Emerging Literacy
Emerging readers need to have understanding of the literacy elements. These readers need to have knowledge of what letters are and that letters make sounds. They also need to have knowledge that letter sounds form words in order to be a developing early reader. Children should and need to having phonemic and phonological awareness to become excellent readers. Phonological awareness consists of skills that typically develop gradually and sequentially through the late preschool period (What is Phonological Awareness?, 2013). They are developed with direct training and exposure. It is the teacher’s job as well as the parent’s job to help and aid in forming this awareness. This essay will explain what emerging literacy is, the
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critical elements which influence a child’s early reading and writing skill, and provide activities used to promote emerging literacy. Emerging Literacy: What is it? Emergent Literacy is a process involving the development of language and concepts, especially as they begin to be linked together (Introduction to Emergent Literacy for Children with Visual Impairments, 1991).
Research and theoretical development have altered how society views young children’s movement into literacy (What Is Emergent Literacy?, 1997). Literacy relates to both reading and writing; it suggests the simultaneous development and mutually effects reinforcing effects of these two aspects (What Is Emergent Literacy?, 1997). This development is seen as emerging from children’s oral language development and their initial different attempts at reading and …show more content…
writing. Critical Elements Most children enter school with a range of emerging literacy.
Children who have been introduced to storybook and complex oral language often learn to read and write much quicker. It is important for children to have knowledge of the critical elements which promote these early reading and writing skills (Effective Elements of Early Literacy, n.d.). These elements include: awareness of print, relationship of print to oral language, understanding the structure of texts, letter knowledge, ability to use decontextualized oral language, and phonological awareness. Awareness of print is critical because it is one of the first steps toward later reading and writing (Effective Elements of Early Literacy, n.d.). Awareness of print starts early in a child’s left because children begin noticing signs, symbols, and labels at a young age. Having a relationship of print to oral language is the second key to reading and writing because young children begin to learn the similarities of oral language and print (Effective Elements of Early Literacy, n.d.). Understanding the structure of text is the third key because certain structural elements, such as temporal markers, are features that remain consistent (Effective Elements of Early Literacy, n.d.). Letter knowledge is another critical element because one of the beginning reader’s biggest responsibilities is to figure out how our alphabetic language works (Wood & McLemore, 2001). Decontextualized language is important because it helps
children narrate stories. Lastly, phonological awareness is critical because a child’s level of understanding sound, words, rhyme, and syllables will predict their future reading success. Promoting Emerging Literacy The most important job of the elementary school is to teach children how to read and write. What is the best way to teach these critical elements of reading and writing? Many teachers use a “letter of the week” method for introducing alphabet letters to their students, but if a teacher does not involve print it become practicing letters in isolation (Effective Elements of Early Literacy, n.d.). Teachers should be sure to include print with the letter. Using letter games and word games that identify letters, sounds, and words promotes phonics. Developing a daily word work will promote what is needed for phonological awareness by including recognition of words in a sentence, sounds in words, rhyming, and counting syllables. During writing teachers can start from the beginning by building sentence already made and looking at parts of a sentence. Once students become familiar with this concept, teachers can begin providing short prompts for student to elaborate on. Conclusion Early emerging literacy learners need to have understanding of the literacy elements. These elements hold the key to success in reading and writing. Teaching these elements correctly and in a way that promotes success in reading and writing is crucial. The level of understanding sound, words, rhyme, and syllables will predict a child’s future reading success when he or she leaves kindergarten. In this essay emerging literacy was defined, the critical elements which influence a child’s early reading and writing skill, and provided helpful activities used to promote emerging literacy. Emerging literacy starts at a young age, but if parents fail to do so; early childhood teachers must pick up the slack.
Deborah Brandt (1998) wrote “Sponsors of Literacy”, a journal where she explained her findings of the research she has done on how different people across the nation learned to read and write, born between 1900, and 1980 (p. 167). She interviewed many people that had varying forms of their literacy skills, whether it was from being poor, being rich, or just being in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
Phonemic Awareness and Alphabetic Principle in addition to Phonics and Decoding Skills provide students with early skills of understanding letters and words in order to build their reading and writing skills. Students will need to recognize how letters make a sound in order to form a word. While each word has a different meaning to be to format sentences. While reading strategies for Reading Assessment and Instruction, I was able to find three strategies for Phonemic Awareness and three strategies for Alphabetic Principles which will provide advantage for the student in my research and classroom settings.
Six principles for early reading instruction by Bonnie Grossen will be strongly enforced. It includes Phonemic awareness, each letter-Phonemic relationship explicitly, high regular letter-sound relationship systematically, showing exactly how to sound out words, connected decodable text to practice the letter phonemic relationships and using interesting stories to develop language comprehension. Double deficit hypothesis which focuses on phonological awareness and rapid naming speed.
Support from parents has proven to be of extreme importance in the literacy success of a child. This often begins with the simple ritual of “bedtime stories” in the home. Studies show that children who are read to as infants perform better in literacy later in life. From a young age, children begin to understand the workings of the written word if they are exposed to it frequently. Babies who are nowhere near having the mental capacity to read and comprehend a book are still able to “follow along” when their parents or caregivers read to them. These children understand that each segment of writing represents a word and they are even able to recognize when a text is upside-down because they are accustomed to the appearance of writing. This puts the child significantly ahead when the time comes to learn to read.
Finding a definition of literacy is not as easy as it sounds. The Webster definition says that to be literate is to be” able to read and write.” But to some researchers, this definition is too simplistic, leading to multiple models of literacy. Most Americans adhere to the autonomous model, which falls closest to the standard, dictionary definition. Believers in this form say that literacy is a cognitive activity that students learn like any other basic skill. It has a set of proficiencies that one must master in order to be capable of decoding and encoding text (Alvermann, 2009; SIL International, 1999). A competing theory is the ideological model, which claims literacy is intrinsically linked to culture, and therefore what constitutes a “literate” individual is ever-changing. Society is the largest influence on literacy, according to this thought, and it is affected by politics, religion, philosophy and more (Alvermann, 2009; SIL International, 1999). These two are just the tip of the iceberg. For example, some studies recognize “literacy as competence,” which is a “measure of competence to do a given task or work in a given field,” (SIL International, 1999) such as being computer literate. Although more researchers are recognizing and exploring multiple literacies, the one that most influences American schools is the autonomous, cognitive model – the ability to read and write. For many, it seems a simple task, but millions of adolescents are struggling or reluctant readers, and there are many reasons why young readers have difficulty with reading. XXXXXX------NEED HELP WITH THESIS STATEMENT HERE PLEASE—(This paper will focus on the effects of low reading skills, some of the possible causes of reluctant and struggling readership...
They have begun to develop sound-symbol understanding to speak the written words (Reading map of development, 2013), this is demonstrated by their ability to point at the word they are reading. The child is beginning to understand the book and its meaning, however fluency is not yet developed and several semantic mistakes were made. They display a good understanding of a graphonic cue and can do this mostly without prompt from the parent. Visual/pictorial cue can be achieved with prompt from the parent, the child is beginning to gain an understanding of how the pictures can match the text and this with more prompting should become an automatic cue. Vocabulary is still limited however it is expanding through their continued reading (Reading map of development, 2013). They know and understand that books are read from left to right and top to bottom. They also know how to ask for assistance when they get stuck on difficult
Reading is a complex process that’s difficult to explain linearly. A student’s reading capabilities begin development long before entering the school setting and largely start with exposure (Solley, 2014). The first remnants of what children are able to do in terms of reading are built from their parents and other people and object around them as they’re read to, spoken to, and taken from place to place to see new things (Solley, 2014). As kids are exposed to more and more their noises quickly turn into intentional comprehensible messages and their scribbling begins to take the form of legible text as they attempt to mimic the language(s) they’re exposed to daily.
Phonological awareness (PA) involves a broad range of skills; This includes being able to identify and manipulate units of language, breaking (separating) words down into syllables and phonemes and being aware of rhymes and onset and rime units. An individual with knowledge of the phonological structure of words is considered phonologically aware. A relationship has been formed between Phonological awareness and literacy which has subsequently resulted in Phonological awareness tasks and interventions.This relationship in particular is seen to develop during early childhood and onwards (Lundberg, Olofsson & Wall 1980). The link between PA and reading is seen to be stronger during these years also (Engen & Holen 2002). As a result Phonological awareness assessments are currently viewed as both a weighted and trusted predictor of a child's reading and spelling and ability.
Literacy is most commonly understood as reading and writing. But before children can read and write, they need to learn about sound, words, language, books and stories (Raising Children, 2015). Children begin to develop and gain knowledge quite differently and with support and developmentally appropriate learning skills children will also come to understand the connection between letters and sounds. Literacy development or early literacy is the most essential in the first three years of life as it the earliest experience children have with language, sound and the positive interactions between child and adult. Vygotsky (1978) believed in how children developed, and the important role of adults in leading child’s early development. The interactions
Literacy is defined as “the ability to use available symbol systems that are fundamental to learning and teaching for the purposes of comprehending and composing, for the purposes of making and communicating meaning and knowledge” (Stock, 2012), and it is one of the most essential skills that an early year student will learn. Literacy serves to provide the building blocks for the continued knowledge acquisition and general education of individuals of all ages; by working to understand and identify how and why literacy is taught using the structured literacy block format in Australian schools, and in identifying the benefits of utilizing this type of tool for teaching literacy in student’s early years, it will be possible to gain a better understanding of the organization, planning, and teaching approaches that are used in a literacy block approach. A sample standard literacy block will be provided, offering the means of understanding the applications of the tool, which will serve to further stress the necessity of this tool’s usage.
The study, “Joint Storybook Reading and Joint Writing Interventions Among Low SES Preschoolers: Differential Contributions to Early Literacy” (2004), was conducted to measure and compare the efficacy of a joint book reading program with the efficacy of a joint writing program in children from low SES backgrounds. The two programs were implemented to target the skills of storybook reading and orthographic skills, respectively. In the article, the benefits of storybook reading are described as encouraging the child to obtain general knowledge from reading, develop the ability to generalize his or her findings from reading, and to learn the art and proper habits of writing. Results indicated that children in both programs performed significantly better on orthographic skills compared to the control group; however, children in the joint writing program performed significantly better than children in the joint reading program on the measures of letter awareness, orthographic and letter knowledge, word writing, and phonological awareness. The authors indicate that a joint writing program, according to its benefits in children from low SES backgrounds, should be implemented in addition to a joint reading program to promote literacy in children. Since this study utilized well-designed, randomized control trials, it contains Level II evidence.
According to Bursuck & Damer (2011) phonemes are “the smallest individual sounds in words spoken.” Phonemic awareness is the “ability to hear the phonemes and manipulate the sounds” (p. 41). Phonemic awareness is essential because without the ability students are not able to manipulate the sounds. According to the National Institute for Literacy (2007), “students with poor phonics skills prevent themselves from reading grade-level text and are unable to build their vocabulary” (p.5) Agreeing with the importance of phonemic awareness, Shapiro and Solity attempted to use whole class instruction to improve students’ phonological awareness. The intervention showed that whole class instruction assisted not only the students with poor phonemic awareness, but also on-level developing readers.
As a teacher, you need to encourage all attempts at reading, writing, speaking, and allowing children to experience the different functions and use of literacy activity (The Access Center, n.d.). Moreover, it is crucial for educators to understand phonological awareness and phonics; know what constitutes good children’s literature and how to use it; know children who need additional assistance with beginning reading and writing (Cunningham et al, 2004 as cited in McLachlan et al, 2013, p. 112). Educators also need to plan effective activities to assist children experience reading aloud, listening to other children read aloud, listening to tape recordings, and videotapes so children have opportunities to integrate and extend their literacy knowledge (The Access Center, n.d.). Morrow (1990 as cited in The Access Center, n.d.) notes that classroom with greater teacher facilitation promote literacy behaviours, so it is educators’ role to provide literacy rich
To allow the children to have opportunities to develop their emergent literacy knowledge while spending time in the writing centre, the educator could add literacy related materials such as different writing materials and different things for the children to write on (Fellowes and Oakley, 2011). To support emergent literacy in this centre the educator could include literacy related materials such as:
Overall, these four readings have shown important strategies and ideas that are useful to a child when learning Literacy. We use literacy in everyday life, it is not just learnt a classroom environment. It is important that teachers keep working with their students towards developing in their Literacy. These strategies are helpful and can be used in classrooms to better student’s skills with communicating with others, and it gives them a chance to express themselves. These way students also develop in their vocabulary, and the child can now make meaning of what they are learning.