Directionality and Storybook Reading

In Chapter 6 of Becoming Literate, Marie Clay writes that children face three main challenges after their initial experiences with print.  One of those challenges is the directionality of print.  In English text, of course, this means learning that print goes left to right.  Period.

I hadn't considered this skill to be anything unusual for children to learn until Clay opened my eyes: "The child's everyday experience has actually trained him in different habits from those he needs in reading.  An orange, a dog or a favourite toy must be recognized from any viewing angle.  Meaning is constant when the object is small or large, is upside-down, back-to-front, or sideways to the viewer...On entry to school he has to learn that in one particular situation, when he is faced with printed language, flexibility is inappropriate."  (Clay, 1991).  DUH!  I had never thought of directionality in reading as something entirely foreign in its adherence to one serial direction in the world of a child for whom every other experience has been multi-directional.

After that "ah-ha" moment, I decided to check out whether or not my kindergarten students truly understood the directionality of print.  Using the Sulzby Storybook Reading Assessment, I had my students read a Goldilocks book to me.  The students were already familiar with the text from a read aloud the previous week.  The book has multiple lines of print on each page, so I was able to gauge whether or not students had learned the following:

• directionality
• return sweep
• high frequency words
• using pictures to gain meaning
• the language "style" of story telling

In addition, I was also able to take notes on what aspects of oral English the students have acquired.  For example, whether or not they correctly form and use plural nouns or regular past tense verbs. 

The Sulzby assessment taught me a lot about my students!  I was surprised to learn that one of my students has not yet mastered directionality.  Not surprisingly, he was also the only one who didn't use the pictures to tell a story, but rather just labeled what he saw in each picture.  He jumped back and forth between right and left pages of the book and only attended to the pictures.  He paid no attention to the print.  My other two kindergarteners demonstrated knowledge of each of the skills I was assessing.  One of the students even made a serious attempt to read each word on the page, and he did a great job of it!

Now, I know which of my students are ready to move on, and which needs more work with simple, one lined texts and retelling stories after read alouds.  I highly recommend reading the Sulzby article (link above) and trying this assessment with emergent readers.

Happy reading!
Jacquie