Pedagogical Aspects of Teaching, Learning, Assessing the Reading-Writing Elements for Primary School

Abstract

The acquirement and automaticity of reading and writing skills represent two main activities of the pupils in the early years of schooling, with a considerable implications on the child development and also on his school performances. These qualities are fundamental in the society we live and a normal development for a future adult. Difficulties that may occur in the attainment of these skills, and their persistence, draw teachers attention due to the pedagogical issues raised by these processes. The extension of reading and writing disorders can and will lead to negative effects on the development of pupil's personality. Alongside specialists in the education field, the teacher is the one and only, who can intervene through many appropriate teaching strategies and methods to overcome the encountered learning difficulties for every child. This paper presents a case study regarding these learning difficulties, control methods and ways of behavior accepted from the teacher’s side.

Keywords: Learning difficultiesreading-writingteaching methodsstrategiesprimary school pupils

Introduction

The main feature of the educational process lies in its complexity, variability and diversity of its related set of correlations that exists between objective and subjective factors involved: the individual characteristics of learners, their intellectual level and their potential, personality and skills of teachers, teaching strategies they use, educational background etc. This creates particular situation, uncontrollable circumstances that can exert influence in the activities of teaching-learning and assessment, influencing the training and education of the human being.

In particular situations when the student presents different difficulties, for example in terms of visual perception, auditory perception, oral language disorders, attention disorders, motor problems, etc., the risk of developing learning difficulties is high. However, adjustment of the learning and teaching strategies to student’s potential and learning style, will allow students to increase learning efficiency. Also, the fact that teaching is regarded as a probabilistic instructions system, can be adjusted through a formative feedback.

Acquiring reading and writing

According to the curriculum for preparatory classes, grade I and grade II, one of the general competences refers to a variety of receiving text messages in known communication contexts. Thus, recognition and naming small and capital letters begins in the preparatory grade, as well as graphics and drawing the outlines of letters. Also, an important focus is on the prevention of the development of learning difficulties at reading and writing through development of speech and communication skills, development of vocabulary, and verbal memory and development of mnemonic skills for language elements. Training and development of organization of perceptual-motor behaviors and space structure is another important aspect that belongs to the pre reading and pre writing stage. Also the development of rhythmic sense is in fact a matter that focuses on the growth of phonological awareness and spelling tasks by segmenting the sounds. All these development areas that prepare the student to acquire reading and writing can be accessed through various educational games that depend on the creativity of the teacher.

Often the difficulties in acquiring reading and writing are put down to the absences of students, the precarious socio-cultural level of student’s family, on affective disorders, the teachers lack of experience, etc., but, although these factors do not exist in all psychopedagogical situations, however there are children who have difficulties in reading and writing. This proves the presence of some possible deficiencies in the development of the areas described above and / or of working memory which can compromise the information association that needs to be used with those existing.

Working memory is information that can be stamped and stored for a short period of time and that can be used to solve a cognitive task. At a young student, working memory intervenes in reading new words. Although he knows all the letters that make up the word, he must rely on the working memory mechanisms in order to read. First he needs to keep in memory the correct order of letters, then to assign the correct sound to each letter (not to replace the deaf sounds to the sounds or vice versa, the sound to the deaf one), to separate the correct word into syllables, to retain the first syllable in order to identify the second syllable etc. He can easily identify the first two syllables and then stops at the next syllable, resume the first two that were identical, he stops again and only after the third try he manages to read the third syllable. This can be a tiring task and can lead to abandonment of the task, reducing the motivation to read and a decrease in learning performance.

Thus, even if the cognitive abilities would allow the student high performances, the lack of appropriate teaching strategies could bring difficulties in acquisition of reading and writing.

Functional and communicative model

Acquiring reading and writing is one of the conditions that contribute to the development of communication skills, by developing the capacity to perceive an oral and written expression. Also, it continues the further learning process of various written texts , developing from the earliest years of school a basic educational culture , creativity and efficient usage of their problem solving , understanding the beauty and the world in which we live.

Studying Communication in Romanian starting with the preparatory grade makes it possible to apply the principle of functional communicative even at this level, the curriculum allows the usage of the functional-communicative model through it’s general competences and the specific one’s and by the suggested learning activities.

Language becomes a tool in relationships with others, with a role in transmission of information and influencing the behavior and the manifestation of feelings and opinions. The diversity of communication field is big, enabling the description and narrative, entering the explanatory, argumentative, all depending on the teacher’s creativity.

The implementation of this communicative-functional model since the beginning of school is challenging for teacher because he must achieve a confluence of scientific content with real life, thus preventing the complexity and difficulty of the real world. Using critical thinking and metacognitive strategies will make an efficient learning. Under the demands of the new communicative-functional model the student is taught to give new meaning of their own knowledge, make connections with previous information and recognize their applicability, underpinning the learning metacognition. It focuses on valuing emotional reaction on critical teaching, on reflection to a text heard or read. The communication in Romanian language lesson will be outlined thus under the form of a dialogue both with the author and with himself, the language being fundamental in interpersonal communication.

Conclusion

Effectively organized educational activities, choosing the proper teaching methods and forming favorable conditions for learners will influence their school performance. So, we can say that there is a methodical influence of the teacher on the learner, according as it develops, there is a substitution of the used methods into participative methods, active, practiced by the student himself. So these are methods of interior reflection, generating operational structure, without which there wouldn’t be knowledge.

Adequate monitoring of certain student’s reactions and of their evaluation, allows the establishing of a set of criteria that would be applied in the selection of teaching strategies according to the learner’s needs and then actual achievement of sequences of training and education. Teacher’s professionalism is seen in the ability of the teacher to master the widest possible range of effective methods, teaching creatively and effectively.

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