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Principles of early childhood education
Early childhood education reflective overview statement
Principles of early childhood education
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Whole-language instruction intertwines all areas of reading and writing to teach literacy. This approach follows the idea that children develop literacy by listening and observing language all around them, as well as using language in meaningful ways. A strength of this approach is that the topics that are taught are taught organically, and in context. Children are viewing how experts use language, and will begin to mimic this language. A weakness of this approach is that some students may not be able to pick up on important features of language without breaking it down into steps. Phonological approaches teach literacy through a set of sequential skills. This method is strong in teaching letter-sound relationships, which is a crucial skill
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.
Whole language is considered a "top down" approach where the reader constructs a personal meaning for a text based on using their prior knowledge to interpret the meaning of what they are reading. Teachers are expected to provide a literacy rich environment for their students and to combine speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Whole language teachers emphasize the meaning of texts over the sounds of letters, and phonics instruction becomes just one component of the whole language classroom. Problems associated with whole language include a lack of structure that has been traditionally supplied by the scope and sequence, lessons and activities, and extensive graded literature found in basal readers. Whole language puts a heavy burden on teachers to develop their own curriculum.
The FLaRE (Florida Literacy and Reading Excellence) Center has published a professional paper entitled “Phonemic Awareness” of which I will be presenting a critical review. Phonemic awareness is one of the five essential components of reading identified by the National reading Panel (Learning Point Associates, 2004). Phonemic awareness can be defined as a person’s understanding that each word we speak is comprised of individual sounds called phonemes and that these sounds can be blended to form different words (Learning Point Associates, 2004). The article was intended to give a synopsis of phonemic awareness and the vital role it plays in a literacy program. I found the article to be very clear and concise presenting valuable tactics that can be applied in the classroom.
This activity suits the child’s current stage of oral development will interest them and aid in them progressing in their oral development. Children at this stage of development enjoy listening to stories which is good not only for their receptive skills, but also for their expressive language (Fellows and Oakley, 2014), in all four key components of spoken language. It helps with phonemes by getting the child to focus on the phonological patterns throughout the text (Fellows and Oakley, 214). Syntax knowledge allows them to observe the sentence structure and grammar in the book which allows them to develop a stronger awareness of the syntax. Visual aids in storybooks can aid in the child in the understanding of semantics (Fellows and Oakley’s), as the story is read aloud their receptive skills hear those more difficult words, when paired with a visual cue such as a picture in the book the child understands better and thus they are able to gain a better understanding of how to speak these difficult words. A better understanding of pragmatics can also be gained from storybooks as they understand how people communicate in society such as greetings and asking for things (Fellows and Oakley,
The first few years of elementary school are crucial for students to build these skills which contribute to stronger reading and writing. The article which I found difficult to gain information to implement in my classroom was “The Relationship Between Phonological Awareness and Reading: Implications for the Assessment of Phonological Awareness” written by Hogan, Catts, and Little. This article described a study based on how phonological assessment could predict the reading level of students in early school grades. The study administered assessments to kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade students on phonological awareness, letter identification, word reading, and phonetic decoding. The results of the study showed phonological awareness in kindergarten predicted word reading in second grade, the level of word reading in second grade then predicated the phonological awareness skills in fourth grade. Although this study was interesting and provided valuable information on phonological awareness, I cannot see myself using any of this information within my high school classroom. There is a huge gap between elementary school students and high school student’s development level. Once I have my own classroom and begin to educate student in these area I may find a connection or correlation, however, at this point in time I do
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.
Phonological awareness and phonics are closely connected in teaching young children, firstly we need to understand what phonics is. Phonics is a method of the teaching smallest unit of sound in the English language, not only repressed by one letter but also between patterns and sound-letter relationship. Phonics is the sound that
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.
Mrs. Hamm discussed that she actually uses three different programs to help teach language and literacy to her students. The first program, which is actually her favorite of the three programs, is called “Read Aloud Library”, the second program is called “Language for Learning” and the third program is called “Reading Mastery”. Mrs. Hamm discussed the programs as being very helpful tools in helping children develop their reading skills. Mrs. Hamm integrates literacy in her classroom in many different ways. In the different programs, the students read one book together in which they work on for the week by breaking down the chapters so that children can retell the story and learn th...
Every child deserves a positive, safe, nurturing, and stimulating learning environment where they will grow academically, socially, emotionally, and physically. My role as an educator is to provide my students with this type of environment as well as an education that will help them succeed academically and become life long learners. It is the responsibility of a literacy educator to provide students with this type of environment, but also to provide instruction that will help students become successful readers and writers. There are numerous programs and philosophies about literacy and reading. Through years of experience and research, one begins to develop their own creative approach on teaching these skills. After looking at different programs and seeing the positive and negatives of each, an integrated and balanced approach of literacy seems to be the best way to teach the differing needs of each student.
These skills are an important core separating normal and disabled readers. According to Hill (2006, p.134), phonemic awareness is a skill that focus’ on the small units of sound that affect meaning in words. For example, the following phoneme has three syllables, /c/, /a/ and /n/. These letters make three different small units of sound that can impact the meaning of words. Seely Flint, Kitson and Lowe (2014, p. 191), note that even the Australian Curriculum recognises the importance of phonemic awareness in the Foundation year, due to the ‘sound and knowledge’ sub-strand. This sub strand recognises syllables, rhymes and sound (phonemes) in spoken language. Rich discussions about topics of interest to children as well as putting attention to the sounds of language can help encourage phonemic awareness as well as improve students vocabulary and comprehension development. It is important to make awareness of phonemes engaging and interesting in preschool and in the early years so children can learn these skills early and become successful
This article explores the benefits of teaching phonics to children and how important it is in several areas. Not only does phonics help with reading, but it also improves skills in word identification, fluency and comprehension, silent and oral reading, and spelling. The article goes into detail on how phonics is crucial as a building block of reading and how the benefits of phonics are related. Without phonics and the connection between letters and sounds, reading cannot happen. Letters need to be taught in relation to their sounds with consideration that many letters have different sounds with certain words. The article mentions how meaningful phonics is and claims “Phonics gives meaning to the medium, the print, while the meanings of the words and the syntax give meaning to the message.” Phonics helps students pronounce and understand new words through their knowledge of letter combinations and sounds. This knowledge allows students the opportunity for problem solving and discovering things independently. The overall goal of teaching phonics is to help readers use their prior knowledge to determine new words for
Much research has been conducted into the most effective method for teaching children a key aspect of developing early literacy skills; that is phonics. A brief explanation in regards to its components and importance in reading and writing development will be given. Considering it is a skill that must be taught, methods which support effective phonic development will also be examined. Definitions, contradictions, similarities and the resulting confusion from the lack of conformity to a singular understanding of the outlines of each method will be addressed. The one key element that is agreed upon by many, that phonics should be taught explicitly and systematically, will also be discussed. This will then lead to analysing the two main methods,
In this course we study both phonetics and phonology. Phonetics to improve the way we should spell the sounds, and in order to spell the correct sounds we should learn how to listen accurately. It’s also known as the study of language which contains 44 sounds and 26 letters. Phonology is to study the rules for combining phonemes and what happened due to this combination. Phonetics contains consonant, vowels & diphthongs. It’s also used in language and linguistics rules that specify how the phonemes are organized into syllables, words, and sentences to