1 Your role is to assist in helping to develop children's reading skills.
* It is likely that you are working in a setting delivering the National Curriculum or its equivalent, so you will need to be aware of the requirements of Key Stage 1. Look at a copy of the National Literacy Strategy, which your setting will have. Describe to your assessor the ways that the strategy is implemented in your setting.
* Your assessor can watch you working with children reading books from a reading scheme. Ensure that you demonstrate your ability to help both skilled and less skilled readers. Show your assessor how you record the children's progress.
* Do a reading audit by identifying all the opportunities for children to read in your setting.
2 Encourage children to sit in the right position, to look at the pictures and context and to gain confidence in their ability to read.
* Help children link cues, such as pictures, with words to develop their reading skills. Make a set of matching word and picture cards and use them to play a game with the children.
3 To make sense of reading and writing, children need comprehension skills.
* Tell a story and ask the children to draw a picture about it. Then. using the picture as a visual aid, ask the children to retell the story.
* Use appropriate terms like fiction and non-fiction, and identify features of books such as title, contents, author and illustrator's name, and index.
4 Use a variety of materials and information sources to aid children's comprehension.
* Write a short description of each type of comprehension resource in your setting, such as different kinds of books, CD-Roms, recipe cards and examples of different languages.
5 There are many ways to assess a child's comprehension skills.
* Give the children a set of four or six cards that tell a story. Ask the children to sequence the cards and tell the story.
6 Supporting the development of children's writing skills should be done within the requirements of the curriculum.
* Encourage children to make their own book. Start by identifying the cover, title and author's (child's) name. Encourage the children to write their own story using simple sentences and grammatical conventions according to the child's level of development. Illustrations can be added.
* Provide writing implements in the imaginative play area and encourage children to make appropriate lists such as a shopping list in the home corner, customers'names in the nursery shop or holiday destinations in a travel agent's.
* Show your assessor how you check, clean, and safely store specialist equipment. Describe how, and to whom, you report any defects.
7 Carry out instructions agreed with the teacher before the session.
Describe to your assessor how the tasks that are set build on children's previous experience.
* Encourage the children to write out the recipe before a cookery session, or ask the children to read out a printed recipe to the rest of the group.
8 You need to be familiar with letter formation, spacing, punctuation and the other mechanics of writing.
* Encourage the children to write a postcard home from an imaginary holiday destination.
9 Demonstrate your practice by encouraging children's writing skills, developing their confidence and maintaining their interest.
* Offer a variety of writing materials, pens, pencils, wax crayons, felt tips, and different coloured and textured paper.
* Ask children to label drawings, diagrams and displays, like growing beans, parts of the body and food on a plate.
10 Top Tip! 'A well chosen visual aid helps to maintain attention levels during storytelling,' says Pauline MacDonald, NVQ3 qualified teaching assistant at Holy Trinity Primary School, Burton-on-Trent.
This is the last in our current series. A series on the new Accreditation of Prior Experience and Learning (APEL) award, Level 3 Certificate in Work with Children (Early Years and Playwork), will begin in January.
