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How to Create a Literate Environment

for Young Children.

Good Practices for Emergent Literacy

in Pre-Primary Education

Eufimia Tafa & George Manolitsis

University of Crete, Greece

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Emergent Literacy is covering all activities, projects and programmes in pre-primary institutions with the aim to prepare young children for the formal teaching of literacy in school, especially to build motivation for literacy acquisition in school.

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Learning to read and write can be seen as a developmental process starting very early in life, characterized by

• the growing insights of the child into the function and features of written language and

• the relationship between oral and written language.

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Even before children are taught formally to read and write in school, they develop emergent literacy skills, i.e. first concepts about books and print, in interaction with adults, and from their experiences with books and other literacy activities.

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In pre-primary education, children can be prepared for formal instruction only when there is an enriched school environment and there are programs which enhance young children’s literacy skills.

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Pre-primary programs should enhance young children’s:

• oral language development,

• print awareness,

• phonological and phonemic awareness

• Early writing development (shared writing)

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Oral Language Development

Children are:

• Encouraged to develop oral language skills

• Offered opportunities to develop vocabulary as well as listening and narrative skills

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Print awareness

Children should understand that:

• Oral language can be written and written language can be verbalized

• Print, not the picture, carries the message

• Books are read from left to right and from top to bottom

• Print consists of words and words of letters whose uppercase and lowercase forms have names and sounds

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Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

• Phonological awareness refers to children’s understanding that spoken language is composed of identifiable units, such as words, syllables and phonemes.

• In an alphabetical system, children should be able to identify the phonemes that make a word up and match them with graphemes in order to read and write (grasp the alphabetic principle).

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Early writing development

• At the same time, children should recognize the differences between writing and drawing and begin to produce their first “scribblings”.

• They should discover the letters of the alphabet and use them to write their names or present their ideas.

• They should use phoneme-grapheme correspondence and become capable of writing all the letters of a word.

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• This developmental process of mastering reading and writing seems to be similar for all children in European languages whether they speak:

• English (Sulzby, Teale and Kamberelis, 1989),

• Spanish (Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1982),

• French (Fijalkow and Fijalkow, in Tantaros, 1999),

• Italian (Pontecorvo and Zucchermaglio, 1990),

• Finish (Lyytinen, Aro, Holopainen, Leiwo, Lyytinen, & Tolvanen, 2006)

• Greek (Tafa, 2001, 2011).

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• However there are also differences according to the orthographic consistency of European orthographies:

• in the growth rate of reading and spelling development (e.g.,

Caravolas, 2006; Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003) and

• the importance of different factors (such as phonological awareness) on reading skills across development (e.g. Georgiou, Torppa, Manolitsis, Lyytinen, Parrila, 2012; de Jong & van der Leij, 2002)

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Methodological guidelines for reading and writing activities

Pre-primary literacy curricula should give emphasis:

• on print rich classroom environment and

• on children’s active engagement in playful literacy activities through which children understand that we read and write in order to communicate with others and express our thoughts, ideas and emotions.

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In particular children should:

• Be actively engaged in reading and writing

• Understand the communicative nature of reading and writing

• Learn how to read and write in a print-rich Classroom Environment

• Learn how to read and write through playfullactivities

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Framework of Good Practices

Important features :

• Children are encouraged to develop oral language skills

• Children are offered opportunities to develop vocabulary

• Children are offered opportunities to develop listening and narrative skills

• Children experience different functions of language in social play, role play, in conflict situations and problem solving

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• Children are encouraged to develop metalinguistic skills by using language games, rhymes, tongue-twisters and poems and by singing and clapping syllables

• Children are encouraged to develop phonemic awareness

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• Children are actively engaged in literacy activities in print-enriched classroom environments with the aim to understand the communicative nature of reading and writing: writing is for sharing thoughts, sending messages, reminding something important, while reading is for understanding the author’s thoughts and feelings, getting information and pleasure.

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• Children are engaged in literacy activities with the aim to understand that print carries meaning, the direction of print and the concept of: letter name, letter sound as well as the “technical language” of books (e.g. page, line, word, sentence, cover of the book)

• Children are actively engaged in “reading” picture books and informational books.

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The Greek Kindergarten Curriculum

• The Curriculum is implemented in all Greek kindergarten classrooms and uses an emergent literacy perspective.

• It is highlighted that children, through the context of play, should be provided with opportunities for being aware of their written language system.

• By the end of kindergarten, most children are expected:

• a) to recognise the link between the writen and spoken language,

• b) to develop an awareness of letter names and sounds,

• c) to use written marks to express their ideas and feelings,

• d) to experiment with symbols and letters, and

• e) to recognise and write some familiar letters and words or their own names.

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The Greek Kindergarten Curriculum

• Tteachers’ role is to mediate and facilitate learning, to encourage and support children so that they approach knowledge through exploration, discussion, creation and an exchange of ideas.

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Children prepare the Menu Catalog for their Classroom Restaurant

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Writing for specific purpose: Children sign the voting list and vote

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Writing for preparing a Veterinary Clinic Corner

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Children write their Identity Card

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The children’s Presence List

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After a visit in a museum children write the story of astatus (the name, the place, the year of production,the characteristics)

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The cover of the Recipe Catalog

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Children’s poster for their classroom “grocery store”

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Phoneme-grapheme correspondence: Children try to make a word from individual letters

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A page for the Classroom Newspaper

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Children write the recipe for Christmas cookies

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Children’s Posters for the animals’ protection

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Children draw and write a different end of the story book read to them

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After story book reading children made the Story Map by drawing and writing

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• By the implementation of this curriculum children learn how to read and write in a rich classroom environment, through the context of play.

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An intervention project for enhancing kindergarteners’ comprehension skills through informational books reading

• The purpose of the project was to train kindergarten teachers in effective informational text reading practices and to examine whether the implemented practices can enhance kindergarteners’ cognitive involvement in text discussion and comprehension abilities.

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• Reading informational texts in kindergarten is crucial, as it provides the context for implementing practices which help children develop comprehension skills, acquire infrequently used vocabulary and elaborate on different text structures and scientific concepts (Kletzien & Dreher, 2004).

• Children who are not exposed to informational texts during kindergarten seem to confront great difficulties in text comprehension in primary school and present low literacy achievement (Chall, Jacobs & Baldwin, 1990).

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• The sample consisted of 10 kindergarten teachers working in public schools located in rural areas in Rethymno, Crete.

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• A three-phase intervention project was implemented within a three-month period. At the first and preparatory phase of the project teachers were trained by a reading expert to read informational texts by the use of specific practices. Teachers implemented the reading practices in their classrooms at the subsequent phases of the project.

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• During the second phase, teachers carried out activities in order to familiarize children with informational texts features, such as the table of contents, illustrations, headings and subheadings, index and labels.

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• During the third phase, teachers implemented reciprocal teaching, interactive reading and Know-Want-Learn method in order to help children comprehend text information, enhance their cognitive involvement in text discussion and train them in asking literal and inferential questions.

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• Several teacher book reading aloud sessions were recorded and transcribed.

• Results showed that the intervention project helped children recognize informational texts features, enhanced their cognitive involvement in text discussion and motivated them to demonstrate comprehension strategies that are related with information processing.

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Results showed:

• Kindergarten teachers empowered their self-confidence in informational text instruction and valued highly the usefulness of the proposed reading practices.

• The intervention project enhanced kindergarteners’ comprehension skills and their knowledge about the purpose of informational text reading and informational books special features.

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Results showed:

• Children’s cognitive involvement in text discussion was enhanced significantly as they could respond successfully to teacher’s low and high cognitive demand questions.

• Children understood the classification between close type (easy) and open type (difficult) questions.

• Children could classify the different type of questions and generate their own questions using the appropriate question word.

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Both examples of Good Practices enhance young children emergent literacy skills in a print-rich classroom environment

In both examples children learn how to read and write through playful activities.

In both examples children read and write in order to communicate (for a specific purpose)

In both examples children learn how to read and write “by themselves” and by their active involvement in various activities

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We hope that the ELINET results from Country Reports as well as the Good Practices will help the policy makers and the education authorities in Europe to develop appropriate emergent literacy programs in all European countries which will enhance young children’s emergent literacy skills and raise the literacy levels among young children.

Coordinator of the ELINET project:University of CologneProf. Dr. Christine Garbe Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Literatur IIRichard-Strauss-Str. 250931 Cologne - GERMANY

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Thank you.IM

PR

INT