By Barbara Brann

Ideally Entry Level should be introduced in the pre-school years. In catering for diversity in the classroom, particularly in the early childhood years, teachers must be aware of the importance of the foundation skills and must actively and explicitly teach them in order to prepare students for the culture of the school and the complex world of formal learning. The activities at the Entry Level aim to meet this diverse need. It is essential that the skills within the Entry Level be well established prior to considering moving on to the Beginning Level.

The Magic Caterpillar's Building Blocks to Literacy  is a program of early literacy skills designed for the formative years of early schooling, encompassing the child's pre-school years and the first year of formal schooling.

It is designed as a four-level, holistic program (Entry level. Beginning Level, Skills Level, Application Level) that takes into account children's physical, intellectual and emotional development. It is based on the premise that children need to be prepared for the demands of the school and classroom environment and for the highly symbolic, abstract world of print. This program leaves nothing to 'osmosis'. It is a program that teaches children the foundation skills needed to become successfully literate.

The Magic Caterpillar's Building Blocks to Literacy program covers the 5
foundation Domains of Learning, offering suggestions for formal, informal, teacher-
guided, student negotiated and independent learning sessions for students. Activities to teach essential skills of learning-to-learn, self management, general classroom behavior and cueing systems are provided in the Talking Domain.

PROGRAM ORGANISATION

The program is organized into four levels:

• Entry Level
• Beginning Level
• Skills Level
• Application Level

It is recommended that Entry Level be introduced at Pre-School while the three further levels could be expected to be covered during the first 12 to 18 months of school. Your rate of progress through the stages and levels and the amount of time you devote to each activity will be influenced by the needs of the students, the system in which the school works, the school entry age of the student and whether or not there is a formal preparatory time at school entry.

There are 5 foundation domains (Learning Areas) considered essential to the development of literacy skills:

Oracy - Talking Domain: understanding and using language appropriate to different situations to get one's needs met, to communicate and to learn. This domain culminates in the participation of a Rich Task that brings together application of skills from the five domains.

Auditory - Listening Domain: learning to listen, phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, understanding the connections between speech sounds and written symbols - matching sounds to letters. This domain culminates in students learning about patterns of spellings and independently writing phonetically-readable stories.

Motor - Moving Domain: integrating gross motor muscles with sensory information through perceptual motor programs and the development of handwriting. This domain culminates in the application of handwriting to all written language tasks across the curriculum.

Print Concepts - Understanding Print Domain: developing skills and understanding for constructing meaning though shared and independent reading and writing. This domain culminates in the application of critical literacy to reading and written language activities across the curriculum.

Visual - Looking Domain: Understanding the written symbols of language and connecting letters and sounds. This domain culminates in independent reading and in proof-reading in written language.

Description of the Program

Each of the Levels is presented in a separate folder containing competencies covering the five Learning Domains. Each of the five Domains is presented in a different color and within each Level each Domain can be identified by a shade of that color.

Each Domain is divided into sub-skills; the number of which varies across Domains and Levels.

Color Coded Card System
• Each level has a folder of Cards. (Link to sample cards)

• Cards are color coded to distinguish each Domain.

• Each card is identified by the sub-skill code and the Stage Number. (E.g., AD 2 is the card for Stage 2 of Auditory Discrimination)

Download sample cards

• Each card has a Learning Outcome and one or more Teacher Guided Activities. Some cards include Independent Activities to be completed either independently or with minimal supervision.

• Where they are required, resource and activity sheets are provided for student use. Ideas and suggestions for further activities, word lists and suggestions for materials are also provided in the resource section - these will be referenced on the Cards. Some of the sheets are specific to the activity and some are generic and can be used for a number of different purposes.

• The cards are designed to be used as a reference for as long as it takes for the students to master the learning outcome. For some students this may be within hours, for others it may take several days or, in some cases, activities may even need to be repeated for several weeks. The time taken to develop mastery is likely to be shortened if the activities are done often and incorporated into daily routines and activities.

The road to literacy is a journey that ever child needs to take.

How they travel is up to each child, some will fly and some will walk.

But they must visit every block so that they establish a solid foundation to build their learning.




  
The Full program comes with 4 set of cards, one for each level (over 500 cards (more than 120 cards per level) in total plus CD with resources on.

For more detail information - BMB Educational Consultancy