The texts selected for instruction, which the students will be able to read largely by themselves, include:
- up to six lines of text with simple language structures used in varied ways;
- a close match between pictures and text;
- a core of high-frequency words and a variety of well-supported high-interest words;
- straightforward storylines and familiar contexts;
- self-generated or group-generated texts (e.g., texts from shared writing, dictated texts, or students’ own captions on their pictures).
It is expected that students will be reading at Red in the Ready to Read series after six months of instruction.
Students will also be listening to a wide variety of texts read aloud by the teacher.
Lāvalava by Lino Nelisi
Ready to Read, Red
In order to engage with these texts, students build on their earlier expertise. As they read, students demonstrate that they:
- expect a text to make sense and understand that they read the text rather than the illustrations;
- have many concepts about print under control, including one-to-one matching, directionality, and some simple punctuation;
- know that sounds combine to form words and that sounds are represented by letters;
- use their developing phonemic awareness to orally blend some phonemes in simple words that have two to three phonemes;
- attend to initial letters and common inflections (e.g., -s, -ed, -ing) as they read;
- process text using interrelated sources of information (semantic, syntactic, and visual and grapho-phonic);
- decode simple, regular words by using word-solving strategies, e.g., by using their knowledge of letter–sound relationships and by making analogies to known rimes;
- use sentence structure and context to supplement information from partial decoding attempts;
- confirm word predictions by cross-checking (e.g., by checking sentence patterns, illustrations, or the meaning of text already read);
- recognise approximately twenty-five high-frequency words automatically, both in and out of context;
- use comprehension strategies, including making connections to prior knowledge, to understand and respond to aspects of texts such as characters in fiction texts or simple facts in information texts;
- self-monitor, at times, by recognising when they’ve lost meaning and using some simple fix-up strategies (such as checking with the picture or rereading the line);
- clearly understand a text (e.g., through conversation, drawing, and retelling).
In order to engage with these texts, students build on their earlier expertise. As they write, students demonstrate that they:
- can orally retell a familiar story or describe an event in a coherent sequence;
- think, talk, or draw in preparation for writing;
- can retain an idea in the head long enough to write it down, reread what they write as they are writing, and retell their writing to themselves and others;
- use their developing knowledge of phoneme–grapheme relationships to:
- say, hear, and record most first and last sounds and some dominant medial sounds in words that they write
- identify all letters by name and match some letters to sounds and sounds to letters or identify a word that begins with that sound;
- can encode some simple, regular written words (e.g., by using their knowledge of letter–sound relationships and by making analogies to known rimes);
- use some high-frequency and personal words in writing text;
- consistently spell known words correctly;
- are willing to experiment with capturing words from their oral vocabulary;
- make close attempts to write words, e.g., by using phoneme–grapheme knowledge and/or by noticing visual similarities;
- can read back what they have written;
- can form most letters (lower case and upper case) correctly.
The writing that students do in classroom contexts, largely by themselves, will:
- include at least one simple sentence that makes sense, with more than one idea;
- include consistently correct spelling of some known high-frequency and personal words;
- demonstrate close attempts at spelling unknown words.
Vocabulary expansion is driven by oral language. Oral-language learning opportunities in the classroom include language experience, shared reading and writing, and listening to stories read aloud.
