Challenge / Strategies
Print /Print Awareness
Awareness of text
How text works.
Text contains information
Text is read top to bottom and from left to right. /
  • Create print rich environment: classroom full of books, print on walls.
  • Teacher points out text on the walls and individual words.
  • Storybooks read aloud or signed to class.
  • Pupils are shown book titles, author’s names, and the back and front covers of books.
  • Teacherfollows words with finger while reading aloud.

Decoding: connecting speech sounds to print
Letter knowledge
Phonological awareness
Phonemic awareness /
  • Present letters in uppercase and lower case at random, ask them to name each letter, the sound it represents or a word beginning with that letter.
  • To familiarise students with appearance of letters ask them to group by shape e.g. a, b, c have curves and letters p, g, j, and y have hanging sticks.
  • Teach letters along with teaching sounds.
  • Work with syllables before isolating individual sounds.
  • Teach phonemes along with letters, not in isolation, scaffold from or build on what the students know.
  • Facilitate blending sounds by providing multiple opportunities to practice.
  • Systematic phonics instruction.
  • Synthetic phonics instruction.

Vocabulary Building /
  • Language Experience Approach:Teach core vocabulary in developmental sequence, scaffold and build on words that a child already knows.
  • Teach written core vocabulary that the child can sign or knows orally.
  • Teach at least 10 new words a week. These should include useful words as well as those that are not part of the students’ everyday experiences.
  • To help retain new words, show the student the written form, ask them to pronounce and ask them the meaning.
  • Engage students in developing categories, word families, and word play activities.
  • Work on synonyms, idiomatic expressions, antonyms, teach groupings and classifications, use/show examples of the meaning e.g. food and cakes.
  • Have students provide vocabulary to complete a text.
  • Teach words around contexts and themes e.g. classroom with various classroom items)
  • Teach dictionary skills.
  • Personal Dictionaries.
  • Have pupils create Key word notebooks.
  • Maintain classroom Key word Displays and school Language Display Boards
  • Use pictures/ video/ other media to reinforce and review vocabulary taught. (Google images)

Reading Comprehension /
  • Chosen texts should not be too far in advance of child’s linguistic expression and should concern meanings and concepts they already know.
  • A reading progresses, provide more context to give the child opportunity to construct meaning regardless of difficult syntax or unfamiliarwords.
  • As reading competence and confidence develops, modify text through expansion and discussion rather than simplification.
  • Extensive use of visual support materials: Use all sources available-to support the text computer/ TV/ video
  • Scaffold to a new text using other books to activate prior knowledge
  • Scaffold from lower to higher-level questions to promote higher order thinking skills e.g. what is the girl’s name to how do you think the girl felt?
  • Promote dialogue with critical thinking skills: ask open-ended questions and questions that require text-supported answers.
  • Read wide variety of tests for many purposes e.g. recipes, maps, informational texts and literature.
  • Have students make connections between given text and other books, knowledge of their own experience: text-to-text, text to world or text to self.
  • Have students predict what will happen.
  • For independent reading: ensure text is at child’s reading level.
  • Pre-teach key vocabulary.
  • Use meta-cognitive strategies such as re-reading, reading ahead, asking for help, asking a question, paraphrasing and retelling: RAP- read the text, ask yourself what does it mean, put the text into own words
  • Read with the students every day.
  • High light multiple word meanings-
  • Cloze tests, blank every nth word to have random mix of structural and lexical words.

Fluency /
  • Extensive oral/sign reading practice e.g. re-reading, repetition of texts.
  • Give guidance and feedback.
  • Pupil-adult reading (e.g., reading to each other).
  • Reading and preforming play scripts.
  • Dramatizing stories.

Spelling /
  • Integrate spelling instruction with all other aspects of reading and writing (e.g., phonics instruction).
  • Explore spelling rules and patterns by using words from a familiar text.
  • Illustrate ways to spell a sound (e.g., long “a”).
  • Core words (e.g., sight words) should be spelled accurately from the start.

Hand Writing
Physical dexterity
Writing, organisation / where to begin on the page
Writing down homework
Copying from blackboard /
  • Some pupils may need explicit instruction.
  • Give the young child a short pencil that balances well in a small hand, with dots for the thumb and middle finger, on opposite sides of the pencil.
  • Cut and distribute writing strips of different sizes for different writing abilities.
  • Avoid fountain pens.
  • Clear margin, page / work title
  • Teach pupils to underline key words in answer.
  • Organisational Checklist / Task Management Board.
  • Class prizes for most improved copy/ neatest work of the week.
  • Consider a buddy system/Allow time specifically for this to be taken down at the end of a lesson.
  • Consider the use of colour-coded homework sheets.
  • Use different coloured chalk to assist the child in following from one line to another.
  • Reduce amount of information to be copied.
  • Allow the student to have a copy of information from a peer.

Composition /
  • Give priority to the child seeing the relevance of writing as a means of self- expression either for an audience or for self.
  • Encourage ‘read back’ to evaluate and self-correct.
  • Class Created books: ‘Big Books’ for on-going class projects such as Weather Journal, Diary of school outings, Festivals and holidays.
  • News reporting.
  • Write and reply to notes from other pupils, including email and other forms of Social Media.
  • Digital story- telling, photographs used as prompts for writing.
  • To help young writers with sentence structure and grammar: Present two sentences, and ask them to combine the sentences to make one more complex sentence (e.g., “Brownies taste good” with “Mary likes to eat brownies” to create “Mary likes to eat brownies because they taste good”). Ask students to insert descriptive words into otherwise plain sentences (e.g., add “black” “big” and “quickly” into the sentence “The spider ran up the wall” to make the sentence “The big, black spider quickly ran up the wall”
  • Model the use of writing frames, templates, or graphic organizers to give children an understanding of narrative structure.
  • Materials without words- comic’s picture stories too be completed.
  • Scripting plays and writing new endings/middles or beginnings for old stories.
  • Creating shopping lists, drafting advertisements, birthday cards and letters.

Memory
Recall
Sequencing
Language processing /
  • Accompany instructions with visual/concrete cues where possible.
  • Teacher should model the steps of the problem aloud (self-talk), encourage pupils to do same.
  • Story retell.
  • Visual/ picture retell- allow students to draw to illustrate what they have read
  • Use prepared pictures to improve sequencing/ structure/ verbal use.
  • Teacher prompts with information filled questions (“what happened when Jonny saw the green car at his house?)
  • Digital material/ use of digital camera to make a book of the child’s day.