Strategies that Support
Emergent Literacy
Dr. Debra J. Coffey
and Dr. Alice F. Snyder
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Reflections of the Past
•
Quickwrite—What do you
remember about your literacy
experiences (reading and writing)
during your…
*Pre-kindergarten years?
*Kindergarten-first grade years?
*Second-third grade years?
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Your Predictions
► What would you consider the top
three predictors of early success in
reading?
► How would you rank the top three
factors of early success in reading
for young children?
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Sociocultural Considerations in
Literacy Development
Piaget
►infant’s schemata developed by responding to his environment
(sensory) and those around him
►children create own knowledge by forming and reforming
concepts in their minds
►child’s view of the world changes and is different from adults’,
thus, their concepts about reading and writing are different
from adults’ concepts about them
►concepts of reading/writing are shaped by what they learned in
previous developmental stages, not necessarily by
imitating adults
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Sociocultural Considerations
Vygotsky
□ Learning takes place in a social context
□ Language comes out of a need to communicate
with others
□ Language and cognition emerge at the same
time
□ Learning is a matter of internalizing language
and actions of others
□ Family, social, and cultural contexts support
learning to read, speak, and write
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Sociocultural Considerations
Heath; Teale; Morrow;
Strickland and Taylor
Early literacy experiences in the home
(B-5) can have an impact on the child’s
development as a reader and writer in
school; storybook reading and talking
about pictures, words; writing for real
purposes modeled by caregivers, parents,
older siblings, etc.
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“Stages” of Literacy
Development
•
Stages relate to how a child’s concepts about written and
spoken language develop over time
•
“Stages” give us a sense of what readers have accomplished,
what they can do now, what they can potentially do, and
what we can do to plan for their needs at any given time
•
Generally speaking, each “stage” characterizes the average
child at that point
•
“Stages” aren’t discrete—readers may move back and forth
from “stage” to “stage”, occasionally reaching a plateau,
staying awhile, and moving ahead
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Emergent (Birth to 5-6 yrs)
Logographic (Ehri, 1991: Juel, 1991)
• Egocentric; sensory contact, fast language
growth based on need
• May “read” signs, labels when associated
with the object, but not when isolated in
print (McDonald’s, Lucky Charms)
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Emergent (Birth to 5-6 yrs)
Logographic (Ehri, 1991: Juel, 1991)
• Very young may have experienced books &
writing materials but don’t find meaning in
printed symbols on their own
• May scribble and make letter-like forms on
paper without intention to communicate a
message
• Later, uses mostly information from
pictures to “read”
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Emergent (Birth to 5-6 yrs)
Logographic (Ehri, 1991: Juel, 1991)
• Begins to name & write some letters
• Becomes aware that printed texts convey
messages
• Writes for purpose of communicating meaning,
but reads & writes in unconventional ways
• Associates word(s) with picture clues
• Likes rhyme, repetition, alliteration, magic and
personification; likes to hear their favorite
stories repeated many times
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Early Reading (K-1, 5-7 yrs)
Alphabetic (Ehri, 1991; Juel, 1991)
• Realize that meaning is mapped onto print
in systematic ways
• Use some letter-sound correspondences
• Later alphabetic readers do cipher reading
(decoding phoneme by phoneme)
• Can segment words
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Early Reading (K-1, 5-7 yrs)
Alphabetic (Ehri, 1991; Juel, 1991)
• Realizes that letters represent sounds so that:
► words may be read by saying the sounds
represented by the letters
► words may be spelled by writing the letters that
represent the sounds in a word
[a.k.a. The Alphabetic Principle]
• Often spells words the way they are articulated when
spoken such as ‘V’ for the PH in ‘phone’ and or ‘HAN’
for ‘chain’ (manner of articulation or identity of
sound); also with affrication (‘DR’ spelled ‘JR’ and ‘TR’
spelled ‘CHR’); Continues to spell in the way words are
formed in the mouth, such as ‘gowing’ for ‘going’
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Early Reading (K-1, 5-7 yrs)
Alphabetic (Ehri, 1991; Juel, 1991)
• Become “glued to print” which hinders
comprehension
• Later, can recognize 100s of sight words
• Begins to develop awareness of audience
• Can monitor own reading and writing and begins to
use strategies such as searching, cross-checking,
self-correction
• Reads familiar texts with phrasing and fluency
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Assessing Emergent
Literacy Development
• Concepts of Print (Marie Clay—Reading
Recovery)
► assesses child’s understanding of book and print
awareness
• Yopp-Singer Segmentation Test
► assesses child’s ability to isolate individual
phonemes (speech sounds) in words
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Assessing Emergent
Literacy Development
• Alphabet Letter-Sound Recognition Test
► assesses child’s ability to identify letter-sound
relationships
• Basic High Frequency Word Recognition Test
► assesses child’s ability to recognize the first 25 Fry
high frequency words in isolation
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Stages of Writing
Development
Blackburn-Cramp Developmental
Writing Scale
► “Stages” are not discrete
► Levels do not represent grade or age levels
► Children can demonstrate characteristics
from more than one “stage” at a time
► These are tendencies/descriptors
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Stages of Spelling
Development
Gentry Developmental Spelling Test
► Assesses a child’s understanding and
knowledge about letter-sound
correspondences
► It is not a spelling test to determine
what words a child can or cannot spell
correctly
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Strategy Instruction
Five Essential Elements of Reading
1. Phonemic Awareness/Phonological
Awareness
2. Phonics
3. Fluency
4. Vocabulary
5. Comprehension
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Components of Phonemic
Awareness Instruction
• Identifying Sounds in Words
• Categorizing Sounds in Words
• Substituting Sounds to Make New
Words
• Blending Sounds to Form Words
• Segmenting a Word into Sounds
**not related to print!
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Strategy Activities:
Phonemic Awareness/Phonological
Awareness
• Reading Aloud (Shared Reading)
• Shared Writing; Pattern Stories
• Onset and Rime Activities
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Strategy Activities:
Phonemic/Phonological Awareness
Onset and Rime Activities
► “I Can Hear”—”This is the Grinch. I can hear the /gr/ part in
grinch--/gr/, /gr/--and I can hear the /inch/ part--/inch/,
/inch/”. Then teacher goes on to read How the Grinch Stole
Christmas! (Seuss, 1957).
►Word Play Books—specially designed to highlight sounds in
words, such as Each, Peach, Pear, Plum (Janet & Allan Ahlberg,
1978), such as rhymes and alliteration
► I Spy—”I spy something that rhymes with…”
►Rounding Up the Rhymes
►Nursery Rhymes and Alphabet Books
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Strategy Activities:
Phonemic Awareness
Segmentation Activities
►Glass Analysis
►Elkonin Boxes
►Rubber Banding
►Song “Bingo”
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References
Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in
communities and classrooms. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press.
Heath, S.B. (1991). The sense of being literate: Historical and crosscultural features. In P.D. Pearson, R. Barr, M.L. Kamil, & P. Mosenthal
(Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2) (pp.3-25). New York:
Longman.
Morrow, L.M. (Ed.). (1995). Family literacy: Connections in schools and
communities. New Brunswick, NJ: International Reading Association,
Inc.
Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1969). The psychology of the child. New York:
Basic Books, Inc.
Strickland, D.S., & Taylor, D. (1989). Family storybook reading:
Implications for children, families, and curriculum. In D.S. Strickland &
L.M. Morrow (Eds.). Emergent literacy: Young children learning to read
and write (pp.27-34). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Teale, W.H. (1982). Toward a theory of how children learn to read and
write naturally. Language Arts, 59, 555-570.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Thank you!
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