Early Emergent Readers

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.

Reading: Locates, understands, and interprets written information in prose and documents--including manuals, graphs, and schedules--to perform tasks; learns from text by determining the main idea or essential message; identifies relevant details, facts and specifications; infers or locates the meaning of unknown or technical vocabulary; and judges the accuracy, appropriateness, style, and plausibility of reports, proposals, or theories of other writers.( 134 USDOL)

For some people reading can be a difficult experience. For me it became difficult at the age of five years old. I really wasn’t an educational kid I was more of a kid that like to play with my toys and four brothers, whenever they came home from school. As I grew up reading became a little more difficult for me to master, at times in my middle school my teacher Mr.G would test us on how well and skilled we were at reading. Every day when it was time for him to test me I would get nervous and started to stubble on words and fail my test. By the time I was in high school I learned how to take my time and read, which has help me to progress my reading skills over the years.

It has been shown that if students start at an early age to learn to read and write their learning in all content areas will improve. It is for this reason it is important for secondary teachers to understand early reading acquisition as to incorporate those reading skills in lesson to accommodate students with reading deficiencies. Educators can understand the building blocks of how a student learns and develops into a successful reader in order to help them develop their reading skills. If teachers understand reading acquisition they can better assess their students’ reading level. As such, the role of professional judgement in understanding the selection of reading or writing material is to know their students reading needs and select materials

The Simple View of Reading (SVoR) model suggests that children must have language comprehension and word recognition skills to be proficient readers, Medwell et al (2014). Jim Rose’s report (2006, p. 40) outlined the Simple View of Reading as a useful framework, which would make explicit to teachers what they need to teach about word recognition and language comprehension (see appendix 1). Before the Rose report, reading was defined as decoding black marks, Graham and Kelly (2012). After this the searchlights model suggested that phonics, grammatical knowledge, reading comprehension and graphic knowledge are equally useful tools when learning to read, Ward (2008). The Rose report’s Independent Review of the Teaching of Early reading reconstructed this model and created the SVoR. Rose (2006, p. 38) determines word recognition as a process which allows you to use “phonics to recognise words” and language comprehension as the means by which “word information, sentences and discourse are interpreted.” The SVoR suggests that, to become a fluent reader, the skills of language comprehension and word recognition are equally important and dependent on each other. Gough and Tummer first mentioned this model, as stated that “comprehension is not sufficient, for decoding is also necessary” Wyse et al (2013, p.

Anyone who would like to succeed in life or plan on making a lot of money knows that you have to know how to read. You have to know how to read to do everything,You are not going to make it in the real world if you don't know how to read. Reading can help you with a lot of things like whether it be financial issues, educational issues, or life in general.

Children are able to connect the visual of seeing letters on the page and the vocal sound of their parent as they are being read to. They also learn their colors, shapes, alphabet, numbers, and expand their vocabulary. Each of these skills will assist in reading comprehension and literacy.

* Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning about key events, ideas and information in texts that they listen to, view and read by drawing on growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features (ACELY1660), (ACARA, 2012). Learning to read is essentially learning to decode and understand the words/language written in the story and to construct meanings from those words (literacy) (Nicole & Roberts, 1993). The more language the children (and adults) hear and read the more developed their vocabulary will become (Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998, Nicole & Roberts, 1993, Anderson et al, 1985). Reading fluency is enhanced with an enlarged

Emergent literacy is important because the literacy development begins earlier than formal schooling. Phonological awareness, letter names, and letter-sound knowledge are essential for beginning reading instruction. Phonemic awareness is a strong predictor of success in the first two years of schooling. Additionally, letter knowledge is the first step to learn the alphabetic principle and one of the most important early reading skills. Several studies investigated Visual Phonics with preschoolers and revealed significant improvements during these fundamental early years.

Good readers integrate three cuing systems when they read, which include syntactics, semantics, and graphophonics. The ability to use context clues (semantic/syntactic cueing) is integral to developing strategies in becoming a proficient reader and students should have access to all three or a combination of these cueing systems.

Regardless of the fact that children start in the same spot when it comes to learning, every child is different therefore, there are possibilities to developmental delays. During one’s middle childhood period, cognitive processes, among many other factors are developing. Children encounter many hardships during this time. Learning to read is a major developmental challenge for many kids. According to an article regarding struggling readers, “learning to read is a challenge for almost 40% of kids” (Reading Rockets, 2015). As life progresses, so does a child’s development and how they manage to go through life day by day. The challenge of learning to read can definitely affect the adults present in a child’s life. Teachers and parents are two of the biggest roles in a child’s life that has to deal with this obstacle in development. A teacher needs his or her students to become well-rounded educated citizens. However, this period of time is definitely one of the hardest stages for teachers to be successful educating all of their students only because this is the time in the learner’s life where they are being taught many different new concepts required in life for them to

Literacy consists of a range of ways to understand and decode symbols for communication in a community (Barratt-Pugh & Rohl, 2000, p. 25). Emergent literacy is a term used to describe how young children interact with books, reading and writing (What is Emergent Literacy, 2006, p.1). Emerging literacy is an ongoing process and to ensure this process is successful children need to be stimulated through active engagement with books and writing opportunities.

Emergent literacy replaced the term reading readiness through the 1980s-1990s. Emergent literacy is based upon the notion that children learn literacy skills through print. Teale and Sulzby (1991) proposed that emergent literacy be recognized as a new model for conceptualizing young children 's written language development. Teale and Sulzby defined emergent literacy as "the reading and writing concepts, behaviors, and dispositions that precede and develop into conventional literacy" (Teale, 1995, p.107).

Reading helps in mental development and is known to stimulate the muscles of the eyes and it is also an activity that involves greater levels of concentration and adds to the conversational skills of the reader.

For a child who is just starting to learn to read, they need sufficient practice in reading a variety of different books to achieve fluency. Reading can be complex and has many different aspects (Burns,1999). It is suggested that children who have problems reading and writing at a young age will find it hard to catch up as they get older and will not reach their full potential as adults, many will withdraw from school or society and some becoming involved with crime (MacBlain,2014). 40 percent of children find learning to read a challenge but with early help, most reading problems can be prevented (Reading Rockets, n.d.).