Chapter 4 Class 3344

Chapter 4 Emerging into Literacy

Not to long ago, people believed that a child was ready to learn to read and write, by the time they turned 6 years old. We know now that children start the process much younger in preschool. Very young children notice signs, logos, and environmental print. This really hit home with me when I was driving with my three year old son the other day. He started naming off places we were passing, Home Depot, Mc Donald's, HEB, the Library. I smiled, knowing he couldn't read the signs, he was recognizing the buildings. The book states "the concept of literacy has been broadened to incorporate the cultural and social aspects of language learning, and children's experiences with and understanding of written language-both reading and writing-are included as part of emergent literacy."

Young children learn that reading and writing are used for a variety of purposes through experiences in their home and community. Just as my son recognized some of the places we shop frequently. Teachers help to demonstrate the purposes for reading and writing by experimenting in many ways.

• posting signs in the classroom
• making a list of classroom rules
• using literacy materials in dramatic play centers
• writing notes to students in the class
• exchanging messages with classmates
• reading and writing stories
• making posters about favorite books
• labeling classroom items
• drawing and writing journals
• writing morning messages
• recording questions and information on charts
• writing notes to parents
• reading and writing letters to pen pals
• reading and writing charts and maps

The Alphabet Principle is the one-to-one correspondence between the phonemes and graphemes, such that each letter consistently represents one sound. However English is not a purely phonetic language. Forming and identifying letters in handwriting are some of the basic information children pickup from the alphabet. The book recommends teachers to take three steps in encouraging alphabet learning.

• capitalizing on childrens interests
  
• talking about the role of letters in reading and writing
  
• teach routines and provide a variety of opportunities for alphabet learning

Two basic ways to begin teaching the alphabet are by using the childrens own names and environmental print. In my son's preschool class they are practicing recognizing the letters in their names and writing those letters. Every time he sees an A he yells our A for Anthony! An example of the effect of environmental print would be the story I told earlier, about the stores we passed. Another would be, when we stop at a stop sign he yells STOP, not because he can read the sign, but because he recognizes the shape and color. These strategies are important because it gives children a since of independence in identifying letters.

The book defines phonemic awareness as a child's basic understanding that speech is composed of a series of individual sounds, and it provides the foundation for phonics. Children learn phonemic awareness in play, such as singing songs and chanting rhymes. They also learn by listening to parents and teachers reading wordplay books to them. Children who have developed phonemic awareness can manipulate spoken language by, matching words by sound, isolating a sound in a word, blending individual sounds to form a word, substituting sounds in a word and segmenting a word into its constituent sounds.

There is a lot of controversy over our next topic, phonics. Phonics is defined as the set of relationships between phonology and orthography. There are five types of phonemic awareness activities, sound matching activities, sound-isolation activities, sound-blending activities, sound addition or subtraction activities and segmentation activities. The most important concepts of phonics that primary-grade students learn are: consonants, vowels, rimes and rhymes, and phonics generalizations. I believe phonics is important in teaching reading and writing.

As children emerge into reading they move through three different stages, emergent reading, beginning reading and fluent reading. There are many ways these stages can be taught, both by parents and by teachers. One of these ways is through shared reading. In shared reading teachers and children read books together. A teacher can accomplish a successful shared reading by, introducing the book, reading the book, responding to the book, rereading the book, continuing the process and by having the students read independently. Another way to help children emerge through reading is by reading predictable books. Predictable books are books that have repeated words or sentences, rhyme or have patterns. There are four characteristics of predictable books, repetition, cumulative sequence, rhyme and rhythm and sequential patterns. Books with large print and pictures, or big books are also a great aid in teaching reading. Along with reading buddies, older students that are paired with younger students, and traveling bags of books, which are books a teacher sends home for the parent to read to the child. I really like the last idea, my son and I read so many books, it is nice to have someone like a teacher to point out some that we may have missed.

Children follow many of the same steps as they enter into writing: emergent writing, beginning writing and fluent writing. When children are just starting to write it is basically their words written down. Interactive writing is used by teachers to model adult conventional writing. The six steps of interactive writing are: collecting the materials, setting a purpose, choosing a sentence to write, passing out supplies, writing the first sentence word by word, and by displaying the interactive writing.