Emergent Readers and Writers

Three Stages of Reading/Writing Emergent Stage : Children understand print has a purpose. Move from pretend reading to reading predictable books Move from scribbles to simulate writing to writing patterned sentences: “I see a bird” “I see a tree” Beginning Stage: Children learn how to “crack the alphabetic code” They use phonics to decode and spell words Learn to read and write high frequency words Write several sentences to develop stories or other composition Fluent Stage: Children are automatic, fluent readers In writing, they develop good handwriting skills, spell many high-frequency words correctly They organize their writing into multiple-paragraph compositions

Pretend Reading When children come to school, their knowledge about written language expands quickly as they learn concepts about print and participate in meaningful experiences with reading and writing.

Pretend Writing Random letters placed on page Letters start to move from left to right AND top to bottom

Concepts About Print Print carries meaning Reading/writing are used for a variety of purposes Menus, Birthday cards, Grocery lists, Stories Teachers demonstrate the purposes of written language and provide opportunities for children to experiment with reading/writing: Post signs around the room Make a list of classroom rules Put reading/writing materials in literacy centers Drawing/writing in journals Have children exchange messages Writing notes to parents Read/write stories Label classroom items

Concepts About Print Include: Book orientation: How to hold a book Turn pages Text carries the message Directionality Concepts: Print goes from left to right Print goes from top to bottom Points to track words Letter and Word Concepts: Points to any letter on a page Points to a particular letter Puts fingers around any word on a page Puts fingers around a particular word Puts fingers around any sentence on a page Points to the first and last letters of a word Points to a period or other punctuation mark Points to a capital letter

Concepts About Word Four Stages of word consciousness: (Papandropoulou and Sinclair, 1974): 1.At first young children don’t differentiate between words and things 2.They describe words as labels for things: “chair”, “shoes”. They don’t classify articles and prepositions as words b/c they can’t represent “the” and “a” with objects. 3.At the third level, they understand that words carry meaning and that stories are built from words. 4.Finally, the more fluent readers describe words as autonomous elements having meanings of their own with definite semantic and syntactic relationships: “You make words with letters”, words have different appearances, they can be spoken, listened to, read and written. Teachers provide activities to help children develop a “concept about word”: Pointing to words during shared reading Rereading familiar text with them: children begin to note spaces between words Pointing out capitals and punctuation: children begin to notice that the first word in a sentence starts with a capital and the last ends with punctuation.

Concepts About the Alphabet Children start to notice that letters represent sounds. Fountas & Pinnell (1998) identified components of letter knowledge: The name of the letter Formation in upper/lowercase Letter features that distinguish it from other letters Direction of letters: “b” and “d” The use of letters in known words: Names Sounds in isolation Sounds in combinations: digraphs: “sh”, “ch” Sounds letters represent in context of words: hard c: “cat”, soft c: “city” Teachers provide enjoyable letter activities in relation to which letters children may be exploring in their writing Teachers talk about how letters represent sounds, how they combine to spell words, point out capitals (reading and writing)

Instructional Practices Morning Message Shared Reading Language Experience Approach Interactive Writing **Ideas pp in Literacy for the 21 st Century**

More Instructional Practices Concept Sorts Phonological Awareness Activities Rhyming Games Alphabet Activities/Games Teaching Beginning Sounds Concept of Word ** Ideas pp in Words Their Way **

Assessing Concept About Print Watch children as they look at books and reread familiar ones. Watch children as they write their names and/or other words they may know. **During shared reading, note which concepts they understand and which ones you need to continue to talk about and focus on.** Watch “Hannah” video Tompkins, G. (2010). Literacy for the 21 st Century: A Balanced Approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.