EDRG 3344 BE#2

A summary of chapter #4: Emerging into Literacy.

Emergent literacy is based on research about how children learn to read and write. It has replaced the traditional approach. As children learn about words they learn to recognize words associated with context before moving on to printed words in books. Understanding phonics is extremely important for children learning to read.

There are three development stages to both reading and writing: emergent, beginning and fluent. During the emergent (foundation) stage children start to understand the communicative purpose of print. They notice environmental print, can dictate stories and reread predictable books. They start to decode words in the beginning stage by making use of phonics and correspondence. In the third stage, fluent reading children have learned how to read. They recognize most words quickly and can decode others quickly. Fluent reading should be reached by the third grade.

Young children’s writing develops similarly to reading. During the emergent stage they make scribbles to represent writing. They learn to line up the scribbles top to bottom, left to right like letters and eventually can their tell you what the writing says. The beginning stage signals the child’s growing understanding of the alphabet. Children use invented spelling to represent words and as they learn about phoneme-grapheme correspondences, their writing approximates conventional spelling. They begin to write sentences and experiment with capital letters and punctuation. When they transition to fluent writing, children begin to write in paragraphs and vary their writing according to genre. They use mostly correct spelling, punctuation and capital letters.

What this means to me:

It’s important to understand how children effectively learn to read and write. The information provided in this chapter can be used to create better, more effective lessons and activities to develop the child’s skills. I especially like the ideas of using minilessons during literature focus units, workshops, and activity times. I never realized or thought about the importance of phonics in reading and writing prior to reading this chapter.

What it means in the classroom:

Teachers must use strategies like shared and guided reading to help develop the children’s skills. Beginning readers require books written at an appropriate level of difficulty in order form them to be successful. Interactive writing can be used to teach concepts about print, phonics, spelling, high–frequency words, and written language. Minilessons about reading and writing topics can also be used. Minilessons are effective at teaching how reading and writing convey messages and how children behave as readers.