Caitlyn Owings
ECE 322
Dr. Arneson
December 2, 2016
Designing Literacy Activities Early childhood professionals have understood the importance of language and literacy in young children for quite some time. Early literacy plays a key role in facilitating the kind of early learning experiences that corresponds with academic achievement, reduced grade retention, higher graduation rates and an increase in productivity during their adult life. (Elliott) A child’s journey towards literacy involves learning to speak, listen, read, understand, watch, draw, and write. The building blocks for constructing these skills begin at birth. Throughout this paper, I will explain the components of a well-designed literacy activity, why each piece is important, and how
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Is the activity that you chose developmentally appropriate? Implementing developmentally appropriate practices into classroom means meeting the students at the developmental stage they are currently at and enabling them to reach goals that are set for them. Is the child cognitively developed enough to know the desired material? As a teacher, am I providing the students with the materials and resources that they need as well as preparing them for the activity to the best of my abilities. For example, since we are talking about preschoolers, we aren’t going to assign them a reading and then ask them to give a 500-word written response because they are not capable of such tasks. Now, if a story was read to the class and they were asked to give a spoken response or even draw pictures explaining what they thought about the book or specific questions about the book, that would be appropriate. As a teacher, it is my full responsibility to make sure that I am exposing children to literature and language and much as I can in a proper manner. This will only benefit the students in the class and
Effective literacy instruction in early childhood is not a designated 15-minute portion of the daily schedule, rather instruction in which is embedded throughout the entire school day. Educators should not just provide literacy instruction during the obvious portions of the day. Using meaningful instructional materials during transitions and other unconventional portions of the day, allow for literacy instruction to be seamless throughout the day. For example, in a study conduced on providing literacy instruction professional development, teachers were encouraged to implemented literacy activities during snack time ((Lesley, 2004). In the past, snack time was commonly utilized as simply an instructional break for students to socialize with peers. Mixing literacy instruction with engaging songs about letters or table conversations around a book being read allow students to learn literacy skills in a fun
This understanding of literacy development is relatively new and complements the research that supports the crucial role that early experiences play in shaping the development of our brain.
Learning to read and write as a child is an experience that all can relate to. The average child learns to read and write at the early ages of three and four. Developing literacy at an early age is crucial to academic development as well as to performance in life. Early development can be just what a child needs to stimulate their minds, which in turn is assisting in the evolution of their future. The early and latter stages of development in a child’s literacy journey are the makings for their reading and writing skills. It also plays part in their analysis of obstacles as well as their developed or problematic literacy future. A child
The article, Literacy-Rich Environments, by The Access Center, informs the reader on the several ways to create a literacy rich environment for early childhood classrooms. Literacy development needs to be supported from the very beginning of a child’s life. Due to culture, some students will enter school without any prior knowledge of literacy (The Access Center, 2007). It is the duty of the educator to facilitate literacy development, and provide students with an environment full of opportunities to develop literacy skills. This article covers why creating a literacy-rich environment is important, what materials an educator needs in the classroom to create such an environment, and how the educator should arrange the classroom to enhance literacy development (The Access Center, 2007).
Literacy, whether it is reading, writing, or listening, can mean many different things to people. Each form can impact everyone immensely. In 2016 I had a literacy encounter that made a lasting impact on me. That summer I began babysitting John, a precious five-year-old boy, for the sole purpose of building up my bank account. Since both of John’s parents worked long hours at the hospital, John did not get to spend as much quality time with them as he or they would have liked. I felt badly for John, so I made it my goal that the time I spent with him would be meaningful and memorable.
“Literacy learning has a profound and lasting effect on the social and academic lives of children. Their future educational opportunities and career choices are directly related to literacy ability. Since early childhood is the period when language develops most rapidly, it is imperative that young children are provided with a variety of developmentally appropriate literacy experiences throughout each day, and that the classroom environment is rich with language, both spoken and printed. Early childhood teachers are responsible for both understanding the developmental continuum of language and literacy and for supporting each child’s literacy development.
Literacy is important for young children. It’s so much a child has to know before entering kindergarten. The Essentials of Early Literacy Instruction stressed the importance of teaching literacy. Early literacy is an emerging g set of relationships between reading and writing. Today a lot of terms have been referred to for literacy development for preschoolers the term that’s mostly used is early literacy. The term was chosen because the earliest forms of literacy development are forming reading and writing concepts. Linking early literacy to play is the most effective way to for young children to learn. There are many ways educators can teach literacy activities such as rich teacher talk, storybook reading, phonologic awareness activities, alphabet activities, support for emergent writing, shared book experience, integrated, and content-focused activities, Young children understand print by oral and written language. Asking students to help read a book and turn the page help them understand the basics of a book. There are at least three critical content categories in early literacy: oral language comprehension, phonological awareness, and print knowledge. Children need to learn phonological awareness, alphabet letter knowledge, the function of written language, a sense of meaning making texts, and vocabulary. Alphabetic writing is quite difficult once children understand the language of their community they learn which words stand for which concepts in that language.
The main focus of this chapter is to emphasize the importance of not only reading aloud to your child, but also the importance of doing it regularly from the day they are born. Even though most parents initially believe that their babies have no interests in books so young, but infants and toddlers genuinely enjoy books and being read to. If the routine of reading aloud is fostered from the beginning, then it can lead to endless benefits. The book also clarifies that at such an early age, the books don’t even need to be children’s books. Babies genuinely enjoy being read to and hearing the soothing sound of your voice. They don’t care whether it is Dr. Seuss or a college textbook, the point is to just read aloud to them. The biggest thing to take away is the importance of establish a routine that fits with your schedule, whether you start the day with reading or end the day with it. It is vital to have a point of the day that the child is read to regularly. It also is important to keep a book on you at all times. Books are a powerful method of keeping a child interested and calm in those situations that aren’t particularly child-friendly. Reading aloud from birth regular can help prevent many reading problems and listening issues. A child that is read to in their early months and years and on a routine basis, will significantly assist them in gaining listening skills and will help them find desire to hear more and more. Compared to children that weren’t read to, these
From the moment a child is born, they are surrounded by countless sources of influence that help construct and develop a child’s oral language skills, print concept, phonics skills, and more. There are many different influences in a child’s life that could influence them such as, their culture, their family, their parents, and their environments. However, one of the most important influences that help construct and develop the child’s literacy skills is what the child learns at
Teachers of preschool and kindergarten grades can promote early literacy in their classes by supporting their students in their natural environment. Meaning, children that are in their preschool years are at the natural time for developing their early literacy skills. Teachers should not be drill sergeants in teaching their children early literacy, but rather teachers should incorporate early literacy into games and fun activities. For example, card games with different syllabus on them, creating dances about words, and songs about letters. In addition, teachers should include picture books, story books, alphabet books etc. in their library center. Moreover, in the dramatic play center there should be items to reenact what was just read in
|Of Basic Early Literacy |assessing the acquisition of early literacy |measures used to regularly monitor the development of |
Language is universal with many dialects across the world. Many people consider language as being spoken or written, but it is much more than that. It can be viewed as unchanging and conventional, or regarded as dynamic and changing. Language and literacy can be analysed and examined, broken down to reveal how it is made up of all its intricate parts that form language. The impact of language in different perspectives, affect people in their daily lives, either in a good or bad context. Language has developed over time, and we now live in a digital world. This has affected people in a social and business life, diversifying how language is communicated. Language has many functions and roles. In the past, theorists have debated how language is developed, be it behavioural, cognitive or linguistic. Language is a form of communication that it is a complex and a unique human quality that is diversified throughout the world.
Literacy includes the ability to read and write as well as the various skills needed to develop and improve those abilities. Reading, while often automatic for adults, actually includes incorporating many skills at once. To become proficient readers, children must begin building the foundational skills as preschoolers. This early building of skills, often done in informal situations, is known as emergent literacy. If children begin school with a poor emergent literacy foundation, they will likely become poor readers. This could impact their academic achievement into high school. While school is important in developing these early skills into reading and writing, early experiences with parents at home are crucial to developing later literacy. Additionally, experiences at home can either support or undermine what school-aged children learn in school. This raises questions about what parents can do to foster emergent literacy and keep children interested in reading and writing. Two areas parents might wonder about are how to increase children’s motivation to read and how television viewing affects literacy.
Reading is one of the basic components of literacy. “Reading is a process of translating visual codes into meaningful language” (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998, p. 849). Children with emerging literacy are at the early stages of reading which mostly involves decoding letters into their corresponding sounds and then linking those sounds to single words. A study was conducted that found that 5% of a child’s daily speech was entirely produced during joint book reading (as cited in Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998 p. 855). Reading is made up of the following components: contextual, semantic, language, sound, and print units.
Language is a human phenomenon, and the course of human evolution then transformed into varieties of cultures where different dialects and languages were established all over the world. Language provides opportunities for learning new concepts and new ways for understanding the world. Culture is an integrated pattern of human knowledge, beliefs, moral goals, values, and behaviour. Social-Cultural inclusivity is the crucial element for teaching language and literacy in the classroom. Discussing language as an object; cultural diversity; Vygotsky’s theory; significance of Bilingual children; the effects of social class; significance of multiliteracies in the classroom; awareness of post-structuralism; the importance of ideology factors; and