Let young children's natural interests and instinct for play lead literacy learning
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See a sample weekly planning guide from the play-based Language-Focused Curriculum |
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Early childhood educators face two seemingly contradictory challenges: to get children ready for school prepared to learn and to give children opportunities for free expression and to explore their own curiosities. When it comes to the essential preschool task of exposing children to early literacy, here are three new resources that demonstrate different approaches to incorporating the two.
Support literacy through dramatic play
Betty Bunce's Language-Focused Curriculum for Preschool, presented in Early Literacy in Action, is centered around dramatic play activities because of their rich potential for facilitating language, literacy, social, and cognitive development. (The curriculum, developed at the Language Acquisition Preschool (LAP) at the University of Kansas and field-tested over 25 years, was selected by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) as a model program for Early Reading First.)
Different dramatic play activities have different strengths for developing language skills:
• Interactive play with defined roles set, for example, at a fast-food restaurant, are rich in verbal exchanges.
• Other settings encourage strong vocabulary development; a grocery store script, for example, lends itself to classification activities such as identifying fruits, meat, cereals, etc.
• Some scenarios emphasize sequential development of the action: Going on a picnic involves preparing the lunch basket, getting to the park, eating the lunch, and going home.
• Action-oriented activities such as firefighting and car-racing provide opportunities to practice and develop verb, adverb, and adjective structures.
• Mechanic or construction play promotes problem solving. In these activities, the adult or child can present a problem to be solved (how to fix windows, shingle a roof, put together a car), and everyone can suggest a solution.
Dramatic play activities can entice a child to take a risk to learn by getting involved. Within each type, some verbal or social interaction takes place. Children learn to share desired items and to get their needs met in socially accepted ways. The shy child is supported in interactions with others; often, pretending itself allows children to experiment with roles and dialogues. For children who use sign language or augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices, a list of new sign vocabulary for the dramatic play can be posted or vocabulary programmed on an AAC device. (See the weekly planning guide in the free download above for sample dramatic play activities.)
Adapted from Early Literacy in Action: The Language-Focused Curriculum for Preschool by Betty H. Bunce. The complete curriculum includes 40 weeks of lessons that support literacy learning throughout the day through dramatic play, art, group activities, story, and song.
How to use signs and logos that children see every day as a segue to reading
Early reading is an interwoven web of experiences, one part of which is children's early exposure to print in their world. As pointed out in Effective Early Literacy Practice, the new handbook for teachers edited by Andrea DeBruin-Parecki, most educators know that literacy development begins long before children reach school age. In fact, studies have shown that children as young as 2 are aware of and can read print in their environment.
"Environmental print" (EP) is print familiar to kids that they see on product packaging, signs, and in ads. It is everywhere: signs for fast food chains, names of popular cartoon characters, street signs, etc.
Teachers use EP as it appears in a child's surroundings. As children read EP, they are influenced not only by graphic cues—color, specialized font, specific image—but also by social, contextual, grammatical, and language cues. Children respond to graphics, color, and context in which print is embedded, and they search for graphic cues in the squiggles and lines of print.
Initially, young children attend to the entire context of EP rather than just the print. As they grow older, they become able to recognize increasingly decontextualized forms of print. Research suggests that teachers can help this progression from full-color, logo-graphic to more decontextualized print by explicitly drawing children's attention to the letters within the word.
See how Ms. Jordan does this in the vignette below:
Sitting around a horseshoe table, Ms. Jordan and five kindergartners begin to match logos to deconceptualized print. At the table, Ms. Jordan holds up a Trix logo. She asks the children to look at their five cards to see which of their print cards match. Each child has a set of logos in the final decontextualized form. Ms. Jordan facilitates this activity by asking the following questions:
1. "How do you know the one that says 'Trix'?"
2. "Do any of the others begin with the same letter?"
3. "Is the second letter r?"
4. "Are there any other letters in the word that you know?"
5. "What letter sounds do you hear?"
The activity lasts between 5 and 6 minutes, and then Ms. Jordan invites another group to play with her. She can simplify the difficulty level of the game by using logos that start with different initial letters. However, Ms. Jordan has found that the children really begin to pay close attention to the subsequent letters in the word if she has all the logos begin with the same initial letter.
Once a teacher has begun to use EP as an instructional approach, she can easily build on previous lesson. (See an example of an EP alphabet chart used to introduce consonant blends and digraphs.)
Teachers need not be afraid of what children already know from being members in our commercial culture. Instead, they can actually embrace children's interests and prior knowledge to speed letter and sound recognition. All it takes is inviting the children to share what they already know and using some creativity on the teacher's part to create a solid, culturally sensitive and inexpensive learning opportunity.
Adapted from Chapter 2: "Exploring Intentional Instructional Uses of Environmental Print in Preschool and Primary Grades" by Bille J. Enz, Jennifer Prior, Maureen R. Gerard, and Myae Han from Effective Early Literacy Practice: Here's How, Here's Why edited by Andrea DeBruin-Parecki.
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How to encourage everyone's literate participation including your students with significant disabilities 
The new guide Seeing All Kids as Readers challenges educators to expand their definition of literacy for their students with significant disabilities. Seeing All Kids as Readers by Christopher Kliewer describes a dynamic social model of literacy in which teachers can involve all their students in literacy activities by matching book selections to students' interests, encouraging children to relate stories to their own interests, providing opportunities for children to express their experiences in whatever is their manner of communication (not necessarily verbal), and encouraging children to relate their experiences to each other's. The goal is everyone's literate participation. Consider the case of Isaac*, a young boy born with trisomy 21 (commonly known as Down syndrome), who had little speech: Four-year-old Isaac Johansson pulled the children's picture book Where the Wild Things Are from the hands of his teacher, Shayne Robbins. He held it over his head and doubled forward with a shriek of excitement. Isaac's mother watched from near the classroom door. This was Isaac's first day in the Corner Nook classroom at the Shoshone School, an inclusive early childhood education center. Isaac had started the year in a different program at another school, but his parents became concerned when they saw none of the preschool activities present when his sisters attended nursery school: "No picture books, no children's books at all, no paint, no pretend kitchen, no dolls," his mom pointed out. In response to their concerns his parents were told other functional skills were a priority. Before Isaac's first day at the Shoshone school, Isaac's teacher visited his home to meet the family and ease his transition. From those visits Robbins learned about Isaac's passion for books, particularly Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. She decided to make Wild Things the theme of Isaac's first week. Robbins' decision to use a favorite book as a way of connecting Isaac to his new community demonstrated her realization and unqualified acceptance of the power of literacy in Isaac's life. As the children made their way to the reading rug, Isaac eyed the other children recognizing their names on carpet squares and taking their places. One of the three assistant teachers saw Isaac and said, Whoops, I was supposed to get you a carpet spot. I'm sorry Isaac. She grabbed an unused piece of carpet and stuck a strip of tape across it. Kneeling next to Isaac, she said, Okay, let's put your name on this—your own brand new carpet spot. Let me write I-S-A-A-C. She slowly enunciated the letters as she wrote them in their capital form. She used her hands to cover all but the double A in the name. Look, she said, you have an A and an A right in a row! Isaac smiled. Shayne Robbins arrived at the rug carrying several stuffed dolls representing Max and several of the Wild Thing monsters. May I have the book? she asked Isaac. He turned away from her, protecting his treasure. I tell you what, Robbins said, I'll swap you. You can hold Max and I'll hold the book. I want Max! cried out Trevor, a 4-year-old. Robbins said, We'll let Isaac have Max. It's his first day. Trevor shrugged and said, Yeah. Trevor's interest affected Isaac who handed the book toward Robbins. She gave him the stuffed Max figure. Isaac plopped onto the carpet spot. Trevor leaned close in and touched his nose to the Max doll. Hi, Max. Hi, Max, he repeated several times in a silly fashion while shaking his head back and forth. Isaac smiled and shook his own head much like Trevor. Robbins took her place on the carpet and began reading as her students listened intently to the classic story about a boy, Max, who is sent to his room where he falls asleep and dreams of sailing to a land inhabited by monsters. She showed the pictures slowly around the group. Emily, a 4-year-old yelled out, Max shouldn't run with a fork! Patrick, also 4, shared, My daddy sent me to my room. Robbins paused to ask, For running with a fork? Patrick said, Nawww. Robbins dropped the book to her lap and said, Well what did you do? Patrick looked sheepish with hands drawn to his mouth and would only say, He was just really mad. Thadeus, who had just turned 5, shouted out, My sister got grounded. Got what? another child asked. And yet another, on her knees and falling toward the center of the circle, blurted, I'se grounded. Robbins broke in, Okay, okay. We're all going to get in trouble sometimes. Sometimes even I get in trouble. Isaac sat amidst this engaging commentary, the stuffed Max character in his arms, gleefully awaiting each turn of the page. When Robbins got to the illustrations where the character Max engaged in a dancing rumpus with the Wild Things, Isaac could no longer contain himself. He leapt to his feet and began dancing along with the picture that covered two full pages in the book. Robbins laughed and said, Isaac has the rumpusing moves! Who else can rumpus? In a flash nearly all the children were on their feet spinning and twirling. Amazingly, within one hour of starting school in the Corner Nook at Shoshone, Isaac had been transformed from a child presumed by numerous experts to require a segregated program devoid of children's literature into a child recognized as part of the literate culture of the classroom. His interests, garnered first during the teacher's visits to Isaac's home, actually directed the choice of readings, and his understanding of the text ultimately led to a whole-group dance to the story. *Adapted from Seeing All Kids as Readers: A New Vision for Literacy in the Inclusive Early Childhood Classroom by Christopher Kliewer. |
