time to time. We talk about how we’re playing together and how we are learning together and how we have changed and grown. A question I thought we’d ask this year when we view what we have already done is, ‘What else is it that we would like our parents to know about what we do at school?’ We could then ask, ‘How can we show them this on the video?’ Developing this kind of awareness is the beginning of basic critical literacy.

In kindergarten we incorporate visual texts because we want to develop speaking and listening, and literacy skills, but visual texts are also an integral part of English and SOSE and other curriculum areas. Also, importantly, we can use them to help children with their social skills, learning how they interact with each other.

Where do the teaching ideas come from?

I think one of the most important things for me is membership of professional organisations because of the networking and the interaction that gives me with like- minded professionals. I am a member of the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association and I find the interaction I have with other enthusiastic teachers from all sectors, through conversations and workshops, broadens my outlook. When I hear a new idea I always think about how I could adapt the idea for kinder! I am also a member of the Kindergarten Teachers Association, The Early Childhood Association, The Special Education Association! There are so many I have had dealings with and each of them offers me something for my own classroom practice.

I also try to attend professional development workshops when they are on offer through school. My own professional reading provides a wealth of ideas. I like to browse bookshops and buy the latest books or borrow them from the library to get ideas. I often don’t use the idea directly from the book but adapt it to suit my context or purpose.

I really think that the conversations I have with teachers are most valuable — I get an idea and I think about how I can do it or change it. The ‘wrapped in reading’ came from a national conference. I have adapted, changed and extended the idea to suit my own context. You listen to or read one thing and it gives you ten more ideas.

Evaluating the program To see whether the program is working well I want to see that all the children are engaged in meaningful learning and they are not just being kept busy because there is only half an hour to go. A spin off from this is that behaviour management issues are minimised because the children are all engaged in something that is meaningful and purposeful to them. The fact that they are busy constructing and building things and talking together about how this fits, where that goes, is really important. People come into my room say, ‘Oh, it looks busy in here today!’ and I always think that’s good. When everyone is off doing individual or group things and engaged in meaningful activities, it gives me time to work with children on a one to one basis if they need any extra help or if they have something I want to explain to them.

Involving and informing parents

We’ve carried out our own research through the Flying Start Action Research Program into home-school relationships. A lot of the interaction with literacy learning happens at home because they are only at school for 10 hours a week while they are home a lot more often. If we can involve parents, the learning continues when children go home and everyone benefits. They go home and they see signs there and they say, ‘What does that say?’ or, ‘I know that thing!’ or they go to the shop and they ask, ‘What do those words on the packet say?’. Then they are able to help and be part of the shopping. To me having this ongoing learning is one of the most important things.

Parents are informed about the value of ongoing learning through our coffee chats. The parents are able to come along and learn about early literacy development and reading and writing. In fact we ask the parents what it is that they want to know about and then organise ‘coffee chats’. We start that in parent-child and invite parents in before their children even come to kindergarten. That continues into the kinder year. We’ve had parents write about the literacy things that can be learnt at the supermarket and they brainstorm ideas together. The ideas from those sessions make up the handouts to the parents — we always call them something like, ‘By the kindergarten parents 1999’ so parents have ownership too.

We’ve invited other people in to speak. We’ve had an occupational therapist and a speech pathologist. They also value speaking to parents about their particular fields. We find that if we have the sessions during school time just before the children are collected, we have a higher attendance.

The most recent parent workshop was on Research Skills. This was well received by parents of children of all ages. I know that parents are a really important part of the education partnership and we actively try to enhance their understandings of the education process.

If we think about the parents being the child’s first teacher then somebody needs to take responsibility for assisting the parents to move with education as it moves and I think that it is something we don’t do very much. There are a lot of parents out there who are very keen to learn more about assisting their children. We want them to make the most of life opportunities, not to try to do ‘school’ at home.