Developing Emergent Literacy Skills in the Early Years - Essay Example

Children who are of pre school age tend to acquire reading and writing skills at different stages. This is because their brain development differs from child to child. Use of pictures in various learning activities that develop these literacy skills has been found to be one of the mechanisms that contribute to the development in children’s learning (Collins III and O’Brien, 2005 p27). Children aged 0-5 years old develop 85 per cent of their intelligence and personality by the age of five and increase their vocabulary through repeated experiences such as story reading every night. (David Edie & Deborah Schmid, 2007 p1). The essay below is a critical evaluation of literacy activities on the strategies used to promote reading and writing skills among children based on early learning theories. The first literacy learning activity is an interactive activity between the teacher and the children that involves letter writing to Father Christmas. The first strategy used by the teacher to develop writing skills of children was introducing the activity with a picture of Father Christmas. By doing this, the attention of the children is drawn, therefore helping the teacher in developing the writing skills of the children. Majority of children first learn how to write their names according to the cognitive theory of learning. When the teacher in this learning activity asked the child to write on paper what he wanted from Father Christmas, the child ended up writing his name (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Another important strategy the teacher used to develop the writing skills of the children was writing down and spelling out the letters for the children to copy. The teacher spelled out the letters in the name of one of the children and asked the child to write the letters down whilst sounding them out. For children to develop their literacy skills it’s important for them to link sounds and letters to improve their reading and writing and in addition by sounding out the letters in the child’s name this will help the child recognise those letters in other words. (EYFS, 2012) Furthermore this relates to the bottoms- up theory that children need to be taught to identify the sounds in words and be able to match sounds and letters. (Harris, 2005) Use of symbols such as pictures can be used as an effective strategy in developing the writing skills of children. According to theorist Piaget, asking children to draw pictures of the items they are supposed to write tends to develop their writing skills immensely. For instance, in this particular learning activity, the teacher asked one of the children what he wanted from Father Christmas and the child answered a boat. Since the child had difficulties in writing the word, the teacher asked him to draw a boat. The child drew the sea under the boat creating a story, which gave the teacher the chance to start talking about the story with the child. This is an indication that the strategy applied by the teacher worked in developing the vocabulary and therefore improving the future writing skills of this particular child. (Bodrova and Leong, 1996, p62). According to the literacy learning methods applied in the social cognitive learning theories, children tend to learn emergent literacy skills such as writing from other children. This enables them develop their own literacy skills. In this case, the teacher is supposed to attend to both the children. For example in this learning activity, when one of the children saw another child writing, he went and sat next to him and started distracting him because he also wanted to write. The teacher responded positively to this case by assuring this child that she will help him out with writing after she is done with the other child. This strategy left the child eager in wanting to know how to write also. (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Provision of various writing material to the children is another strategy that develops the writing skills of the children such materials include different types and colours of paper and pens. This fascinates the children in wanting to write because of the different colours (EYFS, 2012). Within the social constructivist theory, children tend to select paper and pens with their favourite colours for writing, hence enhancing their writing skills. For instance, in this particular literacy activity, the presence of a yellow paper and a blue pen fascinated one of the children to write. The child was attracted to these writing materials because of their colours. At the end of the activity when the teacher asked the child to make the letter pretty for Santa to receive it, the child picked a red and an orange pen. He then drew a portrait of himself on the letter colouring the hair black because he has black hair (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). The second literacy activity involved storytelling and nursery rhyme. Such learning activities have been found to be among activities that promote reading skills of children by a number of theorists. For instance, when children listen to stories, their literacy skills improve in the sense that they learn about vocabulary use, they develop their phonological awareness and sensitivity, they develop their oral language skills, they learn about written syntax as well as learning about print concept according to Piaget (White, 2005) Various strategies and emergent literacy resources were used in this learning activity for promotion of the children’s reading and writing skills. Storybook preview is one of the strategies used in this particular learning activity. According to the requirements of the bottom up early learning theory, introducing the child to a storytelling session is an important activity because the attention of the child is drawn. The teacher gathered the children together and introduced the book to them. The teacher introduced the vocabulary, “ladybird” to the children as used in the book. This attracted their attention of wanting to know what is entailed in the book, hence improving their reading skills (Larson and Marsh, 2007 p98). Another strategy that the teacher used in this learning activity to develop the reading skills of children is the application of the concept of a symbol. Use of symbols, according to the cognitive learning activity during story time includes the use of pictures of items available in the story, production of sounds produced by items in the story. This strategy helps in the development of oral language of children, which further develops their reading skills as well (Riley, 2006 p36). For example in this particular learning activity, the teacher used pictures of ladybird moving home, a cat, and a worm. When the teacher pointed at the picture of a worm, all the children were heard shouting the word “worm”, and when the teacher turned the page of the book and pointed at the picture of a cat, another child was able to recognize it. When the teacher made a buzzing sound, one of the children shouted the word bee. This is an indication that the child was able to recognize that sound comes from a bee, hence developing the reading skills of the children. A follow-up strategy was used by the teacher in children who were distracted from the learning activity. During story time, one of the children switched off form the story, maybe because the story was not her favourite. When the teacher noticed that, she made a follow-up on the child and was able to draw her attention back to the activity. After that, the teacher pointed on a picture of a worm on the book and all the children were able to recognize the picture. This is an indication that the follow-up the teacher made on the distracted child helped improve her reading skills. Emergent learning theory by Piaget states that children who are poor in paying attention during story time should be fully followed up the teacher so that their emergent literacy skills may develop. If such children are left unattended by the teacher, they tend to lag behind in reading; hence, this may affect their future literacy knowledge (Rhyner, 2009). Reading aloud of the story during the learning activity was yet another crucial strategy that the teacher applied. Theorist Bowbley recommends that during strorytelling sessions, adults should read the stories to children loudly in order to improve their oral learning skills. In this activity, the teacher asked the children loudly to kiss the ladybird goodnight. When she passed the paper of the ladybird round the class, all the children were able to say “goodnight ladybird”. This is a clear indication that when the teacher said those words loudly, the children were keenly listening to her and eventually were able to repeat the same words (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). It is also recommended by Marie Clay Reading Recovery theory that teachers or adults should read words in the story loudly and ask the children to repeat the same words. This boosts the reading skills of the children (Whitehead, 1997) Rhyming activity was applied in this activity in order to develop phonological awareness of the children. The teacher in this lesson began singing a nursery rhyme about Christmas tree with the children the children found the activity fun and they started clapping their hands singing along with the teacher. According to Social cognitive theories, such activities tend to help children be able to attend to certain sounds, hence developing their vocabulary use (DeVries, 2004 p78). Conclusion In conclusion, literacy activities that involve storytelling and letter writing have been found to key contributors in the developing of reading and writing skills of children. Both literacy activities incorporated relevant strategies that helped the children develop their emergent literacy. The main observation made from the two activities is that they were both interactive between the teacher and the children involved, hence development of reading and writing skills of the children. References Bodrova, E. & Leong D.J. (1996). Tools of the mind: The Vygotskian approach to early childhood education. Merrill: Ohio. Collins III, J.W., & O’Brien, N.P. (Eds.). (2003). The Greenwood dictionary of education. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. DeBruin-Parecki, A. (2007). Lets Read Together: Improving Literacy Outcomes with Adult- Child Interactive Reading Inventory. Baltimore: Brookes. DeVries, R. (2004). Why the child’s construction of relationships is fundamentally important to constructivist teachers. Prospects, 34(4), 411-422. Edie, D & Schmid, D. (2007) ‘Research on Brain Development’, Brain Development and Early Learning, 1, 1, pp.1-4, Emergent Literacies. [Online]. Available at: http://uelplus.uel.ac.uk/webct/urw/lc4130001.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct (Accessed:29 November 2012) National Early Literacy Panel. (2008). Developing early literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy. Rhyner, P. (2009). Emergent Literacy and Language Development: Promoting Learning in Early Childhood. New York: Guilford. Department for Education and Skills (DFES), (2012) ‘The Early Years Foundation Stage’,  London DFES https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00023-2012 Larson and Marsh J. (2007) Making Literacy Real. Sage Publication Riley J. (2006) Language and Literacy. Sage publication White, H. (2005) Developing Literacy Skills in the Early Years. Sage Publication Whitehead, M R. (1997) Language and Literacy in the Early Years (2nd ed), London: Paul Chapman Read More