Early Childhood Literacy: Empowering Parents to be Partners in Education

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Early Childhood Literacy Empowering Parents to
be Partners in Education

• By Andrea K. McClain
• Principal
• Kingsolver Elementary School

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Fundamentals of Early Childhood Literacy

• Awareness of sounds, language, and print
• Reading and speaking with parents
• Reading in the community
• The mechanics of reading (decoding)
• Reading comprehension

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Awareness of sounds, language, and print

• All newborn babies make a wide variety of sounds
  when they coo
• Within 6 months, babies only reproduce those
  sounds that they hear in their environment (Noam
  Chomsky)
• This is an early indicator of phonemic
  awareness, which is the awareness of individual
  sounds that make up words

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Awareness of sounds, language, and print

• Babies realize that these sounds have meaning due
  to the context in which they are presented
• Parents intuitively teach babies language in
  context when they present items while repeating
  the word for that item (Bear? You want your
  bear?)
• An international study shows that parents
  worldwide, regardless of their native language,
  elongate their vowel sounds and clearly enunciate
  and even exaggerate consonants when speaking with
  their babies (Loooook! See the doooggy?)
• This is actually called mother speech, although
  fathers do it too!

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Awareness of sounds, language, and print

• As toddlers, children realize that books are full
  of symbols which stand for words
• Long before they can read or write, children will
  hold a book and pretend to read or write a series
  of scribbled symbols on a page
• This indicates a realization that symbols make up
  words, which is a key concept for children to
  grasp
• When children are scribbling, they may make a
  long series of scribbles for long words and just
  a few scribbles for short words, which indicates
  an awareness of the length of words

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Reading and speaking with parents

• Many studies reflect the importance of reading to
  and speaking with children
• The achievement gap America currently faces has
  been described as a vocabulary gap
• Parents are key in providing children with early
  training on sounds, especially beginning sounds
• Children can understand speech at a slightly
  higher level than they can actually replicate
  (Vygotskys theories on proximal development). So
  please enjoy books with a few new words in them,
  so children can absorb new vocabulary comfortably

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Reading and speaking with parents

• Children can comprehend adult speech, since
  adults unconsciously provide young children with
  many context clues (acting out, showing an item,
  making dramatic faces)
• We adults are code switchers and automatically
  slow down our speech, weed out inappropriate
  words, topics, and expressions, and provide body
  language clues when we speak with children
• Baby talk is actually harmful to childrens
  linguistic development, since they grow from
  being exposed to slightly higher levels

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Reading in the community

• A typical drive through town is a lesson in
  beginning sounds
• Children recognize the signs for McDonalds,
  K-Mart, and other locations at an early age,
  especially places they enjoy
• Parents tend to automatically stress the
  beginning sounds of these locations or even
  explicitly discuss these sounds (MmmmcDonalds
  starts with m)
• Children recognize stop signs and other traffic
  signs, thus reinforcing that these words these
  collections of symbols represent something real
• Children will recognize the pattern of a word and
  read it to you, especially if the sign is
  distinctive
• This is an important step in their development as
  pre-readers

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The mechanics of reading (decoding)

• As preschoolers and kindergarteners, children
  engage in activities which promote an awareness
  of sounds
• Teachers provide explicit instruction in the
  alphabet and letter sounds, which would be easier
  in any language other than English
• Our English letters have names (A and B) that
  often do not resemble their most common sounds
  (the short /a/ in cat, for example or the /b/ at
  the beginning of bat)

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The mechanics of reading (decoding)

• Teachers teach the alphabet to promote
  recognition of each written symbol, both capital
  and lowercase
• Teachers simultaneously teach the most common
  sounds each letter makes
• It may surprise you that knowing the sounds is
  the most critical part of reading, not the letter
  names
• We often teach the letters out of order, due to
  the frequency in which they appear in English
• Letters m and s are the two highest frequency
  letters in English
• This explains why so many childrens books have a
  character named Sam!
• Please note that consonants should be pronounced
  briefly (/b/, not buh, and /k/, not kuh). This
  will help students blend beginning sounds with
  endings more successfully.

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The mechanics of reading (decoding)

• Learning how to read involves two elements
• Decoding refers to how to actually read the word
  out loud how to look at those written symbols
  and make the right sounds
• Reading comprehension involves making sense out
  of the words and sentences once youve read them

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Decoding

• Decoding has three main skills
• Sight words these are words students learn
  almost like pictures. These are always high
  frequency words such as and, the, like, as, I,
  am, see which crop up on nearly every page.
  These may end up on a word wall where students
  review them daily.
• Students learn these words without sounding them
  out they learn them as a visual pattern. The
  word the, for example, uses th. This th
  blend isnt usually taught until the second
  semester of first grade, but the students need
  this word constantly. Similarly, like uses the
  long i/silent e at the end pattern, which also
  isnt generally taught until first grade. So
  students learn these words as sight words and we
  dont dissect or try to sound out the word

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Decoding

• Phonemic awareness is an awareness that words are
  made up of a series of individual sounds. The
  number of sounds may be different than the number
  of letters. For example, deer has 4 letters but
  three sounds /d/, long e, and /r/.
• Teachers will engage students in listening
  activities to promote phonemic awareness. This is
  unrelated to how these words are spelled its a
  listening activity.
• Our primary students tend to start with words
  that have three sounds (beginning, medial, and
  final sounds).
• Teachers might have a list of ten words and ask
  the students to put their thumbs up or down if
  they hear or dont hear a certain sound in the
  middle.
• Research indicates that phonemic awareness is a
  key skill in reading success
• Regional dialects may impact a students phonemic
  awareness (for example, speakers of Hawaiian
  pidgin and Cajun Creole may be used to vastly
  different pronunciations)

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Decoding

• Manipulating sounds to make new words is part of
  phonemic awareness
• When working with initial sounds, the teacher may
  break words up into chunks. Bat may become
  /b/-at.
• The teacher might wonder, What would happen if
  we took the /b/ away from bat and put a /r/ in
  front?
• This is when everyone shrieks Rat!
• Its loud and joyful. Protective earplugs may be
  needed in a highly engaged classroom.
• Being able to manipulate the chunks of a word and
  switch new sounds at the beginning, middle, and
  end is a key component of reading instruction

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Decoding

• This next bit of information may surprise you.
  Did you know that 37 simple endings make up over
  500 high frequency words?

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Decoding

• Here are 37 common endings
• -ack, -ain, -ake, -ale, -all, -ame, -an, -ank,
  -ap, -ask, -at, -ate, -aw,-ay, -eat, -ell, -est,
  -ice, -ick, -ide, -ight,
• -ill,-in, -ine, -ing, -ink, - ip, - it, -ock,
  -oke, -op, -or, -ore, -uck, -ug, -ump, -ug.
• These endings are actually referred to as
  rimes. Beginning sounds are called onsets.

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Decoding

• Teachers will teach each rime by going over the
  sounds. For -at, the teacher might have a card
  showing an a and a t and have the students
  make each sound, then blend them together.
• The students may practice saying
• -at and learn it by sight. The idea is to
  recognize this rime, or word chunk, by sight
  versus sounding out every letter every time.

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Decoding

• In the same lesson, the teacher may have a card
  or sign ready that says at. He or she will
  probably have other letter cards ready for the
  beginning sounds.
• With a rime such as at, the teacher might have
  cards for b, f, h, m, and r ready.
• By practicing the beginning sounds and then
  putting the cards in front of at, the students
  will read bat, fat, mat, and rat.
• Teachers tend to teach single letter sounds
  first, but will also discuss familiar words with
  blends. For example, students learn th, ch, sh
  much later in first grade, but the teacher will
  encourage students to think of all words that end
  in at. So if a student suggests that, the
  teacher may agree without teaching the th
  spelling. If a student suggests gnat, the
  teacher will agree and may not choose to share
  that it starts with a silent g.
• How crazy is a silent g, anyway?

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Something that will surprise you

• It may surprise you that sounding out words is
  the least efficient way to learn to read. Its
  not a recommended practice at all.
• By the time a student pronounces each individual
  sound, they have generally forgotten what they
  have read.
• Also, if students say the name of the letter
  instead of the sound, they will be really
  confused.
• English has many words, such as sight and
  rough which you cant sound out successfully
  anyway.
• You might want to suggest that your child look
  for a familiar word inside of the unfamiliar
  word. For example, they may recognize the like
  in likely or the can in candy.
• When your child is reading and encounters an
  unfamiliar word, encourage them to look for a
  familiar rime or word, but please feel free to
  just tell them what it is!
• Do not worry if your child is an inventive
  speller! In fact, many researchers see it as a
  positive. When students dont know how to spell a
  word, they will try to replicate as many parts of
  it as they can using whatever spelling patterns
  they already know. This actually demonstrates an
  awareness of sounds.

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Reading comprehension

• Once your son or daughter can read each word out
  loud, they can decode.
• Reading comprehension includes the ability to
  understand what has been read, summarize it,
  sequence it in order, make predictions, discuss
  characters, and make inferences, among other
  skills.
• You can promote comprehension skills long before
  your children are readers. When reading a book
  out loud at home, pause and ask questions, make
  predictions, wonder out loud why something is
  happening, ask questions about the characters,
  and make personal connections with your home life
  (Do you think we should have green eggs and ham
  for breakfast?)

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Reading comprehension

• It is possible for a student to have excellent
  decoding skills and struggle with reading
  comprehension, and vice-versa
• When we administer standardized reading tests to
  students, such as the DRA, we look at their
  fluency (how many words they can read per minute)
  and their comprehension (can they answer a few
  questions about the story?)
• It is definitely possible to have a gap between
  decoding levels and comprehension levels.

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Literature vs. Information

• Reading skills differ depending upon the type of
  reading materials.
• Students enjoy literature as it unfolds
  page-by-page and remember the sequence of events
  in a story.
• Students read informational texts (also called
  expository) in a different way. For example, when
  a first grader reads a book about polar bears, he
  or she must read more carefully to note details,
  understand concepts, and learn new information.
• Both types of reading are important. As students
  move on to upper grades, reading for information
  is an increasingly valuable skill. Informational
  texts often are full of unfamiliar vocabulary,
  which adds to the rigor of this type of reading.
  Many new textbooks highlight new words and
  provide definitions in the body of the text.

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Something that may not surprise you

• Literacy and numeracy (math automaticity skills)
  are easily the most important skills we teach in
  the lower primary grades.
• If you would like to discuss these skills at
  greater length, please do not hesitate to contact
  me. I have met with numerous parents and provided
  an impromptu literacy workshop and would be happy
  to meet with you too!
• If you would be interested in attending a parent
  literacy workshop, please let me know so we can
  plan one! As a former adjunct faculty member at a
  university, I taught Reading Methodology to new
  teachers as part of the California state teacher
  credentialing program. It would be a pleasure and
  a privilege to help you help your child at home!