More Than Letters, Standards Edition

Literacy Activities for Preschool and Kindergarten

Sally Moomaw, Brenda Hieronymus

• Publisher: Redleaf Press
• ISBN:
  9781605545219
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación infantil

For decades early childhood educators in high-quality programs have understood that the transition into reading and writing occurs naturally when young children are surrounded by opportunities to interact with print in ways that are meaningful to them. The original edition of More Than Letters, first published in 2001, showed teachers how to intentionally help children develop literacy skills through hands-on, play-based activities. Like the original edition, the Standards Edition is based on theory and research. It contains new chapters that specifically focus on developing the skills needed to decode literature and informational text. Expanded chapters include activities that target specific concepts included in national literacy standards.

Chapter 1

Literacy Development, Standards, and the Literacy-Rich Classroom

FOR DECADES EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS in high-quality programs have understood that the transition into reading and writing occurs naturally when young children are surrounded by opportunities to interact with print in ways that are meaningful to them. In fact, research into children’s literacy development in classrooms such as these has contributed to the state and national standards that serve as guidelines across the country (Neuman, Copple, and Bredekamp 2000). By visiting a classroom of three- to five-year-old children, we can see how the transition into reading and writing evolves:

• Several children sit with their teacher at the special activity table. She writes what they tell her about the pictures they have drawn. The pages will be compiled into a class book.

• In the reading area, three children cluster around a popular book with a repeating text and recite the words together.

• Nearby, a child points to the words on a class chart and inserts a card with his best friend’s name into the song.

• A little girl arrives with her father. She runs to the teacher and shows him the writing she created with a take-home literacy suitcase.

• In the manipulative area, a child arranges magnetic letters to spell Mom and Dad.

• In the dramatic play area, two children write down grocery orders as they pretend to talk on the phone.

• In the block area, a child uses invented spelling to write a “Save” sign for her block structure.

• In the writing center, one child copies word cards into a blank book while another types words on a computer.

• During group time, the children help the teacher list new rhyming words for a silly song they love to sing.

For these children, reading and writing are fully integrated into their typical preschool day. Literacy experiences are carefully planned and guided by a knowledgeable teaching team. Throughout the year, the teacher will carefully document each child’s progression into more sophisticated levels of reading and writing. Years of experience in diverse classrooms have shown that all children, regardless of cultural or socioeconomic background, flourish in this type of literacy environment. In fact, teachers of children learning English as a second language have documented that they often progress into reading English concurrently with learning to speak it (Elgas et al. 2002). Kindergarten and first-grade teachers are able to build on this solid literacy foundation as they continue instruction.

Literacy and the Young Child

As children are exposed to written language, both through books and through print in their environment, they begin to construct important literacy concepts (Neuman, Copple, and Bredekamp 2000). For example, they learn that what is spoken can also be written, and there is a prescribed way for writing things down. Children who do not yet understand the relationship between spoken and written language may appear puzzled if the teacher says she will write down what they say. However, repeated opportunities to see spoken words in written form help children construct the relationship between oral and written language. They learn that once something is written, it says the same thing no matter who reads it.

As children continue to explore books, they learn to distinguish the pictures from the print. They also observe the left-to-right and top-to-bottom orientation of the text, notice the configuration of words, begin to recognize the function of letters in the formation of words, and make sound/letter associations. Children develop both phonemic and phonetic awareness. Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to recognize spoken words as a sequence of sounds, and phonetic awareness describes an understanding of the relationship between letters (or groups of letters) and the sounds they represent. Eventually, children begin to recognize certain words and transition into actual reading. The process of reading evolves from the whole to the part (Goodman 1986). In other words, children first differentiate the print from the rest of the page globally. Later, they begin to distinguish words from the stream of writing, and finally they look at the parts of the words as they form letter-sound relationships.

Children also follow a predictable progression in learning to write, much as they move through stages in learning to speak (Fields 1988). When surrounded by meaningful writing, children naturally transition into writing themselves, just as they progress in speaking through living in a verbal environment. Although the rate of development in writing varies from child to child, the sequence of the stages follows a predictable order. This seems to be the case regardless of the child’s native language. In our classrooms, we have observed similar stages emerge in children transitioning into writing in Chinese, Arabic, and English.

Writing Stages

Stage 1—Scribbling

Scribbling represents a child’s first attempts at reproducing writing. Although similar to the scribbling stage in art, the marks children create to represent writing are often more controlled. Scribbling is similar to babbling in oral language. Babbling allows children to explore the sounds of language, and scribbling enables them to experiment with the visual appearance of writing.

Stage 1 Examples: Scribbling

Stage 2—Linear/Repetitive Drawing

This stage is sometimes referred to as personal cursive. At this level, children’s scribbling has been refined to look much more like standard writing. In fact, teachers who are not familiar with a child’s native language may mistake the child’s personal cursive for actual writing (see the Stage 2 example from a child of a Chinese family). As with scribbling, this stage of development in writing parallels early refinements in speaking. As children progress in learning to speak, they gradually drop sounds that are not present in their own language and retain only the relevant sounds. In a similar manner, as children become more aware of how writing actually looks, they refine their own writing attempts.

Stage 2 Examples: Personal Cursive

Stage 3—Letterlike Forms

At this stage, children’s writing looks very close to actual pr...