STANDARD COURSE OF STUDY

EMERGENT LITERACY

The process of literacy begins much earlier than was previously believed, with early contact with print (for example, soft alphabet blocks, books, legos, etc.) serving as a basis for a lifelong learning process. Also, literacy is now regarded as a social and a linguistic process, rather than merely a cognitive skill to be learned. The importance of Emergent Literacy is indicated by the following research: IQ, mental age, race, parents' or guardian's levels of education, left or right handedness, and perceptual styles are weak predictors of children's reading success. Rather, these factors of Emergent Literacy are heavily correlated with later reading success:

• Print awareness (knowledge of print)
• Alphabetic knowledge ( graphophonic symbols/sounds)
• Phonemic awareness (linguistic awareness of words, syllables, phonemes) (Diamond and Mandel, 1996).

Both direct instruction and extended exploration of these concepts in real reading and writing are necessary for developing emergent literacy. However, different children will require different levels of direct instruction, with some children needing more explicit instruction and more repeated experiences. Children who are not already reading and who cannot successfully decode need phonemic awareness, explicit instruction in the fundamental sound-letter associations, and opportunity to practice in text that they can decode and that is at an individually appropriate level of difficulty. Meanwhile, read-alouds and guided reading sessions should be maintained to ensure ample experience with meaningful, rich literacy and language.

Research in Emergent Literacy indicates the following important points:

• Literacy development begins early in life, long before formal instruction.
• The functions of literacy (how reading and writing are used in real life situations to accomplish various goals) are an integral part of the learning process.
• Reading and writing are interrelated and develop together.
• Children learn about written language through active engagement in reading, writing, and discussion with others.
• Children should be helped to understand skills and strategies through direct instruction.
• To help children internalize skills and strategies as an integral part of reading and writing processes, they should be practiced within a meaningful context.
• Progress should be monitored by ongoing, multiple observations and analysis of reading behaviors and writing samples as children engage in reading and writing meaningful, connected text (The Primary Program: Growing and Learning in the Heartland, 1993).

Print Awareness

Print awareness is an important foundation for students' learning how to read. Children should possess a broad, general appreciation of the nature of print. They should be aware of how printed material can look and how it works; that its basic meaningful units are specific, speakable words; and that its words are comprised of letters. Of equal importance, they should have a solid sense of the various functions of print-to entertain, inform, communicate, record-and of the potential value of each of these functions to their own lives. To learn to read, a child must learn first what it means to read and that she or he would like to be able to do so (Adams, 1990).

While some children come to school with extended knowledge of print, other children do not; teachers of young children need to assess what each child knows about print and make sure that each child acquires the print awareness he/she needs for success in reading. Ways to teach print awareness include:

• Teach book concepts and print concepts through demonstrations as part of shared reading and shared writing.
• Use teacher demonstrations/direct instruction with individual students.
• Use teacher modeling to demonstrate book and print concepts such as the concepts that words can be spoken or written and that print corresponds to speech.
• Provide language activities that develop listening and expressive skills (e.g., listening to stories, poems, and expository texts; telling and retelling stories; enacting stories; discussing word meanings, ideas, books, and experiences; etc.).
• Provide a classroom full of print that is varied and meaningful to students (e.g., lists of birthdays and chores, labels on possessions and seat assignments, etc.). Such printed materials could be accessible to students as they go about the reading/writing routines of the day.
• Teach page arrangement, story grammar, and directionality of print with repeated readings and modeling with big books.
• Write students' words (what they say) for teacher and students to read aloud.

Letter Knowledge

To help young children learn to recognize and print upper- and lower-case letters, the following activities are recommended:

• Familiarize students with the alphabet by teaching them alphabet songs and poems, such as the ABC song.
• Play letter recognition games to help them learn to recognize both upper- and lower-case letters.
• Teach students to print their own names and expect them to label their work regularly.
• Play games that teach the children to pair upper- and lower-case forms of each letter.
• Assist students in learning to print the letters with tactile, kinesthetic mediums such as magnetic and sandpaper letters.
• Give students ample and regular opportunity to print the letters of the alphabet using the large motor skills (writing in sand, fingerpaint, salt, or rice, or writing on the chalkboard) as well as the small motor movements.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is the insight that words and syllables are themselves comprised of strings of still smaller sounds, the phonemes. In principle, phonemes are the speech sounds that correspond to letters in an alphabetic language. For this reason, an awareness of phonemes is essential to making sense of the logic of our writing system.

Phonemic awareness is difficult and should be developed in progressive stages. It includes segmenting and blending, and children need to do both (Fox, 1996). To foster children's awareness of phonemes, engage them in games that encourage word play-rhyming, blending, segmenting, and all manner of play with the initial, final, and medial sounds of words. To complement activities that are specifically designed for developing phonemic awareness, find ways to direct the students' attention to the sounds of words in their daily interactions with language print.

Research indicates that poor phonemic awareness is a major underlying cause of specific reading difficulties. In order to make sure that lack of phonemic awareness can be detected and corrected before it causes reading problems, teachers should take full advantage of diverse assessment strategies.

Ways to teach phonemic awareness include:

• Gradually move from larger, easier phonological insights to smaller, more subtle ones.
• Share stories, poems, songs, and dances that play with language sounds and patterns.
• Engage the children in games that combine phonemic play with meaning (e.g., "I see something yellow whose name begins with /m/").
• Engage the children in games that encourage word play and rhyming.
• Engage the children in games that encourage blending of syllables and phonemes.
• Engage the children in games that encourage segmenting of initial, final, and medial phonemes.
• Foster attention on sound elements with words by clapping syllables, manipulating magnetic letters, and manipulating tokens to match sounds or to match sounds during slow word articulation.
• Engage students in segmenting activities such as tapping and counting sounds in words and using a rubber band to illustrate how to segment words into sounds.
• Engage children in blending activities, for example, the use of visuals such as a slide to illustrate how sounds are blended together during pronunciation.
• Carefully monitor and assess the growth of each child's phonemic awareness.

Alphabetic Principle

In the later stages of Emergent Literacy and as a bridge into the Developing Literacy stage, children should begin to understand the basic alphabetic principle: The letters of written words represent the phonemes of spoken words. Phonemic awareness and letter knowledge are prerequisites to understanding the alphabetic principle, but they are not quite enough. Instruction is also warranted on how the relations between letters and sounds are represented in print.

Research shows that children who have a basic understanding of the alphabetic principle generally move into the challenges of learning to read and write words with ease and confidence. In contrast, children without this basic understanding have great difficulty.

The purpose of teaching children the alphabetic principle and sound-letter relationships is that they will be able:

• In reading to form an approximate pronunciation that must be checked against their knowledge of real words and the context of the text.
• In writing to form an approximate spelling of a word and to move from phonemic or temporary to standard or conventional spelling.

The goal of alphabetic instruction is for readers to be able to use information consistently about the relationships between letters and sounds and letters and meanings to assist in the identification of known words and to figure out unfamiliar words independently.

The alphabetic principle can be taught in the following ways:

Important Concepts for Teachers of Early Reading Instruction

Teachers who teach early reading instruction should transform the following ideas into their teaching. These transforming ideas are based on research provided by the Office of Educational Research of the U.S. Department of Education (Sweet, 1993).

• Children use prior knowledge to construct meaning when reading.

  Reading comprehension is a process of constructing meaning from text based on the reader's background of experiences. Overall prior knowledge comes from past experiences both in and out of school. Prior knowledge for reading a specific text is of two types: text-specific knowledge for understanding a type of text (e.g., elements of fiction versus nonfiction ) and topic-specific knowledge for understanding the topic of the text (e.g., knowledge about reptiles). Independent reading and writing are essential for expanding students' overall knowledge. Activating both text-specific and topic-specific prior knowledge helps the reader build meaning when reading a particular text.

• Effective reading instruction can help develop engaged readers who are knowledgeable, strategic, motivated, and socially interactive.

  Classrooms should have print-rich environments where readers can choose their own reading materials at least part of the time, where readers learn and practice reading strategies, and where they are routinely engaged in self and mutual assessments.

• Phonemic awareness, the explicit awareness of the sounds of words, is a precursor to competency in identifying words and one of the best predictors of later success in reading. Word identification needs to become effortless and automatic for the reader to devote attention to constructing meaning while reading.

  Efficient, early instruction contains a balance of activities and strategies to improve word recognition, including phonics instruction, reading meaningful text, writing, and spelling activities. Effective teachers interweave these activities in their instruction and make sure that direct teaching of skills is complemented and extended by encouraging students to use and extend those skills in authentic, meaningful reading and writing activities.

• Teacher modeling is an important form of classroom support for literacy learning.

  Modeling should be both implicit, or a part of the literacy experience (e.g., reading aloud to children and engaging them in conversation about the meaning of the story), and explicit, or direct teaching of how to approach a text (e.g., think-alouds where the teacher shares with students her/his thinking process as she/he completes a task).

• Reading of storybooks and informational texts-in the context of sharing experiences, ideas, and opinions-is a highly demanding task for children.

  Discussion among readers and listeners of shared text is essential and intellectually demanding for young readers.

• Responding to text, both fiction and nonfiction, helps students construct their own meaning.

  Students need to be taught to read for inferences which can be substantiated and for personal and aesthetic response. Encouraging personal response can help the reader construct more complex and accurate meaning.

• Children who discuss what they read daily are more likely to become critical readers, writers, and learners.

  Discussion in which students hear alternative points of view and solve problems encourages logical reasoning skills.

• Expert readers have strategies to evaluate meaning before, during, and after reading.

  Teachers should instruct students in how to use strategies such as making an inference (or drawing a conclusion), identifying important or relevant information, monitoring their own thinking while reading, summarizing information, and generating questions.

• Children's reading and writing abilities develop together.

  Writing leads to improved reading, reading leads to better writing, and combined instruction leads to improvement in both reading and writing.

• The most valuable student reading assessment occurs day to day for every student. It reflects current understanding about reading and is used to inform instruction.

  Good classroom-assessment practices include using unabridged, rich text for construction meaning; accounting for students' prior knowledge (including phonological awareness) before they begin to read; encouraging students to self-assess; and collecting samples of students' work over time.

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