Module 6 key components

Hannah McMichael
CIRG 653
Marshall University
Planning for preschool students
(an environment for emergent learners)

 To create the appropriate environment for emergent learners two things must
be correct, the physical features and attitude of the learning space.

Physical aspect: Attitude:

-Labels used generously -Create conversations about literacy
-Children’s names placed around the -make use of opportunities to foster
room reading and writing
-special days are marked on the -Students are encouraged to write or
calendar draw
-strong transitions -time is spent on demonstration
-active class library -emphasis on expression and
-dramatic play exploration
-classroom routines
Emergent literacy

 Emergent literacy is the basis in which all other reading and writing knowledge
builds upon. Children gain their first knowledge about reading and writing by
watching their parents and peers and trying to make sense of their actions. The
rate of a child’s development varies with their individual backgrounds. It is
important to find where each child is developmentally and grow from there.
 Parents roles in emergent literacy:
 Talk to children
 Read to children
 Supports attempts at reading and writing
 Sing songs and recite rhymes with them

The importance of reading to children

Core activities for emergent literacy

 Reading to children
 Shared reading
 Reading by children
 Language experience/shared writing/ interactive writing
 Independent writing
 Other literacy building activities
Assessing emergent literacy

 Emergent literacy can be assessed through observation using the Emergent

Literacy Observation Guide by which the child is graded below average,
average, or advanced. This observation goes beyond the product and focuses
on the process the child uses while reading. Knowing where the child is can
help you lift them into a higher level of literacy. You should observe the
child’s strategies, routines, products, and comments they make throughout
the production of their work. Observations of the child’s work can happen
often and notes should be kept about the observations but it is recommended
that a formal observation is completed each month. Other informal
assessments include writing samples, printing letters, and book discussions.
 USING THE RESULTS: the results of the assessment should help to guide
instruction and catch those falling behind who may need more intensive
intervention.
Emergent literacy in the classroom

 Children do not become literate automatically. Instead, it takes careful

planning and instruction by their teacher as well as an appropriate classroom
environment. It is important for a reading program to focus on reading and
writing but also include structured and unstructured activities. Teachers need
to take full advantage of the skills that students come to school with and use
those to build during instructional time. Children at different instructional
levels need different kinds of literacy that still focus on language,
alphabetical and phonological awareness, and print knowledge.

Fostering language: Fostering alphabetical and Print knowledge:

-Listening to and phonological awareness: -exploring environmental
discussing stories -engage in drawing and signs
-engage in small group and writing -observing adults
one on one conversations -listening to rhymes read/write
-retelling stories/events -exploring alphabet books -dictating stories
-following directions in -exploring picture books -exploring picture books
order
Concepts about print

 The idea of the concepts about print task was to allow students to have time
to engage in school literacy but catch them before they fall too far behind
and was usually given after the first year of schooling. After much change
with the CAP task it is now being recommended for school entrants. This task
is used to check students understanding of literacy when entering school
based on their background. The conventions of the written language control
what readers direct their attention to and therefore affects their overall
learning. The CAP uncovers those students who need more of the teachers
attention in order to close the gap between where the students are with their
concepts about print and where they need to be to make them successful
readers.
 click here to learn more and see an example of CAP task
Alphabet awareness
 Names are a good way to introduce letters giving the students something they
are familiar with and has significance to them. Students learn about letters by
their experiences and comparing them to one another. Once students begin to
learn the letters in their name they can begin to match other names that
begin with the same sound. Learning letter names also provides clues for the
sounds, if a student forgets the sound a letter the letter name may help them
remember it.
 Ways to practice and assess letter recognition:
 Line up by letter name
 Using keyboards
 Games (alphabet walk)
 Labeled object grouping
 Identifying and writing letters
Phonological awareness

 In a child’s natural world they do not have to deal with individual sounds,
instead they hear a word as a continuation of sounds. However, it is very
important that students understand individual sounds and are able to
manipulate and separate them. Without these skills students will not be able
to think through unfamiliar words and they will only be able to write a few
letters. There are two things that makes detecting sounds difficult. The first
is metalinguistic awareness, and the second is coarticulation. Metalinguistic
awareness requires reflection on the language at an abstract level and
coarticulation is a part of language that makes listening and speaking easy but
reading difficult. Coarticulation makes words one continuous sound. The
ability to segment words grows easier as a child’s vocabulary grows.
Key skills to phonological awareness

 Rhyming-relates to the ending sounds in words

 Blending-blends together onset and rimes and notes beginning sounds

 Segmentation- breaking words into their individual phonemes

 Click for video: Kindergarten phonological awareness lesson

High frequency words

 High frequency words are those that appear most in the English language.
Students pick up many of these words through shared reading and other
classroom materials. However, it is important that these words receive direct
instruction as well. When giving instruction it is important to take advantage
of the irregularities that occur in many words. For many words we can acquire
the pronunciation through sounding and blending but this may not be the case
for high frequency words. It only takes a few quality encounters with these
words to make the necessary connections between letters to phonemes and
pronunciation in these words. Since these words are so commonly seen the
thought behind rapid automaticity is making sure the students don’t get
caught up sounding out the words and lose memory.
High frequency instructional importance's

 Require direct teaching

 Limit number of words being taught to 3 or 4
 Choose words students will meet in print
 Select words different in appearance
 Point out irregularities
 Seek commonalities

 click here for Dolch Sight word list

Phonics Instruction

 Theory suggests there are two important implications to teaching reading.

The first is that nearly all words we acquire are through phonics and that
instruction should be geared toward the stage that the student is in (Gunning,
p.174). Phonics includes a set of skills with specific conditions that teach the
skills for decoding words, are skills that the student does not already know,
and are related to the reading tasks that students will soon engage in. Phonics
instruction should be well planned, systematic, explicit, and differentiated
for all students. It is important as a teacher to know the content of phonics in
order to teach the 25 consonant sounds and 16 vowel sounds.
Approaches to phonics instruction

 Analytic approach: consonants are taught within the context of a whole word.
 Synthetic approach: words are decoded sound by sound and are pronounced in
isolation
 Whole to part approach: students listen to a selection and teacher draws out
the skill
 whole-to-part approaches: teacher presents pattern to be instructed in
preparation for reading
 Embedded approach: teaching the skills as the needs arise
 Systematic approach: teaching key elements in a logical sequence
Teaching phonics to English language
learners
 It is important to use a student’s native language to build upon.
Understanding the similarities and differences of their native and second
languages can make all the difference in their learning experience. Spanish,
for example, has fewer speech sounds than English. There are also
significantly different consonant sounds in Spanish than in English. The
Spanish language has almost exact correspondence between Spanish sounds
and the letters that represent them but has more multisyllabic words than
the English language. All these things can cause confusion for the English
Language learner so it is important to understand both languages to give
examples and clear explanation.
Interactive reading and writing practices

 Ways to get students involved in interactive reading and writing:

 A variety of centers (writing, music, blocks, dramatic play, library)
 Have letters on display in manuscript form
 Provide unlined paper
 A variety of writing instruments
 Library corner with wide selection of reading materials

 click here for ideas on how to create a classroom library

Resources:

 Creating a Classroom Library. (2015, August 13). Retrieved March 22, 2018, from
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/creating-classroom-library
 10 Benefits that Highlight the Importance of Reading for Young Children. (2018,
March 08). Retrieved March 22, 2018, from
https://bilingualkidspot.com/2017/10/19/benefits-importance-reading-young-
children/
 http://www.k12reader.com/dolch/dolch_alphabetized_by_grade_with_nouns.pdf
 Gunning, T. G. (2016). Creating literacy instruction: for all students. Boston:
Pearson.

 Clay, M. M. (2014). By different paths to common outcomes: literacy learning and

teaching. Auckland, New Zealand: Global Educations Systems (GES) Ltd.