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I
have been studying Early Literacy in depth for the past 16 years. My
Master’s Thesis was on children’s writing. I am a published
author, and have written several professional articles on Literacy.
I also give presentations all around Alberta on Early Literacy,
Author Studies, Writing Centers, and Children’s Literature. This
passion was fueled by a childhood belief that I was a “very poor
writer”.
A
teacher's comment on my report card in Grade 3 affected how I viewed
myself as a writer until I was well into adulthood. I realize now
that she was commenting on my handwriting, which still has not
improved. That is a fine-motor skills difficulty, not a writing
ability. To be a writer, you need to capture ideas, develop
characters. Writing is interwoven with reading, and with my love for
reading, it was natural that to turn to writing.
Because
of my childhood experience and questions about the writing process,
I studied how children come to write, as they struggle to make sense
of print and attempt to express their ideas. I learned about the
emerging and developmental nature of literacy. Marie Clay introduced
us to this concept and I explored research and books to affirm that
this was indeed so. The notion of a "readiness" model for
children being ready at a certain age is wrong. Children begin their
experience with language and print from the moment they are born.
Skills
for reading and writing continue to emerge and develop throughout a
person's lifetime. All you need to do is think how much we have
learned about using language and applying them in a new way with the
introduction of the computer. We will need to continue to acquire
vocabulary and language skills forever - it's a continuum of growth.
There are times when each of us is a neophyte in acquiring language.
Think about walking into a conference for tax professionals, or
architects, or astrophysicists. Would we understand what was being
said? Would we know how to read their language? Would we be able to
understand what they are communicating to us using the language they
are using? Learning to read and write continues throughout our
lifetime.
When
I completed a very in-depth study and research of emerging literacy
at the University as I finished my Master's Degree by 1990. I went
out to teach kindergarten applying everything that I had learned. My
classroom was language-rich and print-rich. We did author studies,
genre studies. We read information books, small predictable books,
rhyming books, concept books, big books and poetry. We wrote in
Journals every day, wrote our own versions of stories, and had
writing materials in most of the centers. We used key words, pocket
charts, language experience. We wrote to parents and authors and pet
stores. We were immersed in language and print.
My
personal children's book library grew and grew and I now have well
into 3,000 books. I have an incredible resource that I can draw from
at a moment's notice. My program was eclectic - I took the best that
everyone had to offer and melded it into my own style and to meet
the needs of the children in my class.
A
professional colleague and I mentor each other and in the fall of
1998, we reached a new breakthrough of understanding in the field of
early literacy. There was new information that was being introduced
that was impacted by brain and learning research and literacy
studies. We now realize that language has to be constructed, not
only through immersion in a print-rich environment. Definitely not
through a phonics in isolation approach. We now know that the brain
is a pattern seeker, not a rule-applier. Our brains look to make
sense of the language and print. There are new words for us to use:
onsets and rimes, patterns for sounds - like /s/ can be found in s,
c, ss, or sc in print. Repetition, predictability, rhyme, rhythm in
print for early readers are givens.
I
became frustrated with the lack of materials for my kindergarten
class. Each "program" or "series" offered a few
little books at the right level. So I began creating my own for the
children. My colleague was using small poems that were enlarged and
posted around her room. These texts for us became the start of a
telecollaborative project that grew out of our comment to each
other, "We need to build a resource for ourselves and other
teachers!" This web site called Early Literacy Project has
grown to be over 300 web pages and includes summaries of new
research, classroom implications, strategies, parent information,
and 2,000 poems and small stories that can be used for children to
find patterns and make sense of language. I have all the poems on
file, and if you need some on a particular topic, please email me
and I will forward them to you. It’s just too good a resource to
sit dormant.
This
“new” approach to language learning is called balanced literacy.
Not capitalized! It requires a language-rich, literature-rich, and
print-rich environment combined with explicit skill development on
pattern finding within the context of great text and natural,
beautiful language. It requires direct teaching for children who are
not acquiring phonemic awareness skills through the
"natural" informal literature sessions. Neuroimaging shows
that children who have reading difficulties have difficulty with
phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is now recognized as a key to
reading success for struggling readers. Phonemic awareness
development has a critical window of opportunity - that is, if a
child has not developed it by approximately 8, it will be unlikely
that it will develop. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear the
sounds of the language. It is oral - hearing and listening to
sounds, then applying those sounds to print. The moment it connects
to the alphabet letters it becomes phonological awareness and the
connection to print is phonics. There is a small window of time for
us to help children hear the sounds and make the connection to print
explicit.
Through
observation of the children I have taught over the past 10 years, I
have come to realize that language acquisition is also a deficit
model. Most of the children I have taught are E.S.L. or from low-income
and low-literacy homes. These children have not had enough
experience with literacy before they come to school, so before they
can be expected to engage in a "production" of literacy
skills, they need to be filled with language. We have to fill the
vacancy with hundreds and hundreds of stories throughout those early
years. The more the brain hears, the more patterns it can find. They
need to experience good literature for learning, neurological and
emotional needs. We do not expect a child to acquire speech without
first hearing and interacting and making sense of the speech.
Children need to hear, interact and make sense of print language
before they can be expected to converse and communicate in this
language. One source I read stated that a child should hear at least
1,000 stories before being expected to begin reading. Do our
children in our classrooms hear that many stories these days with
the bombardment of TV, videos, Nintendo, both parents working, or a
single parent families?
My
colleague, Terry Starko, came up with a metaphor for understanding
how this all fits together. Think of a little plant just beginning
to grow. In the past, we waited until that first little shoot came
up and then we tended it carefully, fertilizing, watering, and
giving it sunshine. What we need to now, with our knowledge of how
children acquire literacy, is tend to the soil. The child is the
seed, and if it is placed in poor soil, it will take a long time to
grow. If a seed is placed in soil but it has not been watered, it
will not grow. If it a seed is planted in in good soil but it is
kept in the dark, it will not grow. It is the magic of planting the
seed in good, rich soil, keeping it watered and exposed to the sun
and the sun's warmth that encourage the seed to grow. Early literacy
teachers should be the planters, preparing a soil that is rich and
good. So that requires books of every type imaginable, poems,
stories, predictable text, chants, songs and experiences. Teachers
should water the soil, giving more to the extra dry areas, and help
children hear the rich sounds in our language with rhymes, rhythms,
onsets, rhymes, and patterns. Teachers should make sure the soil has
the sun's rays and warmth to unlock the growth instinct. Children
should come to love books from the teacher's love of books. They
should feel safe to make mistakes and experience initial attempts at
constructing and interacting with the texts. They should be
encouraged to try, but not be expected to perfect. Acquiring
literacy should be magical and fun and motivating - something to
reach for a little at a time. Just as we know some seeds have longer
germinating times than others, we need to expect that children will
have different germination times as well. We need to give them time
and opportunity to begin. We are root-developers. The part that is
never seen or acknowledged as having value until maturity. The
stronger the roots, the more developed the roots, the stronger the
plants. The more we help the children build the foundations for
their roots, their initial part of growth in literacy, to extend,
explore and develop, the more likely their success in acquiring
literacy skills.
Early
literacy teachers work with the complexity and challenge of keeping
work developmentally appropriate, multi-disciplined, integrated and
multi-leveled. The order of skills to be developed and enriched will
depend on each package of mixed seeds you open, a different package
every year.
Classrooms
need funds to acquire books, books, and more books. Technology has
been a wonderful addition, but has meant that budgets have ignored
the crying demand for books. Without books, there is no meaningful
connection to print for these young children. They need books in
their hands, and books are a consumable commodity. They wear out. So
start accumulating them through whatever means you have. Parents,
donations, gifts for birthdays, wish lists at book stores, garage
sales, Scholastic Book orders.
You
will need to help promote parent education programs to help parents
understand the key role they play in children learning to read and
write. One of the most predictable factors for a child's success in
literacy acquisition is having a parent read stories on a regular
basis. |
