Amanda Lamb

February 25, 2020

CIRG 653

Module 4
This chapter was very insightful in the various ways that students show they are gaining

awareness. It reminded me of my situations as an educator that I have witnessed students

demonstrating their gaining awareness. The first situation I will discuss is from this past summer

when I worked as an early education teacher. I worked with upcoming Kindergarten and first-

grade students. On this day, I was reading a poem to the students to model fluency and touch on

word spacing, concepts about print, and punctuation (for my first-grade students), when one of

my students stopped me. She pointed to a word on the large poster paper and proceeded to spell

the word ‘happy’. All the students clapped for her as she stood up to take a bow!

Clay (2014) says “Efficient school programs allow children to expand their awareness of

letters from whatever its level is when they walk in the school door.” (p. 47). This student, who

was behind her other age-equivalent peers, applied her knowledge of the letters we had been

practicing in isolation to the text we were reading. After, I prompted her and the other students to

find other words with those letters in them. Then, students went around identifies other letters

they knew. While this was one way to provide quality teaching interactions to extend awareness,

I could have done more. Another extension I could have incorporated was modeling the sounds

of the spelled word and providing activities that deal with the letter sounds. Below, Clay (2014)

outlines great activities that allow young children to manipulate sounds:

“rhymes, jingles, poems, songs, and choruses, stories read aloud, some selected for their

play with sounds, rereading aloud that emphasizes rhyme, alliteration, phoneme

substitution, or segmentation, games like ‘What I’m thinking of begins with…?’,

manipulative activities with buckets of letters, magnet letters and boards, and masking
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February 25, 2020

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cards; and demonstrations and shared activities that call attention to sounds as one kind

of naming of letters, and any message writing the children do in which a teacher asks

‘What can you hear? What else can you hear? At the beginning? At the end? in the

middle?” (p.53-54)

The second situation I will discuss is from observation in a Preschool classroom that I

recall from my undergraduate degree. In this situation, a group of students was using

manipulative plastic blocks to create letters. There were curved, straight, long, and short pieces.

They demonstrated their awareness of letters and their formations but also showed incredible

problem-solving skills and cooperation while working together to create letters in their name.

Clay (2014) says “I have emphasized children as creators of their own awareness for two

reasons: for fear adults will set their interaction agenda from assumptions already in their heads

and neglect to observe what the child is capable of doing; and for fear adults will talk too much

about their own concerns.” (p. 73). This quote goes perfectly with this situation. This activity

was completely student-led and didn’t involve adults. While this learning activity could have

been enhanced by an adult’s conversation with them during the activity, the students were free to

create and extend their awareness because there was no one in the way to hinder or slow that

awareness.

A quality teaching interaction during this activity would simply involve having the

student explain the reason behind their choices. Getting students to explain their thinking allows

teachers to check for understanding or misconceptions. Also, the teacher or I could have

extended this activity by asking the students to look around the room at objects or classmates and
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February 25, 2020

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Module 4
try forming the letters that begin other words. To differentiate for lower students, the teacher or I

could have written the letters in the student’s name on paper and have the student match the

plastic pieces to form the letters. Repetition of meaningful experiences is the key to gaining

awareness, as Clay (2014) states “Increasing awareness arises out of many successful

performances or acts, as a result of which children become aware of what works.” (p.42).

The third and final situation I will discuss is from a parent-teacher conference I was part

of while student teaching in Kindergarten. While a parent was in for a meeting, I noticed her two

sons, one in Kindergarten and the other younger, maybe three years old, were looking at a book.

The younger sibling picked up a book upside down and began looking at it, and the kindergarten

student quickly helped his brother. He showed him the right way to hold the book, helped him

turn to the beginning of the book, and pointed at the first word and told him that he had to read

from there. The kindergarten student preceded to run his finger quickly along the page while

describing to his younger sibling what the pictures showed to tell him the story.

“In a book-sharing situation the child reveals what he or she knows about the front of the

book, that print…tells the story, what a letter is, what a word is, where the first letter in a word

is to be found, pairs of upper- and lowercase letters, and when nonlegitimate changes have been

made to the printed text.” (Clay, 2014, p. 42). While the kindergarten student didn’t do all of

these, he took on a teaching role to help his younger brother which demonstrated his awareness

of concepts about print. He knew the correct orientation that a book should be held, knew books

are read from the front to the back, knew to start reading from the top left side of the page to the

right side and continue down the page, and knew that the print tells the story, which he
Amanda Lamb

February 25, 2020

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Module 4
demonstrated by running his finger across the page as he used the photo to dictate a version of

the story since he could not read the words. A quality teaching interaction for this situation

would be to give positive feedback on his knowledge of the concepts about print, model reading

a story, and provide more opportunities to apply concepts about print as the teacher reads. Again,

awareness increases when many successful performances occur. (Clay, 2014, p. 42). The more

students see and apply concepts about print, the more aware they will be when they are reading

on their own or to someone.

No matter how teachers provide quality interaction, it is important to note that Clay

(2014) outlines three ways of teaching: by teacher telling, revealing, or the learner working it out

for themselves (p. 64). I believe a balanced approach of using each way of teaching when it best

fits is how teachers should provide quality interaction and instruction. When situations arise that

show students are gaining awareness, teachers should observe the learning that is taking place to

determine how to approach interacting with the student.

Amanda Lamb

February 25, 2020

CIRG 653

Module 4
References

Clay, M. M. (2014). By Different Paths to Common Outcomes: Literacy Teaching and Learning.

Aukland, New Zealand: Global Education Systems (GES). Pages 42, 47, 53-54, 64, 73