Literacy Innovations
LINKS TO THE PAGES BELOW WILL BE COMPLETED ASAP. LAST UPDATE September 2004
Overviews, advance-organizers, catch-up, self-help and extension materials

For teachers and learners to use and develop freely,with acknowledgment. Titles and content are copyright

Page index
Making print more interesting
English studies - Literacy Innovations
Help in reading, spelling and vocabulary
Tests that teach
Web-sites on literacy
Innovations not yet posted here
Index of 20 lessons

MAKING PRINT MORE INTERESTING

Multilevel reading book - Maldun (to be completed)

Turnabout Reading book - The Story of the Old Gray Man

'Cluey' reading and spelling books - The Magic Migrant

'Hi-Lite' print ideas- Calendar of the Months - some info

A different magic story - the QCumber Shop

ENGLISH STUDIES - LITERACY INNOVATIONS

A junior book of Social inventing - non-fiction creative writing and reading. Constructive literacy

Junior book of Quotations

Shakespeare in Quotations - Macbeth

Aladdin's Wonderful Grammar

Recommended reading - Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia

SELF-HELP in READING, SPELLING

and

VOCABULARY
ABC Go! © Help Yourself To Read Or Find Out Where You Got Stuck'. Half-hour cartoon take-home video/CD literacy project for teenagers and adults.

Project for a whole school - Make your own video 'Help yourself to read or find out where you got stuck'

Dream-Time Dilly-Bag. Indigenous cartoon literacy overview project.

Literacy comic for understanding reading and spelling

The Latin root game of BABL to improve vocabulary

Word Jigsaws

A little book of structured spelling

Spelling in classrooms

Spelling games and curiosities

The hundred most common words - know them and you can read half of almost anything

BABL game with Latin roots, stems and prefixes for improving vocabulary

A reading check-list - What I knew already and what I found out

A set of twenty lessons.

Spelling Day October 9

TESTS THAT TEACH

Self-testing that helps the learner and the teacher

 

Tests that teach - handbook

Silent reading test

The shocker comprehension test anyone can try

The sixteen-word spelling test

Classroom barriers to literacy - Teachers' check-list

A test of holiday forgetting

Reading new words

WEB-SITES and WEB-PAGE on literacy, writing systems,and spelling that can be down loaded

Index pages

Literacy ideas: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/litpage.html

Writing systems of the world - http://home.vicnet.net.au/writintro.htm

Spelling alternativs - home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/spelling.htm

Learning styles of older failing learners: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/lernstyl.htm

Paired reading - how to really help learners by reading with them - 'how' is important: - http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/lpaired.htm

Making print more interesting and helpful http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/lprinth.htm

Unintentional classroom barriers to literacy

 

 

SOME LITERACY INNOVATIONS NOT YET INCLUDED
'Fast track' Reading books,

Standards- individual projects

Time and space classroom projects

Print in your hands - Print Encyclopedia in classrooms, especially pre-1968 Arthur Mee

Spelling List - 6000 words structured to increase visual span and understanding

Spelling Games - for understanding more about spelling and writing systems

OTHER BEGINNERS MATERIALS

Video - Preparing To Read Thru Play. Children using play and play materials in a Scottish nursery school.

ABC chart, plastic letters and play-tray, multipurpose and developmentally

Spelling jingle-dangles

Wall chart syllabus - example of a wall chart for Year 1 Maths

Tables & number summary - color patterns as they are discovered. LIST OF BOOKS and MANUSCRIPTS Valerie Yule 1970-2004

These copyright literacy innovations can be freely downloaded and copied for teaching and learning,
but are not to be sold or put to commercial use without consultation.

The English writing system from scratch in 20 Lessons. Index.More Interesting Print to make learning to read easier. - 12 examples in a story of the 12 months of the calendarReading the 100 most common wordsTurnabout Tale 1 - the old Irish story of the Travels of Maldun, Part 1, with hi-lighted text.Innovative book and story materials. Indexvy's Funny Literacy Innovations materials. IndexSpelling and Vocabulary. IndexInnovative tests that teach. IndexPaired reading with learners, a different technique for faster learning and better comprehensionSome learning styles of adult literacy students - and ways to meet themInternational Spelling Day October 9

See The English writing system from scratch

A set of 20 lessons

1.Hearing sounds in words. 2. Learning the ABC. 3. Letters and sounds. 4. Letters and sounds in words. 5. Vowel sounds a e i o u. 6. Reading 3-letter words. 7. Long vowels A E I O U. 8 . All the 19 vowel sounds. 9. Reading the most common words. 11. Coping with silly spelling. 12. Why English spelling is silly. 13. Old English spelling patterns. 14. French spelling patterns. 15. Old Greek spelling patterns. 15. Latin spelling patterns. 16. Breaking up long words. 17 Working out new words from Latin - their beginnings, middles and ends. 18. Detail of the last 9 vowel sounds. 19 Tips to work out hard spellings. 20. Reading what you want to read. 21. Checklist for learners - What you have found out,and what you knew already? Tip. Look over all the lessons quickly, before you start to learn each step.

  • Innovative book and story materials

1. Turnabout Stories for alternate reading by a beginner and a more experienced reader, so that beginners can have a good story from very early on, learn to read more difficult text by looking on, and build up their own reading vocabulary and skills, from catching on to the whole story in print. Sentences in a story for paired reading are alternately easy (for the learner to read) and more difficult (for parent, teacher, friend, older child to read) and develop reading skills quickly from catching on to the whole story in print.
Example. The Travels of Maldun, part 1.

2. Multi-level and Double-Decker Books Contain the same basic story or information at two to three levels of difficulty on the same double-page, so that the book can be used in a mixed ability classroom without arousing invidious comparisons. The slower learners can be tempted to try reading the more difficult passages to get more detail about the story, and the brighter learners can look across to the easy passages if they need help for the harder text.

3. Hi-Light books and stories - making Print more interesting.To aid learners in decoding for meaning faster. You can hi-light children's books yourself to help young readers and older readers can help. A book can be all in one HI-LIGHT, or have different HI-LIGHTS on different pages or different paragraphs.

a) Word Hi-Light shows sentence-structure. Nouns stand out in green and the vowels stand out in red.

b) Word-Structure Hi-Light hi-lights vowels, so that vowel-consonant structure of words is clarified.

b) Surplus Hi-Light clarifies word structure. Silent letters are faded to grey.

c) Silly-spelling Hi-Light warns learners of spelling traps. Irregular spellings are in another, lighter color.

d) Cluey Books. If the young reader cannot read a difficult noun, they can lift a little flap and underneath is the picture. (This is more useful than books in which the picture is above and readers lift the flap to read the word underneath.)

4. Aladdin's Wonderful Grammar. The story of Aladdin told in a series of passages in which the first passage on a page illustrates a point of grammar or punctuation, and the student has to think about the point by using the next passage as a demonstration exercise.

  • vy's Funny Literacy Innovations -
Materials that you can make yourselves from these Web pages.

a) ABC Frieze with pictures like the letter-shapes, and its many uses

b) ABC Picture-Charts used with Plastic Letters and home-made Play-Trays.

c) Story Jigsaw. Each jigsaw piece contains a complete word from a story, to match on an A3 base which has the story.

d) Vowel Sounds Chart All the vowel sounds with funny faces and spelling patterns in words and pictures.

e). Jingle-Dangles Spelling pattern mobiles.

 

VY's LITERACY INNOVATIONS

Materials you can mostly make

Designed so that learners can

Use their intelligence

Develop their imagination and humour

Have an overview of where they are going

And be reminded of where they have been

or missed out or got confused

And understand English spelling, so that memorising is not by blind-rote.

 

The principle is economy and 'chunking' in learning
The clue is to apply all learning immediately to reading books, not doing more activities.

Methods of learning to read can be still back in the dark ages in spite of more expensive technology
They may have little more to enthuse learners about actually reading,
if they are not lucky enough to have a first class teacher.

This potluck can be less unfair when innovatory materials can help learners to learn faster. Then Learners need not be at the mercy of any of the many ideologies Teachers can have more ideas to use, and Learners can have more chance to use their own brains
to help themselves.

Some of these materials are already available. Others require funding to produce for wider use. Everyone is welcome to use and to copy VY's Literacy Materialsto help their students, to help themselves, and in research andevaluations. I would be glad if you inform the author, tell mehow you get on and how you would improve them. Comments and research evaluations are welcomed.

Anyone is welcome to use and develop VY's Literacy Materials, for non-profit teaching purposes, including video and CD Rom, on condition that permission is asked and recognition is made of original authorship.No commercial use of VY's ideas in original or adapted forms is legal unless permission is asked and granted, recognition is made of original authorship, and royalty awarded on all sales to use in further development of Literacy Innovations.

 

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