EML302 Assessment 3

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Charles Sturt University *

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Jan 9, 2024

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EML302 Assessment Three Emergent Literacy Project Project Overview Neaum (2012, p. 139) identifies that young children often engage in pretend reading and writing in their play such as sharing books with adults, recognising signage, singing rhymes, and scribbling on a letter. These behaviours are a process of emergent literacy. Fellowes and Oakley (2019, p. 7) suggest that it is critical for children to have early literacy experiences as literacy learning is an ongoing process and reading and writing require preparation. Children’s literacy skills will be developed along with adults’ quality engagement. Therefore, I will offer this literacy experience for my focus children to practise oral language and concepts of prints during their play. I have four focus children named, Lea (five years old), Daisy (five years old), Norah (three years old) and Kayla (three years old). They are from bilingual backgrounds and English is not their first language. When the four children engaged in socio-dramatic play, they communicated in English. Leah who was more fluent in English than Daisy had no issue to take a role in their play, but Daisy often asked me how to interpret her Korean words in English or was reluctant to join in. I have an emergent literacy project which is a story book ‘Brown bear brown bear what do you see?’, a story retelling and an ice cream shop. My literacy project emphasises on building the children’s confidence of their oral language in English, awareness of alphabet letters and phonological awareness so that Leah and Daisy would be able to gain confidence of their language skills and prepare well for kindergarten. Learning Experience Analysis Story book The story book I have chosen is ‘Brown bear brown bear what do you see?’ by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. This book offers repetitive and rhythmic sentences so that the children can practise and memorize the pattern of sentences. The brightly coloured illustrations enhance children’s visual literacy (Fellowes & Oakley, 2019, p. 529). 1

Rationale Through this activity bilingual children will be able to develop their oral language skills and awareness of English letters. Literacy concepts The children will be able to recognise print that contains meaning (Neaum, 2012, P. 142). They will learn concepts about print which are book handling skills, left to right and top to bottom orientation, page turning, words, letters, sounds, sentences, and punctuation (Fellowes & Oakley, 2019, p. 210; Neaum, 2012, p. 143). Emergent literacy skills demonstrated by children According to Appendix 1, the children listened to the book reading whilst looking at illustrations and prints of the book then, they also actively recited the sentences. This process demonstrated the children’s emergent reading skills. The older children Daisy and Lea demonstrated phonological and alphabet letter awareness. Daisy identified the letter d by saying, “there is d for Daisy” (Appendix 1). Daisy demonstrated that she recognised capital D and lower-case d. Lea demonstrated that she recognized a few alphabet letters on each page by reading different letters on each page (Appendix 1). Educator’s role in extending the children’s learning Reading aloud to children provide many benefits for learning literacy skills such as concepts of prints, phonological awareness, phonics and meaning of text (Department of Education [DOE], 2023). Fellowes and Oakley (2019, pp. 291-295) suggest that an educator should read aloud by demonstrating how to read a book then gradually involve children in reading where possible. They also discuss that shared reading is an effective strategy for children to develop concepts of print. It is evident that the educator read aloud the book with the children, and she pointed out words and sentences on each page. She also encouraged them to guess the next sentence by showing an illustration of the next page (Appendix 1). The educator encouraged the children to recite the sentences and praised the children 2

when they recognised alphabet letters to provide positive motivation for engagement in prints. Experience One My first emergent literacy experience is story retelling of the story book, ‘Brown bear brown bear what do you see?’. Suggate et al (2013, as cited in Halim, 2022) states that oral story telling offers children many benefits to develop early literacy skills. When children sing and retell familiar rhymes and rhyming stories, they can learn many oral language skills such as phonemic awareness and sentence structures such as syntactic component (Ronson, 2016). For this story retelling experience, I offered the children props (Appendix 2, A) based off the original story book. The children looked at pictures and memorised the sentences related to the pictures. Rationale The children will be able to gain new vocabulary and be familiar with sentence structures in English. Literacy concepts Fellowes and Oakley (2019, p. 206) discuss that oral language experiences assist children to learn about the sound of English; therefore, the children can develop phonological and phonemic awareness such as understanding letter sounds and catching rhymes in words (Bayne, 2015). The children also can gain syntactic knowledge by memorising and reciting sentences from the book. They can learn about how to structure sentences, word order and intonation (Fellowes & Oakley, 2019, p. 206). Emergent literacy skills demonstrated by children According to appendix 1, the children retold the story from their memory whilst placing each animal picture on to the matching-coloured circle. Daisy picked up a brown bear picture and recited “brown bear brown bear what do you see?” she then placed it on the brown coloured circle. The children demonstrated their oral language skills by reciting 3

familiar text by memorising, retelling a story without a book, knowledge of new vocabulary and structure of sentences (Bayne, 2015). According to appendix 2, B and C, the children demonstrated their emergent writing skills. When I asked them to draw their favourite animal from the book, Norah and Kayla drew a circular shape and made scribbles. Bruce and Spratt (2011, p. 83) state that children’s drawing contains meaning, and it symbolises their ideas which develop into emergent writing. Lea and Daisy demonstrated more obvious emergent writing skills (A2, C). It was evident that their drawings were distinguished from their writings. They wrote recognisable alphabet letters such as purple and red. When they wrote the letters, they showed concepts of print such as left to right directionality and identifying the colour of the illustration (Fellowes & Oakley, 2019, p. 384). Educator’s role in extending the children’s learning Oral language, reading and writing skills are interrelated; therefore, an educator should read a variety of books for children to gain new vocabularies, syntactic structures, and new information to improve their oral language skills (Fellowes & Oakley, 2019, p. 206). As Ronson (2016) suggests that retelling stories without using a book is good practice for children to become a story writer. I encouraged the children to retell the story book by their memory whilst using props. When they could not make a full sentence, I demonstrated how to say or added words they missed to complete the sentence. After story retelling, the children moved to a drawing table as their interest had changed, therefore I suggested for them to draw their favourite animals out of the book characters. In this way the children practised their emergent writing skills, and their drawings and scribblings symbolised characters in the book (Bruce & Spratt, 2011, p. 84). Experience Two Recently my focus children often played ‘ice cream shop’ outside by usings pebbles and little toys as ice creams then they pretended to buy and sell the ice cream. To extend their interest I set out an ice cream shop menu, a signage, order sheets, pencils, telephones, toy ice creams and shopping baskets. Sociodramatic play enhances children’s oral language 4

skills by taking roles to discuss and communicate through play (Fellowes & Oakley, 2019, p. 111). Rationale The children will be able to learn how to communicate in English and engage in emergent writing through Ice cream shop play. Literacy concepts The children can gain concepts of print whilst reading an ice cream shop menu and a signage such as recognising environmental prints, identifying letters, words, numbers, and dollar signs. They engage in writing attempts such as writing lines, names, numbers when they wrote on an order sheet (Neaum, 2012, p. 145; Appendix 3, C, D). When they engage in different roles, they can communicate by asking and answering questions and they can negotiate, suggest, explain, and solve problems through their play (Bayne, 2015). Fellowes and Oakley (2019, p. 111) states that children can develop their phonologic, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics component of their oral language through socio-dramatic play. Emergent literacy skills demonstrated by children According to appendix 3, the children identified a word, chocolate ice cream by the picture and they read the number next to the picture. They said chocolate ice cream is three dollars. They demonstrated that they were engaged in prints, and they figured out the meaning of words by the picture. When they pretended to take an order by phone, Daisy and Lea copied alphabet letters from the menu then wrote words on an order sheet. Neaum (2012, p. 145) explains that Daisy attempted to write letter looking shapes and lines and these writings symbolise alphabet letters. Lea’s handwriting appeared to be more recognisable, and she could copy a few words from the menu. Lea and Daisy kept asking and answering questions to each other through their play. Educator’s role in extending the children’s learning The Early Years Learning Framework states that an educator should intentionally teach children through play by modelling, demonstrating, explaining, and problem solving to assist 5

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