- Wednesday 24 May 2023
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Literacy is a wonderful skill to possess. As educators, we know this to be true, but how do we get our students to believe the same?
It doesn’t help that the lockdowns that occurred during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the literacy skills of some students, who found learning from home during a pandemic challenging and unstable. Fortunately, research about the impact of COVID-19 on early childhood reading practices suggests that many parents and carers understand the importance of reinforcing literacy skills at home—even with something as seemingly simple as reading a story before bedtime.
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic saw children across New Zealand and the world having to adapt to online learning and homeschooling. While many families reaped the benefits of homeschooling and chose to continue this style of learning after life returned to a sense of normalcy, homeschooling isn’t suited to every child and parent.
Luckily, with our educational resources, getting students excited about learning literacy and comprehension skills can happen inside and outside the traditional classroom. Designed to elevate the learning experience for students, The Comprehension Box and The Literacy Box series provides an effective solution to supporting learners’ English skills throughout primary school. Both literacy resources are an ideal way to reinforce some of the strategies that were interrupted or lost during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
So, what are some of the ways all educators can use each of the series to improve students’ literacy and comprehension?
Implementing The Literacy Box
1. Cover cross-curricular activities
As educators, we know the number of cross-curricular connections that can be made from having strong literacy skills. The Literacy Box has a range of cross-curricular activities to engage your students, as our texts span across genres. Is one of your students fascinated by nature and Earth science? Utilise the texts about nature and animals to encourage them to be excited about learning new literacy skills; show them how developing good English skills can help them better understand science.
Demonstrating how your students’ literacy skills can be used in the real world is a great way to show your class the bigger picture and help them get excited about the purpose of your lessons.
2. Assess and adjust
The colourfully illustrated cards in The Literacy Box assess 12 different comprehension skills and pronoun references, so you can see exactly where your students need guidance. This allows you to adjust your lessons to better support your students, ensuring you are covering the areas they need you to, while still following the New Zealand Curriculum.
All answer cards are separate from the texts to allow students to work and progress at their own rate. Allowing student self-assessment helps them to gain a better understanding of the learning area, encouraging them to become autonomous learners.
3. Reinforcement matters
Reinforcement is a powerful learning tool that supports students’ deeper understanding of key areas and concepts. In literacy, it involves reinforcing the structure, concepts, and features of texts to help students better grasp the context and real-world application. And it could include a range of elements—from the repeated sounds in alliteration, to the use of typography and formatting—to do so.
Introducing reinforcement strategies in your classroom will also give you a clearer idea of the areas your students are struggling with—and those they are excelling at!
Implementing The Comprehension Box
1. Make comprehension visual
The colourfully illustrated cards in The Comprehension Box feature both fiction and non-fiction texts of a wide variety of genres, so each of your students can explore different texts and find something they enjoy. The engaging texts will transform literacy activities into fun learning adventures—you could even source your own pictures or graphics for younger learners to accompany the ones we’ve included. All students learn in different ways, so introduce more visual elements to accompany the texts you give your class to read—we’re sure you’ll see positive results!
2. Let imagination run wild
Children have incredible imaginations—and believe it or not, imagination can be used to help make students’ learning experiences a blast! Show your students how fun reading and sharing stories can be by utilising our imaginative comprehension questions.
Explore a whole host of different genres of text in The Comprehension Box series—from dragon-slayers to magical tree houses and everything in between, all of your students will be sure to find something they enjoy. Encourage them to let the stories play out in their heads and describe or draw what they see. You can even make whole-class reading more fun, and answering questions easier, by allowing them to discuss the elements of each text with each other.
Using story-driven content makes for a more engaged learning experience—your students won’t even know they’re learning!
3. Embrace progression
Seeing the gradual progression and improvement of your skills is an exciting thing for anyone—encourage tracking this in your classroom! Reaching incremental goals will give your students a sense of achievement, boosting their confidence and enjoyment of the learning area.
Monitoring the progression of your class is made easy with the illustrated cards in The Comprehension Box series. With comprehension and word questions featured on the back of our text cards, students have the ability to self-assess their progression through the teaching concepts and become aware of any areas they are struggling with—and get excited about areas they excel at!
Watch your students’ literacy skills flourish and run a complete reading program in your classroom with The Literacy Box and The Comprehension Box series. Want to try it out for yourself? You can download a free sample of The Literacy Box and a free sample of The Comprehension Box now—we can’t wait to hear what you think!