In our shared reading on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, we looked at the old favourite ‘The Gruffalo’. The kids really connected with text, drawing on past experiences when they read the book at Kinder or in Prep or with a loved one at home. On Thursday, after reading the text, we connected The Gruffalo to our Big Idea of systems and explored the concept of sequencing and story mapping – as a way to make sense of a text.
Some students were given the task of sequencing pictures from the book.
Other students were asked to illustrate the story of The Gruffalo through story maps
Then, on Friday after reading the text we brainstormed the idea of ‘high frequency words’. High frequency words are quite simply those words which occur most frequently in written material, for example, “and”, “the”, “as” and “it”. They are often words that have little meaning on their own, but they do contribute a great deal to the meaning of a sentence. They are also words that are often are tricky to sound out or recognise through illustrations.
In the next two weeks and then after the holidays, we will focus more on high frequency words to assist children in making meaning in texts that they read. If you would like to find out more about high frequency words, head over to the literacy home learning page.