Developmental Strategies for early readers: Where are we and where should we be going?

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Developmental Strategies for early readers
Where are we and where should we be going?

• Professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
• Temple University

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Early childhood on the front page!

• Learning starts here
• (PA Library System, 2004)
• Born Learning
• Civitas Family and Work Institute
• No Child Left Behind
• Government accountability
• Americas Promise
• Marketable skills

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WHY? Because

• The gap between rich and poor
• 25 of low income families have fewer than 10 age
  appropriate books in their homes (Whitehurst)
• Vocabulary disparities
• Children ages 0-6 are spending more time on
  entertainment media than on reading, being read
  to and playing outside combined (Rideout, 2003)
• Language and literacy skills are the single best
  predictors of later academic success

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WHY? Because

• There is a clear research basis telling us which
  developmental strategies work for promoting
  language and literacy
• We know that intervention helps!
• Head Start
• Early Childhood Longitudinal Study
• High Scope
• Abecedarian

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A talk in 6 parts

• Introduction
• Burnout on the front lines
• Language Development
• The foundation for reading
• Narrative development
• Where language meets reading
• Literacy
• Writing
• A partner for reading
• Conclusions

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Burnout on the front lines

• Even if it is with the best of intentions.

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Examining the pressures

• No Child Left Behind
• Good idea /bad execution
• Accountability
• Outcomes vs. process
• Testing The problem
• You cant fatten a pig by weighing it
• Closing the gap between teaching and testing
• Forging a new road
• from language to narrative to literacy to
  writing

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Language Development

• The foundation for reading

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What you see Landmarks in production

• 0-3mo coos, burps
• 3-6 mo coos laughs, cries, gurgles
• 6-9 mo babbling turn taking pat-a-cake
• 9-12mo points first words Bam Bam
• 12-18mo 2 words per week 50 words at
• 18 mo., names for body parts, animals, imitates
• 18-24 mo naming explosion Whas sat?
• Talk about here and now loves stories over and
  overfollows simple commands

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What you see continued

• 2-3 yrs 500 wds asks questions
• past tense Wh- sits 20 minutes WHY? pronounce
  clearly - m,n,f,b,d,h,y uses fuller sentences
  with in, and on. girls might appear to
  stutter
• 3-4 yrs 800 wds contractions - wont
• cant can follow plot in story line time words
  - morning afternoon adds sounds k,g,r,l may
  still distort v,sh,ch,j and th wonderful new
  made-up words like, Michael wave or vampire

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What you see continued

• 4-5 yrs 2000 words speaks clearly most
• of the time can make up stories use complex
  sentences still might mispronounce
  s,r,th,t,v,sh,ch, j.
• 5-7 yrs retells stories with more depth
• participates in discussions learns
  relationships like big/little/happy/sad
• 1st grade 11,000 words
• 3rd grade 20,000 words
• 5th grade 40, 000 words
• YOU 52,000 words
• Big jump in school age What causes this?
  Addition of derived words like sadness, manager
  Kids seems to have root words and inflected words
  and idioms but greatly add in compounds and
  derived words

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Beyond words to conversations

• Building vocabulary through dialogue
• Questions not answers
• Playing with language
• Jokes
• Games
• Youre mama.

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Cautionary notes

• Pediatricians have had this chart for a long time
• Different strokes for different folks
• Groups
• Individuals
• Its not all over at 4 years!
• There is a lot of variation and what I showed you
  are just general guides to the patterns in
  language development

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The role of language in reading
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Two models

• Indirect and direct

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(No Transcript)
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Direct
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Given the importance of language for reading..

• What can you do to help language growth?

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Enhancing language

• Talk with not at children
• Hart and Risley
• Responsive, contingent conversations on their
  topic of interest
• Read, read, read and read some more
• Dialogic reading (Whitehurst)
• Vocabulary games
• Snark, snarkist, snarkly
• Taking the Latin and Greek out of English
• Heal and health
• Tell stories -- from you, jointly

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Narrative

• Structuring the stories of our lives

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Stories

• The role of stories
• From Thanksgiving to Christmas
• Grids for experience
• Decontextualized language
• Distance between sender and receiver
• Complex sentence structure
• High degree of cohesion

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The Structure of Narrative

• Setting (place, characters)
• Initiating event
• Problem
• Resolution
• Most 3 year olds have setting,
• most 5 or 6 year olds have parts with no
  embellishment,
• most 10 year olds have full plots.

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Cross cultural differences

• Asian
• mouth is source of misfortune
• African American
• topic association rather than topic centered
  performance, exaggeration
• Caucasian American
• Topic centered rather than topic association
• Respect individual differences!

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Literacy
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A definition
The earliest sign of a childs interest in and
abilities related to reading and writing.
Whitehurst Lonigan, 1998
The case of 12 month old Kelly and 21 month old
Jim
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Key components of emergent literacy

• Phonemic awareness
• To understand that speech is composed of units
• Letter recognition
• The ability to associate letters with appropriate
  sounds
• Awareness of print
• The understanding of print and word conventions
• Early writing development
• Attempts to produce written text (scribbling,
  invented spelling)
• Oral development
• Vocabulary, discourse and narrative

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How we help children learn these skills?

• Talk with them
• Tell stories
• Read aloud and expose children to print
• Targeted learning of code skills and phonological
  development

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Reading aloud

• Going beyond the covers of the book
• Reading the same thing over and over and over
  again
• Using the book as a spark for conversation

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Reading aloud What to avoid

• Shushing --
• the technical term for forcing silence
• Reading every word as is with no breaks
• Meaningless reading that children cant identify
  with or understand
• Spot the dog

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Targeting Phonological SkillsCode learning

• Pointing out similar sounds
• Rhyming games
• Singing
• An example
• Playing the alphabet games
• What starts with this letter/sound?
• Creating print rich environments

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What to avoid

• Boring repetition with no meaning
• Only learning the 10 letters of the alphabet
• Why MNOP is one letter!

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Writing
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Writing as.

• The right arm of reading
• Tell a story -- write a story
• Writing as relevant
• Labeling your clothes
• Getting your way
• What you can do
• Writing letters on issues that matter for
  children
• Writing to stuffed animals or Santa Clause
• You tell the end of a story and have the children
  write the beginning

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Interventions that work

• Creating language rich environments
• The castle on the hill -- in the classroom
• Creating literacy rich environments
• Signs and charts
• Telling stories
• While -- building forts, blowing bubbles
• Learning to play and playing to learn
• PLAY LEARNING

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Conclusions
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Whats happening in PA
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The way out of the crisis in education

• Think process not just product
• How you learn is as important as what you learn
• Reclaim education
• Its for educators not for business people.
  Children are not widgets.
• Close the gap
• between what we know about how children learn and
  what we are doing in the classroom
• Add PLAY to the equation

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Then we will have
Smart and happy children in our classrooms today
who become sensitive and creative adults in the
workplace of tomorrow