Emergent Literacy
Chapter 4 Acquiring Concepts
about Print.
Emergent Literacy
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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)
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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:
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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)
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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.)
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4. 2nd and 3rd graders used
conventional and invented spelling in
their writings and were reading in a
conventional manner.
Gender differences (Beach &
Robinson)
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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
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Interactions where adults talk about
their experience influences children’s
understanding and knowledge. This
helps develop concepts and vocabulary.
Parents reading to children
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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
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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
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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
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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
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To inform, to entertain, and to direct.
Must know “word”
Students don’t automatically know
about these features of print.
Phonemic Awareness
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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).
Phonemic awareness
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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)
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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:
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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
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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
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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
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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
Predictable Books
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.