Page 118 - Reading Nest - The Supportive Literacy Environment Handbook

In both preschool and primary education it is important to monitor children’s holistic

development, which has many components. Lagging behind in one area may impact
formation of skills in another, for instance poor fine motor skills hinder the
development of writing and drawing skills. A child’s inability and difficulty in holding
a pencil and drawing lines might make all manual activity feel unpleasant. As fine

motor skills advance, the teacher may see that child more often in the art centre drawing
or cutting with scissors.

While observing a child in action and analysing the child’s work, the teacher maps the
current situation first. Mari is fairly good at writing texts related to assignments, age-
appropriate dictation and homework and makes only a few mistakes; while in class her

texts contain lots of mistakes, she swaps plosives, letter order, omits some sounds and
so on. This is a strange contradiction but the teacher soon finds an explanation to it.

She observes Mari’s activity and notices that during the lesson she often peeps into her
desk mate's work.

As soon as the teacher has realised the cause, their further choices become important

but different teachers may suggest a different course of action. For example a teacher
may think it is a serious issue where the child cribs in the second year of school. They
would move Mari to a single desk and make sure she could not see anybody else’s

work. They would invite Mari’s parents to school and asks them to speak about honesty
at home, and not to do their child’s homework for her. Another teacher would also
contact Mari’s parents but with a different message, suggesting to the parents that their

daughter considers good academic results very important, she is not confident when
writing and therefore tries to look at her desk mate’s work. The teacher might say
something like: “I have told Mari that making no mistakes in writing is not important

in the second year and these short dictations are done to help every child understand
where they would need more practice. It seems, though, that Mari does not like making
mistakes, therefore I suggest you emphasise at home as well that mistakes are a normal

part of the learning process. Mari understands the basics of writing in the Estonian
language, and is able to write letters corresponding to sounds. She has a good visual
memory and I am glad to see that she likes being in the reading nest. To develop

literacy, the home should encourage free reading (recommendations for setting up a
reading nest at home follow). She should decide for herself what to read. When
attending to the texts of her choice at least 20 minutes a day, she would soon memorise

how words are written in Estonian.”