HEROES Teacher's Guide - Book - Page 10
After this, discussions revolve around the pupils’ personal and affective responses to
the story as they make connections between the story and their own real-life
experiences. They reflect on the story and what they have learned from it.
Stage 4: Acting Out the Story
In this final stage, the pupils put to active use the language they have learned from
the story. They act out the story including the sequential events of the story, as well
as the characters’ actions and emotions.
A full list of all story scripts in the program appears in Appendix I.
7. Teaching Reading and Writing Readiness
In Heroes, the exposure to the spoken language and familiarity with the language helps
create a solid foundation on which to then build reading ability later on. English uses an
alphabetic writing system in which the letters, singly and in combination, represent single
speech sounds. Learners who can differentiate the individual sounds of a word, recognize
their identity, and put the word together again have the foundation skills for using the
alphabetic principle (Troia 2004). Without phoneme awareness, pupils may later be
mystified by the print system and how it represents the spoken word.
Phoneme awareness facilitates growth in printed word recognition (Good, Simmons, and
Kame'enui, 2001; Torgesen 2004). Explicit practice of this skill is especially prudent for
exposure to novel sounds, blends, and structures that are common in English, but may not
be in the pupils' L1. Through work on aural/oral skills and extensive phonemic awareness
exercises, pupils become familiar with the sounds of the language, creating a smooth
gateway to beginning reading (Russak 2019).
Alongside the exposure of vocabulary and lexical chunks, many stories and topics are taught.
The pupils acquire a plethora of language, varying in phonological makeup and syllable type.
Many of these lexical items can later be taught as reading words or as sight words to enable
a further expansion of reading ability. By first learning them in an aural/oral context, these
words become part of the repertoire of the pupils and enable automaticity later, on their
way to becoming fluent readers.
The program also addresses the important skill of directionality in developing reading and
writing readiness. “Learners’ L1 reading directionality mode seems to affect their L2 reading
fluency.” (Naghdipour 2015: 70). Research has found that L1 readers of Hebrew and Arabic,
for example, are at a disadvantage to L1 readers of a left-to-right orthography when learning
English. Therefore, it is crucial that pupils are explicitly exposed to and practice the
directional orientation of English orthography in order to prepare them for reading later on
(Naghdipour 2015).
Through literature, pupils are exposed to the directionality of an English storybook as they
practice turning the pages of their storybooks from left to right. The program also provides
explicit practice in the development of these skills through movement, songs, and activities
practicing proper English directionality and shape formation.
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