Developmental Strategies for early readers:
Where are we and where should we be going?
Professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Temple University
Early childhood on the front page!
• Learning starts here
• (PA Library System, 2004)
• Born Learning
• Civitas; Family and Work Institute
• No Child Left Behind
• Government accountability
• America’s Promise
• Marketable skills
WHY? Because…
• The gap between rich and poor
– 25% of low income families have fewer than 10 age
appropriate books in their homes (Whitehurst)
– Vocabulary disparities
• Children ages 0-6 are spending more time on
entertainment media than on reading, being read to
and playing outside combined (Rideout, 2003)
• Language and literacy skills are the single best
predictors of later academic success
WHY? Because…
• There is a clear research basis telling us which
developmental strategies work for promoting
language and literacy
• We know that intervention helps!
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•
•
•
Head Start
Early Childhood Longitudinal Study
High Scope
Abecedarian
A talk in 6 parts
• Introduction:
– Burnout on the front lines
• Language Development:
– The foundation for reading
• Narrative development
– Where language meets reading
• Literacy
• Writing
– A partner for reading
• Conclusions
Burnout on the front lines
Even if it is with the best of
intentions…….
Examining the pressures
• No Child Left Behind
– Good idea /bad execution
• Accountability
– Outcomes vs. process
• Testing: The problem
– “You can’t fatten a pig by weighing it”
• Closing the gap between teaching and testing
– Forging a new road:
• from language to narrative to literacy to writing
Language Development
The foundation for reading
What you see:
Landmarks in production
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•
•
•
•
0-3mo: coos, burps
3-6 mo: coos; laughs, cries, gurgles
6-9 mo: babbling; turn taking; pat-a-cake
9-12mo: points; first words; Bam Bam
12-18mo: 2 words per week; 50 words at
– 18 mo., names for body parts, animals, imitates
• 18-24 mo: naming explosion; “Whas sat?;
– Talk about here and now; loves stories over and
over;follows simple commands
What you see continued
• 2-3 yrs: 500 wds; asks questions;
– past tense; Wh-; sits 20 minutes; WHY?; pronounce clearly m,n,f,b,d,h,y; uses fuller sentences with “in,” and “on.”; girls
might appear to stutter
• 3-4 yrs: 800 wds; contractions - won’t;
– can’t; can follow plot in story line; time words - morning;
afternoon; adds sounds k,g,r,l; may still distort v,sh,ch,j and th;
wonderful new made-up words like, “Michael wave” or “vampire”
What you see continued
• 4-5 yrs: 2000 words; speaks clearly most
– of the time; can make up stories; use complex sentences; still might
mispronounce s,r,th,t,v,sh,ch, j.
• 5-7 yrs: retells stories with more depth;
– participates in discussions; learns relationships like
big/little/happy/sad
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•
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1st grade: 11,000 words
3rd grade: 20,000 words
5th grade: 40, 000 words
YOU: 52,000 words
Big jump in school age: What causes this? Addition of derived words like sadness,
manager… Kids seems to have root words and inflected words and idioms but greatly
add in compounds and derived words
Beyond words to conversations
• Building vocabulary through dialogue
• Questions not answers
• Playing with language
– Jokes
– Games
– You’re mama….
Cautionary notes
• Pediatricians have had this chart for a long time
• Different strokes for different folks
– Groups
– Individuals
• It’s not all over at 4 years!
There is a lot of variation and what I showed you are just general guides to the
patterns in language development
The role of language in reading
Two models
Indirect and direct
Model 1: Language plays in indirect role in early
(1st grade) reading
Oral Language
Comprehensive
Oral language:
Comprehensive
Oral language:
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
Code:
Reading
Comprehension
36
mo.
Code Skills:
Phonemic awareness
Code Skills:
Phonemic awareness
Reading readiness
Reading readiness
54
mo.
1st
grade
3rd
grade
Direct
Model 2: Language plays both a direct and
indirect role in early (1 st grade) reading
Oral Language
Comprehensive
Oral language:
Vocabulary
Comprehensive
Oral language:
Vocabulary
Code:
Reading
Comprehension
36
mo.
Code Skills:
Phonemic awareness
Code Skills:
Phonemic awareness
Reading readiness
Reading readiness
54
mo.
1st
grade
3rd
grade
Given the importance of
language for reading…..
What can you do to help language growth?
Enhancing language
• Talk with not at children
– Hart and Risley
– Responsive, contingent conversations on their topic of
interest
• Read, read, read and read some more
– Dialogic reading (Whitehurst)
• Vocabulary games
– Snark, snarkist, snarkly
• Taking the Latin and Greek out of English
– Heal and health
• Tell stories -- from you, jointly
Narrative
Structuring the stories of our lives
Stories
• The role of stories
– From Thanksgiving to Christmas
• Grids for experience
• Decontextualized language
– Distance between sender and receiver
– Complex sentence structure
– High degree of cohesion
The Structure of Narrative
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Setting (place, characters)
Initiating event
Problem
Resolution
Most 3 year olds have setting,
most 5 or 6 year olds have parts with no embellishment,
most 10 year olds have full plots.
Cross cultural differences
• Asian
– “mouth is source of misfortune”
• African American
– topic association rather than topic centered;
performance, exaggeration
• Caucasian American
– Topic centered rather than topic association
Respect individual differences!
Literacy
A definition
The earliest sign of a child’s interest in
and abilities related to reading and
writing.
Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998
The case of 12 month old Kelly
and 21 month old Jim
Key components of
emergent literacy
• Phonemic awareness
– To understand that speech is composed of units
• Letter recognition
– The ability to associate letters with appropriate sounds
• Awareness of print
– The understanding of print and word conventions
• Early writing development
– Attempts to produce written text (scribbling, invented
spelling)
• Oral development
– Vocabulary, discourse and narrative
How we help children learn
these skills?
• Talk with them
• Tell stories
• Read aloud and expose children to print
• Targeted learning of code skills and
phonological development
Reading aloud
• Going beyond the covers of the book
• Reading the same thing over and over and
over again
• Using the book as a spark for conversation
Reading aloud: What to avoid
• “Shushing” -– the technical term for forcing silence
• Reading every word as is with no breaks
• Meaningless reading that children can’t identify
with or understand
– “Spot the dog”
Targeting Phonological Skills:
Code learning
• Pointing out similar sounds
• Rhyming games
• Singing
– An example
• Playing the alphabet games
• What starts with this letter/sound?
• Creating print rich environments
What to avoid
• Boring repetition with no meaning
• Only learning the 10 letters of the alphabet
– Why MNOP is one letter!
Writing
Writing as….
• The right arm of reading
– Tell a story -- write a story
• Writing as relevant
– Labeling your clothes
– Getting your way
• What you can do
– Writing letters on issues that matter for children
– Writing to stuffed animals or Santa Clause
– You tell the end of a story and have the children write
the beginning
Interventions that work
• Creating language rich environments
– The castle on the hill -- in the classroom
• Creating literacy rich environments
– Signs and charts
• Telling stories
– While -- building forts, blowing bubbles
• Learning to play and playing to learn
PLAY = LEARNING
Conclusions
What’s happening in PA
The way out of the crisis in
education
• Think process not just product
– How you learn is as important as what you learn
• Reclaim education
– It’s for educators not for business people. Children are
not widgets.
• Close the gap
– between what we know about how children learn and
what we are doing in the classroom
• Add PLAY to the equation
Then we will have
Smart and happy children in our classrooms today who
become sensitive and creative adults in the workplace of
tomorrow