Children's Emergent Literacy Development

A literacy rich environment is essential for any emerging reader. Emerging literacy reflects "children's natural growth and awareness of print in the environment" (Genisio & Drecktrah, 1999, p. 227) and therefore the environment has to contain suffient enough manifestations of this print and other literacy material presented in an attractive way without overwhelming the child. "Clearly, literacy-rich environments are of value. They allow children to practice literacy behaviours and language in ways that make sense to them" (Roskos & Neuman, 1994, p. 264).

Multnomah County had a survey done for kindergarten teachers. The results suggested that 19.4% of their students were not headed toward literacy success, due to a lack of necessary language and pre-reading skills. There is a 90% probability of a child that is a poor reader in first grade, still being a poor reader three years later, in fourth grade (http://www.co.marion.or.us). As Early Childhood Educators, we must help our students.

Learning to read is beginning to develop earlier in elementary grades. Students are expected to be emergent readers by the time he or she leaves kindergarten and enters first grade. If a child is not, he or she is labeled as being behind. According to Hughes (2007) emergent readers are using early reading strategies in consistently, read easy patterned text, retell text with simple storyline, and respond to text at a literal level. Hughes (2007) also says literacy develops in young children through play, daily conversation and interactions with text of all kinds. Many children come with emergent literacy skills; can recognize signs and labels, scribble letters, retell stories by pointing at pictures and talking about them, and some have varying degrees of phonemic and phonological awareness. This essay will define and explain implication for each theory in learning to read.

The single most significant factor influencing a child’s early educational success and achievement is an introduction to books and being read to at home prior to beginning school. Parents must be literate to help their children succeed.

Young children imitate what they see adults do in society. On such thing is reading. Children will take up any form of literature and pretend that they are reading. To enhance and cater for this behaviour parents and teachers can:

For this assignment I’ll be conducting a practicum observation, and do a Web search for additional literacy strategies that can encourage literacy growth.

This literature review is my work in progress for my master`s final project at Washington State University. My chair Dr.Tom Salsbury recommended some of the articles that I included in this literature review. The key words are engagement, motivation, English language Learners, reading, struggling readers, parent involvement, home literacy, literacies, home-school connections, and funds of knowledge.

Senechal (1996) study show that students’ achievement level in reading improved when they had early exposure to storybook and early literacy in the home (Senechal, 1996). This study examined whether storybook, reading and the amount of teaching in reading and writing skills, provided by parents in the home would enhance the language skills and

Reading is a skill often taken for granted but it is essential in order to progress in life. For a child being able to read well helps them learn new things, give ideas and enables use of imagination. National literacy trust (2015) suggests that children’s early language skills can have a major impact on a child’s development of literacy skills. Five-year olds with poor language and literacy have a higher risk of underachieving at age seven and beyond. Reading skills encourage more opportunities in life and it can affect a child’s wellbeing if they do not achieve this effectively (Finnegan,2015).

Research has consistently shown that that reading books to children has a positive effect on literacy outcomes in the following ways:

Many students also have limited access to literacy skills at home, poor vocabularies, poor oral fluency, and often come from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Yesil-Dagli, 2011). In the past there was not a lot of emphasis on the pre-kindergarten years. Today, experts recognize the first five years of a child’s life as a time for enormous growth of linguistic, conceptual, and social competence (Pikulski, 2005). Yesli-Dagil (2011) found that the majority of research on literacy skills has been done with non-English language student populations or populations that had English language learners involved but there was no differentiation between the two groups. This research was then generalized to the English language student population, not taking into account that they may learn differently.

In an article pertaining to literary activities performed at home and the effect on early literacy skills researchers collected data from over sixty children and their parents. The children’s households all varied in terms of socioeconomic status. The researchers were interested in determining if there was a significant relationship between the reading to children in the home, coaching the children when reading at home and the overall home literacy activities taking place in the home. The researchers also wanted to determine if after considering the children’s cognitive ability and the parents level of education if the literacy activities taking place in the home were contributing to the several literacy areas (letter sounds and names, receptive vocabulary, phonological sensitivity). Finally, the researchers wanted to determine if reading comprehension and spelling in the first and second grade was a prediction from the “outside-in” and “inside-out” skills acquired in kindergarten. The overall findings in this study proved that the literacy activities

Emergent literacy is used to describe how a young child interacts with books and when reading and writing, even though they could not read or write in the usual sense of way. Emergent literacy is a process that takes place over the timeframe from birth until a child can read and write in what we think to be a standard sense. The key to term literacy is the consistency of all parts of language: speaking, listening, reading, writing, and viewing. Some people believe that, up until a child starts school he/she will first learn to read and then learn to write. The process to learning to read and write has to start early in a child's life. Right away they have contact with different types of communication from the start.

By the mid-1980s emergent reading/literacy became accepted among researchers, early educators, and reading teachers. Emergent literacy appeared as an ERIC descriptor and was recognized as a justifiable area of work in the conventions of the National Association for the Education of the Young Children, the National Reading Conference, the International Reading Association, and other professional organizations (Teale, 1995). According to Teale, the emergent literacy model for preschool reading instruction had far-reaching implications. Daily interactions between parents or other caregivers and children in the home environment were emphasized. The shift to an emergent literacy perspective in the preschool and pre-kindergarten environments meant that reading needed to be taught in those settings (Teale, 1995; Roberts, Jurgens, Burchinal, 2005). In other words, adults in those environments must be considered as the child

Laramie county is home to 6,727 children under the age of five. These children are the future of an everchanging world, it is essential that they have access to age appropriate books in their homes. The correlation between poverty and illiteracy is extremely profound. Early childhood learning shapes the foundation for future education, and children are falling behind by being under exposed, and are not prepared for kindergarten. Parents are failing to facilitate early learning, and using television as a replacement. The need for raising awareness surrounding the importance of early childhood literacy and access to age appropriate reading material for all children under the age of five that implements a lifelong foundation for a healthy loving relationship with literacy is evident.