BurbankJournal.com
Emergent Literacy
How Teachers Can Use its
Concepts to Equip Students to Read
When I was a youngster, my
parents were excited about sending their child to school for the first time because they
thought that school was the place that children first learned to read, write and do
arithmetic. Most small towns in Rhode Island couldn't afford a kindergarten; so first
grade was a really big thing. Children had to prepare to learn to read, and begin to read
all in one year. It's too bad that concepts about "emergent literacy" didn't
emerge for another thirty-plus years. Just think about it: no television or GameBoys, and
with transportation and weather often problematic, what possibilities there were for
children, especially those from large families, to get a running start on the oral to
literate continuum! Too bad so many opportunities were often missed.
Because concepts about emergent literacy have been researched and explained,
nowadays, one might think that there should be no excuse for parents to miss the
opportunity to give their children a literacy head start. From a child's perspective,
listening to stories being read aloud to them, focusing on objects, recognizing sounds,
noticing signs and other environmental print, experimenting with crayons, markers,
finger-paints and pencils, all take place along a continuum starting at a very early age.
Children start developing literacy from their interactions with adults, their peers and
their environment. For example, children can notice environmental print, dictate stories
for an adult to record, invent words and rhymes, and reread predictable books, long before
they are able to think about the rules of language. From all these early experiences,
before learning to read and write, children gain an understanding of the communicative
purpose of print. In fact, exposure to a print-rich environment provides many
opportunities for children to develop their early literacy experiences, and better
prepares them to become readers and writers.
Many children in their pre-school years do acquire a rich and varied background of
experiences that help them develop concepts necessary for reading. However, many other
children have home experiences that are not supportive of school literacy. These children
depend more on school for their academic success, and they must acquire an understanding
about the concepts and purposes of print in order to become skilled readers. Because
individual children, especially those in a diverse urban environment, often have such
unique needs, it is not always possible for teachers to meet each child's unique needs all
the time, every day. What teachers can do, however, is to create a literate school
environment and provide direct instruction in order to help equip their students to read.
Specific Things Teachers Can Do
Three specific strategies are Read Aloud, Words On Walls and Environmental Print. A
fourth strategy, Home School Partnerships, uses the first three. Finally, a list of other
strategies is provided for teacher consideration
Read aloud. Listening to the teacher read literature aloud to them is
a practice that has survived since I was in elementary school. One of my favorite grade
school teachers read from a chapter book out loud to us every day. His reading had
feeling. We heard his pitch rise and fall, his loudness varied according to what he wanted
to stress, and he paused just at the right times to maintain attention, and sometimes to
provide suspense. Yes, we were entertained, but at the same time we were exposed to
different types of literature, learned new words, and had time to think about the meaning
of what was being read without having to do the work of reading it ourselves. At the same
time, we acquired interesting material for follow-on class grand conversations. Emergent
readers can be motivated to learn when they have a teacher who enjoys reading to them and
is good at it
Words On Walls. Emerging readers need to be able to recognize their
own written names and the written names of their peers, as well as learn certain
high-frequency words. Teachers can help their students acquire these skills by putting
these names and words on the wall and other surfaces. The names of the students can go up
right away, but the high-frequency words can be introduced at about two a week, until the
24 most common can be recognized. Once the students have the basic 24 words down, it is a
good idea to continue learning sight words. It can be frustrating and embarrassing for
students to stumble on simple words. On the other hand, students develop a sense of
competence when they can quickly and accurately recognize words, even while they are
emergent readers
In addition to specific word walls, my observation is that children benefit from seeing
other words on the walls and other surfaces of their classroom. These words can be next to
student art, pictures, headings cut from magazines, and big-letter labeling of equipment
such as "Computer", "Television", and "Tape Recorder"
Environmental print. Print already exists in the environment that
students experience everyday. Teachers can walk their students around the school campus
and help their students read words that are already there. Teachers can help their
students notice off-campus print too, such as advertising on public busses as they may
drive by. Schools, in my opinion, sometimes do not do enough to create environmental
print. I had the opportunity to work for the LA Olympics for a couple of years, and one
thing that we did was to put signage throughout the various venues and the city. The
athletes and visitors were certainly not emergent readers, but many were not English
language literate. The environmental print that we created helped our guests get where
they had to go, learn to read enough helpful English words to survive, and take back with
them a good feeling about their hosts. Schools could be better hosts to their children by
naming and labeling things in their own campus environment. "Room 29" may also
become "Martin Luther King's Room". The walkway between Building 1 and 2 could
become "American Heroes Way". Emergent readers could benefit from a print rich
campus environment in many ways. Not only would they be exposed to additional
informational content purposes of print across domains, children would benefit from our
making the extra effort to treat them like the valued clients that they are
Home-School Partnerships. Teachers must take the lead in building
home-school partnerships to help emergent readers. The above three activities are
especially important because they can be done outside of school, and the parents, assuming
that they can read, need very little training in order to be effective. Many parents read
to their infant children, and by the time the child enters kindergarten, the child is
already a beginning reader. But for those parents who did not read a lot to their
children, it is rarely too late to start. The same is certainly true of word walls; every
home, no matter how small, could have one. Environmental print learning opportunities are
enormous; all that it takes is for parents to spend quality time with their children, and
start pointing out words on signage that is already there. Teachers can help by sending
information and instructions home with the children (homework for the parents), and
following-up to see that it is happening
More things that teachers can do
This section is in the form of an annotated list, and includes more helpful things that
teachers can do prepare their students to become beginning readers
- Vary the class format to provide one-to-one, whole class, small-group and paired
instruction
- Provide opportunities for students to interact with one another, to use oral language,
and to develop pragmatic skills with peers and adults in a variety of situations
- Allow the quicker students to help the struggling students. The teacher must provide
oversight, and step-in when needed
- Provide opportunities for students to practice their literacy
- Celebrate student accomplishments, and publish those accomplishments in print where all
can see
- Read aloud using big books, so that children can see the illustrations and the words as
the teacher reads to them
- Read using predictable books with lots of repetition so that children can participate by
rereading what they have heard
- Have the children construct a whole-class or group collaborative book.
- Use sign-in sheets and have students read the entries made by other students.
- Have the children make storyboards for the books read to them.
- Carry out many types of reading experiences, including shared reading, guided reading,
morning message and news.
- Make high quality literature readily available in the classroom, and use that literature
to provide explicit instruction and skill development.
- Children should get used to writing, even if it starts out as illustrations. Students
will learn to label their drawings with letters and words.
- Develop phonological awareness using real and invented words, and read aloud books with
beat and rhyme.
- Teach directional concepts for the printed page.
- Teach letter-word concepts using, for example, collaborative alphabet list. Students can
write the letters of the alphabet and brainstorm to find words that start with each
letter.
- Use the Language Experience Approach. This approach can be used as follow-up to any
classroom experience. I have seen it used as follow-on to recess activities. Children
described what happened in the play-yard, the teacher wrote it down on butcher-block
paper, and the children then added small illustrations.
Learning to read is needed for academic success in every domain. Teachers can help
emergent readers in many ways. The overall goal is learning to read for the meaning that
is found in print. The connections that children can make between print and meaning help
motivate them to read more and enjoy themselves as they go.
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