Chapter 4 Acquiring Concepts about Print. Emergent Literacy Chapter 4 Acquiring Concepts about Print.

Emergent Literacy Reading and writing behaviors of children that occur before and develop into convention literacy. These behaviors are shown by children from all cultures and all SES backgrounds.

Characteristics of Emergent Literacy Teale and Sulzby (1996) 1. Age 2-3 children recognize signs, labels, and logos. 2. Reading and writing are used to reach a goal: recipes to cook, TV guides to find shows, write a check to pay. 3. Reading and writing development happens together and is related to each other. Children who are read to and who write have better understanding of print.

Characteristics: Children do best when many opportunities to read and write are presented. Language rich classroom environment is best.

Children come to school with different literacy experiences; Beach and Robinson (1992) Preschool children know about writing. They know logos, write with scribbles (Tell you what they have written), write the first letters of their name. Kindergartners know more logos, can write their name, and write with letters. 1st graders attended more to actual print. They know letters, words, and sounds. 2/3 were conventional readers.

Emergent reader behaviors (cont.) 4. 2nd and 3rd graders used conventional and invented spelling in their writings and were reading in a conventional manner.

Gender differences (Beach & Robinson) Girls did better than boys in literacy tasks in 1st grade. Differences narrowed in 2nd grade and disappeared in 3rd grade. Girls out performed boys in writing rereading the writings until 2nd grade. Boys performed better with environment print with context. Girls did better with decontextualized print.

Concept about print Watching TV Playing with friends Trips Interactions where adults talk about their experience influences children’s understanding and knowledge. This helps develop concepts and vocabulary. Watching TV Playing with friends Trips

Parents reading to children This is the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for success in reading. Anderson, et, al. Contributes to children’s experiences, concepts, relationship between written and oral language, and developing phonemic awareness.

Environmental Print Labels and signs on objects. Stop, Yield, Post Oak Mall, telephone books, newspapers, catalogs, TV guides, lists, and menus. Helps children learn the form and function of print, help build a sight word vocabulary, recognizes letters, and letter names, the detail of print.

Art and Play Activities p.101 Drawing and scribbles are early forms of writing. Child asks his mother to write the words clown, balloons, and elephants under the correct pictures. Most children write in upper case letters because they have more experience with these on signs.

Decontextualized Print Knowing that stories have structure, that the story progresses from left to right and top to bottom and knowing the difference between print and pictures is slower to develop. Children must understand connections between oral language and print. Print=message; spoken message must make sense.

Functions of written language To inform, to entertain, and to direct. Must know “word” Students don’t automatically know about these features of print.

Phonemic Awareness Hop on Pop The Cat in the Hat Letter sound awareness is necessary for success in early literacy. (Adams, 1990) Children recognize words in 3 ways: visual memory -whole word recognition; letter-sound relationship (phonics); and by context (syntax or semantics). The Cat in the Hat

Phonemic awareness Helps beginning reader to understand that the word can be broken into sound parts. Helps develop word recognition. Helps with writing activities.

How to Teach Beginning Literacy Encourage activities of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Constructing meaning is most important. Expand children’s vocabularies at every opportunity. Read literature, drama, write stories and share books orally.

Teach terms; word, letter, sound, sentence and concepts: left to right, page, letter names. Read aloud stories Using music and drama, drawing, cutting and pasting to increase motivation. Teach listening skills Set short term goals

Give tasks which can be completed with a high level of success. Give responsibility to all children. Select goals for individual needs. Children who use invented spellings write more, use more complete thought, reflect more on their writing, and often say words aloud and listen to how the word sound as they represent these sounds with letters.

Language Based Reading and Writing Instruction Teachers use variety of a writing activities, read books aloud, use shared reading, use story telling, label objects in the room and use read along books. They make predictable big books, learning and play center, catalogs, and magazines are available.

Learning Centers:(Morrow & Rand) Children read more when they did literacy tasks in centers; fill our form for prescriptions, wrote labels for cans, read menus, and recipes, newspaper ads. This modeled literacy behavior.

Rug time Centers: Meet together to discuss a story. Sing songs, share stories each has written, plan a thematic unit. Computer writing for lists. Computer center for skill practice. Listening library center Art center-crayons, paints, finger paints,etc.

Thematic Units for Writing and Reading Activities Create an environment around the topic Farm unit: front hallway looked like a barn with life sized animals. Jungle classroom with paper vines, monkeys, a tiger and gorilla.

Language and Concept Development Use a variety of book, pictures, tapes, and models about the jungle. Children produce group dictated stories; then individually dictated stories. Use cereal boxes as a connection between home and school literacy: The Little Red Hen, The Terrible Tiger. Writing activities based around thematic units are assigned.

Literature, Book, and Writing Activities p.112 Tape record children’s books for listening. Students should follow along in the book.This helps connect print and oral language. Computer Software: Motivating feature of hearing, reading,and seeing the animation of the story. Games promotes visual memory. Student can select different endings to stories. Other allow students to draw picture, name it, sequence it, etc.

Predictable Books Student can easily anticipate what the author will say next. Picture closely match the text. Have strong rhyme and rhythm. Have repeated sentences. Have sounds of animals with many rhyming words.

Using Big Books Discuss the book cover, title, setting, characters, primary events. Make predictions about these. Point out the title, author, publisher, and beginning reading the story as you point to each word. Read the entire story aloud and share interpretations of the story while checking predictions that were made.

Reading Big Books Reread these books Use choral reading Use echo reading where teacher reads a part of the story, which the children repeat. After multiple reading, children begin reading along with the parts they know.

Wordless Picture Books Story is told in sequence of pictures. Dialogue balloons can be added for characters and students can dictate to the teacher what the story characters may be saying. Story can be dictated and written strips attached to appropriate pages. Children can use the strips and draw their own pictures.

Big Books have big pictures and print that is large. Use an easel to hold the book open. Pointer is good to use along with flip chart for writing student’s responses. Teacher should be enthusiastic about the book’s content. Write the student predictions and chorally read the story.

Make big books with old calendars, rhymes, lyrics of songs. Big Books made from cereal boxes. Science and Social Studies: Use photographs or magazine picture and have student add their own text. Care and feeding of Rabbits Taking Care of an Aquarium

Interactive Writing Activities 1st part of the year Write simple text: Label Text must be completed in one day: Today it is hot and rainy. Repeat orally word or line to be written Teacher models sound/symbol relationship. Might write part of the text. Assist with letter formation.

Interactive writing Later in the year: Write a complete story Complete the story in two days. Count the words to be written. Student will hear beginning sounds, represent them with symbols, leave spaces between words, use familiar endings ed, ing; Write text with little help

Poetry Read it aloud. Children should be led to form mental pictures of the poetry. Haiku is a 17 syllable pattern in 3 lines with five syllables in the first and their line and seven syllables in the second.

Reading Aloud and Telling Stories Helps develop vocabulary and book sense: story language, character expectations. Leads to story telling which involves: introduction, story incident, using voice, gestures, and posture, using interesting speech patterns, using sound effects to accompany the story.