Literacy Development in the Early Years

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Literacy Development in the Early Years

• Morrow
• Chapter 4

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Theory and Research on How Children Acquire
Language

• Behaviorist Theory
• Nativist Theory
• Piagetian and Vygotskian Theories
• Constructivist Theory

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Behaviorist Theory

• Skinner defined language as the observed and
  produced speech that occurs in the interaction of
  speaker and listener.
• Children learn through imitation.
• Acquisition of language is enhanced and
  encouraged by positive reinforcement.
• Language is mediated by adults through
  ineractions.

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Nativist Theory

• Language is innate.
• Children internalize the rules of grammar without
  practice reinforcement and modeling.
• Children learn new patterns of language and
  unconsciously generate new rules.
• Language acquisition is motivated inside
  children learning is a natural ability.

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Piagetian and Vygotskian Theories

• Piagets theory of cognitive development is built
  on the principle that children develop through
  their activities.
• Children's words are egocentric, or centered in
  their own actions.
• Early language development relates to actions,
  objects and events they have experienced through
  touching, hearing, seeing, tasting, and smelling.

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Vygotskys Theory of Basic Learning

• Children learn higher mental functions by
  internalizing social relationships.
• The zone of proximal development is a range of
  social interactions between an adult and child,
  that ends when the child can function
  independently.
• Implications for language instruction are clear
  adults need to interact with children by
  encouraging motivation and supporting them.
• Through expansion and reinforcement of words by
  the adult, the child acquires new language.
• Positive interactions encourage practice which
  helps continue language development.

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Halladays Theory

• Language development is based on function.
• Instrumental personal need.
• Regulatory control others behavior.
• Interact ional to get along with others.
• Personal refers to self.
• Heuristic what, when, why, how
• Imaginative make believe.
• Informative communicate information.

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Language Development From Birth to Age 8.

• Neural shearing is the loss of brain cells.
  Neural shearing occurs as early as six months of
  age. When baby can no longer recognize sounds of
  language it has not heard.
• Synaptogenesis is the rapid development of neural
  connections.

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The Brain

• Motor cortex movement
• Cerebellum motor skills
• Temporal lobe auditory processes, learning,
  memory, and emotion.
• Wernickes area language understanding
• Brocas area speech production
• Frontal lobe planning, reasoning, emotional
  expression.
• Somatosensory cortex body sensations, touch,
  and temperature.
• Parietal lobe perceptions and processing.
• Occipital lobe visual processing.

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Stages in Language Development

• Children acquire language by moving through
  predictable stages. In doing so they discover the
  rules that govern the structure of language.
• Phonology sound
• Syntax grammar
• Semantics meaning
• There are 44 separate sounds or phonemes in
  English.
• They learn appropriate articulation,
  pronunciation, and intonation.
• Intonation involves pitch, stress, and juncture
• Pitch- how low or high a voice is when producing
  a sound.
• Stress- how loud or soft
• Juncture- pauses or connections between words

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Birth to One

• In the first few months of infancy, oral language
  consists of a childs experimenting with sound.
• Eight to ten months, babbling becomes more
  sophisticated.
• Eight to twelve months, children increase their
  comprehension of language dramatically their
  understanding of language far exceeds their
  ability to produce it.

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One to Two

• Childs oral language grows a great deal.
• Utters many sounds with adult intonation.
• Uses content words, such as nouns and verbs, but
  omits functions words.
• Language grows tremendously once the child begins
  combining words.
• 18 months most children can pronounce 4/5 of the
  English phonemes and use 9-20 words.

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Two to Three

• Between two and three is the most dramatic in
  terms of language development.
• Oral vocabulary grows from 300 words to 1000.
• Telegraphic sentences of two to three words
  continue to be most frequent, but syntactic
  complexity continues to develop.

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Three to Four

• Syntactic structures added to the childs
  repertoire including plurals and regular verbs.
• As they approach age four children seem to have
  acquired all the elements of adult language.
• Generate language and apply basic rules that
  govern it.

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Five to Six

• Sound very much like adults
• Vocabularies of approximately 2500 words.
• Tendency to be creative, inventing their own
  words if they do not have one for a particular
  situation.

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Seven to Eight

• Developed grammar that is almost equivalent to
  adults.

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Helping English Language Learners in the Classroom

• The number of English language learners with
  different languages and different language
  proficiency is increasing rapidly.
• A dialect is an alternative form of one
  particular language used in a different cultural,
  regional, or social group. Such differences can
  be so significant that an individual from a
  region with one English dialect may not be able
  to understand someone from another region because
  of pronunciation of letter sounds is so
  different.
• Teachers must be aware of different dialects and
  help youngsters with the comprehension of
  standard dialects.

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Strategies for Helping English Language Learners.

• Include print in the classroom that is from
  childrens first language.
• Suggest that ELL students create books in their
  first language and share their stories.
• Be sure that children from different language
  backgrounds have the opportunity to read and
  write with others who speak their language, such
  as parents, aides, and other children in the
  school.

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Language Experience Approach

• It is also important to support the learning of
  English.
• Allow children to talk.
• Have routine story times.
• Provide thematic instruction that elicits talk,
  reading, and writing, and heightens interests in
  exciting topics.
• Write charts based on talk about childrens home
  life and experiences in school.
• Encourage children to copy experience charts,
  have them dictate their ideas for you to write,
  and encourage them to write themselves.

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Developing Language in the Childs First Year

• Surround infants with sound.
• Surround infants with sensory objects.

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Language Development at Ages One and Two

• Scaffolding- adult provides a verbal response for
  baby who is not yet capable of making response
  itself, this provides a language model.
• New experiences help develop language.
• Overgeneralizations
• Materials

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Strategies for Language Development in Early
Childhood Classrooms.

• Children need constant opportunities to use
  language in social situations with adults and
  other children.
• Teachers organize centers for learning, one for
  each content area that includes materials for
  encouraging language use.
• Examples on pg. 91-93.

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Expanding Vocabulary Word Meaning in 2nd and 3rd
grade

• Semantic Maps diagrams that help children see
  how words are related to one another (example on
  page 98)
• Context clues Using clues from surrounding text
  is an important way of figuring out word
  meanings. Leaving blanks in sentences for
  children to determine the appropriate word,
  helping them to understand the meaning of that
  word.
• Vocabulary books
• Word parts
• The dictionary

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Informal Talk Without the Teacher

• Aesthetic talk revolves around childrens
  literature.
• Efferent talk used to inform and persuade.
• Dramatic activities another avenue for
  different types of talk.

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Assessment

• Checklists practical and provide concise
  outlines for teachers and appropriate slots for
  individual children. (p. 102)
• Anecdotal records
• Tape recordings

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KidwatchingCh 3

• Print Awareness

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(No Transcript)
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Print Awareness Some Developmental Moments

• Children who are aware of print will pay
  attention to
• Environmental print
• Shared writing
• Story books
• Alphabet books
• Children recognize shapes and forms of letters

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• When children point to print and ask
• What does that say? or when they write a few
  letter like shapes and call out
• This says Mama!
• They are demonstrating the understanding that
  print involves an act of meaning.
• Reading begins at this point of awareness

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Understanding What Symbols Mean

• Reading is not alphabetic to young children
• They do not know that symbols relate to sounds
• Example twenty- two-month-old Jacob points to
  any print, he reads it either as Jacob or stop.
• He knows that print means, but he hasnt yet
  developed the understanding that letters in
  English relate to sounds to make up words.

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• Three and four year old readers use colors,
  pictures, shapes, and textures to predict what he
  print might say.
• Example they see the print on a Crest tube and
  they say toothpaste, or the print on the cover of
  a book says lion
• Overtime they discover that print can do more
  than label

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Understanding How Symbols Mean

• Size and Length
• Children think long strings of letters (PANOBOB)
  represent big things.
• Barn or granddaddy.
• Short strings of letters (BMD) represent small
  things.
• Salamander or Rebecca
• They are using real life objects to compare
  Barns are bigger than salamanders and
  granddaddies are bigger than little girls.

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• Unique Designs
• Children often relate letters to people, places,
  or things.
• Example two-year-old Zada reads the word Zoo as
  her own name.
• She does not understand that Z makes the first
  sound in her name she sees Zada as a unique
  signature that represents, or belongs to her.
• With time Zada will learn that the letter Z can
  be used to spell her name, as well as zoo, and
  the name of her classmate, Zia.

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The Concept of Word

• Children will gain more information about written
  language, as they do this they will develop a
  hypothesis about what makes a word a word.
• They notice that words are certain lengths and
  have internal variation.
• They will realize that words can only be words if
  they look a certain way.
• Very young children will begin to realize that
  written symbols have conditions that make them
  interpretable.
• Children do not grasp that words must look
  different if they are to say different things.
• Example Carlos wrote a sign and read it aloud
  (No Girls Allowed in My Bedroom. When asked if
  this applies to his mother, Carlos revised the
  meaning without changing the writing It says,
  No Girls Allowed Except My Mom.
• Overtime children will realize that words are
  going to say different things, they must look
  different. Children who dont know many letters
  they may use an few letters but change the order
  of the letters to represent different words.
• Example Aster wrote P R i W Pencil, R P
  iPaper, P E I OEnvelope
• Aster understands that graphic differences
  support different intentions. She uses the 10-12
  different letters she knows to write anything she
  wants.

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Directionality

• As adults we read left to right, top to bottom
• Young children may read bottom to top, right to
  left, or diagonal.
• Spanish and English print is read left, to right.
• Chinese, Hebrew, and Arabic are written from
  right to left, or vertically.
• Teachers need to take into consideration
  childrens varied literacy experiences,
  especially when they ask children to look at the
  first letter or write the first sound you hear.

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Understanding How Letters Relate to Sounds

• Children will start to recognize that there is a
  relationship between letters and sounds.
• Example C-R-E-S-T could not spell toothpaste
  because it starts with a C.
• Children will start to focus more strategically
  on the print rather than the context.
• Over time, children become increasingly sensitive
  to letter-sound relationships and to words.

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Guidelines for Evaluation

• Taking stock of students print awareness formally
  and informally will help you understand each
  student and where their coming from.
• Knowledge about the print in the local
  environment
• Hypothesis about what and how symbols mean
• Understanding of written language functions
• Understanding of written language features,
  including graphic characteristics, letter-sound
  relationships, and phonics.
• Views of self as a reader/author/literate
  individual

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Informal Print Awareness Evaluation

• In preschool and kindergarten classrooms,
  informal evaluation of print awareness takes
  place on a daily basis.
• Questions to think about while recording your
  information
• What does the child know about print?
• What evidence is there that print awareness is
  developing ?
• When a child produces something unexpected or
  unconventional what does it tell about the
  childs knowledge?
• This will help teachers plan instruction and
  activities that are within your students zones
  of proximal development or that connect with what
  children already know and challenge them into new
  directions.
• Examples of ways to set up informal situations
  that enrich the curriculum and at the same time
  promote children's development
• Print from Home
• Environmental Print Walks
• Photo Shoots
• Print Scrapbooks
• Print Displays
• Word Study Centers
• Play

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Formal Print Awareness Evaluation

• To more formally evaluate childrens print
  awareness, carefully collect a set of print items
  that reflects elements of the popular culture of
  your local area.
• Collect items that children are familiar with and
  relates to their culture environment.
• These items are not used to compare children or
  to count how many pieces of print they recognize.
• The pieces are used to help you learn how your
  students respond to various kinds of print.

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Techniques for Questioning and Interaction

• Print awareness procedures may be implemented
  with varying degrees of formality and may be used
  in one-on-one situations or adapted for small
  groups or whole-group settings.
• Look on page 34

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I already know how to read Ch 4

• By Prisca Martens

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How do we read and write?

• Sarah started reading
• Books
• Signs
• Labels
• Birthday cards
• She and learned the rules of reading and writing
  left to right, the letters of the alphabet, and
  punctuation.

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• Sarah is 3 yrs old, and her reading and writing
  is not conventional.
• Her sophistication and understanding, had
  authenticity, power, and legitimacy of her
  literacy.
• Sarah had two significant experiences in the
  alphabet and writing her name.

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Sarah Writes Her Name

• Sarah went to preschool and was determined to
  learn.
• First, she wanted to spell her name.
• She practiced learning the letters in her name,
  and recognizing them on signs, menus, candy
  wrappers, all forms of print.
• A week later, Sarah tries to write her name.

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• Sarah has trouble writing letters correctly, the
  S is in uppercase and the rest is in lower case.
• She writes her name backwards for 4 days, then
  she turns it around but now the S is reversed.
  This went one for one year.
• Now she learned how to write Matthew, Mommy, and
  Daddy.
• These were personal to Sarah.

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Sarah Discovers the Alphabetic Principle

• Sarah wanted to a thank you note, and invented
  her own language.
• I love you was ILU.
• 2 was to
• She read books she already knew, not reading any
  new ones.
• She used her finger, with landmark pictures to
  keep the story moving.

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Sarahs Placeholder Stick

• Sarah uses verbal placeholders when not knowing
  how to write a word and she moved on.
• It gave her strategy when she was unsure of a
  word.
• Her figures had heads, arms, legs, bodies, and
  hair that covered the head.
• Large heads in her drawings, reflected her
  positive self image.

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• She used her place holder stick for four mounts.
• This reinforced her confidence that not knowing
  will not prevent her from writing.
• The place holder stick gives her central focus on
  making meaning, with out paralyzing her writing.

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Refining Writing Through Names

• Sarah knew how to spell her family names, and now
  shifted her focus on friends names.
• She began writing lists of her friends names.
• She began writing beyond syllabic-alphabetically,
  to more detail.
• Katie was Kb.
• Chelsea was Tlce.
• Jesse was jse
• Alex was Alzxs
• Belinda was Plid

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Refining the graphophonic System

• Sarah focused on spelling and punctuation, thus
  gaining knowledge with her experiences.
• She spelled mommy as mime, daddy as dade, and
  matthew as mavu.
• Spelling involves learning to integrate both
  graphic and phonological cues.

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Integrating the Graphophonic System into Writing

• Her invention of the syllabic hypothesis focused
  on her phonics.
• Her spelling inventions were systematic and
  logical.
• Sarah was inventing her own personal system of
  phonics.
• Children perceive patterns of sound in a context
  which determines the representation of sound
  patterns.
• She continued interchanging letters, and writing
  them backwards.

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• She pronounce Matthew as Ma-few, Three and free,
  r as w, Terri as Te-Wee, Sarah as Sa-wah, gorilla
  as gowilla.
• Y representing R, tickets for TAKc.
• Teacher was tehr
• House as Yays
• She referred foo-foo to the letter Y.
• She invented a sophisticated writing system and
  understood about phonics, phonology.

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• Saras art improved with dominate focus on
  animals, snowmen, airplanes, angles, the church,
  the pastor, flowers, and curved sidewalks.
• Her figures had improved details
• Children write by drawing on orthographic
  information they perceive in their environment
• There are two principles deciding if something is
  readable. Quantitative meaning the word has two
  to four letters, and qualitative meaning there in
  a variation in those letters.
• Phonics provides a logic comprehensible spelling
  for a particular speller, it cant be counted on
  to provide a conventional spelling standard.

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Punctuation

• Punctuation is the means by which authors share
  with readers necessary information about meaning
  or language structure not contained in the words
  of a written text.
• Sarah invented ways to use fonts and graphics to
  enrich and punctuate her meanings.
• She used the size of to indicate volume, and
  invented puffy letters as well as incorporating
  color into her writing.

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• Sarah didnt incorporate spacing into her writing
  until she was well into kindergarten.
• Instead of spacing, Sarah used segmenting in her
  written language with periods.
• She was aware that a period mend stop or end and
  used them at the end of segments of her writing.
• Now she started to use commas, question marks and
  exclamation points.
• She demonstrated awareness that periods mark the
  end of linguistic units.

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• She demonstrated awareness that periods mark the
  end of linguistic units.
• As her experiences with reading, writing, and
  literature continued to grow , she refined those
  spellings to their standard forms.

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Integrating the Graphophonic System into Reading

• Sarahs reading made sense and sounded like
  language, now she wanted to connect her reading
  with the print.
• Sarah had several self-initiated strategies for
  integrating print and reading.
• She read like a writer and wrote like a reader,
  inventing how the systems relate and refining her
  inventions.
• Sarah uses familiar landmarks such as I, no,
  Mommy, or yes, as she read, pacing her reading so
  her finger and voice reached the landmarks at the
  same time. .

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• Sarahs awareness of visual cues increased and
  she integrated the visual information in the test
  with the nonvisual information in her head.
• She started to follow the print intensely, she
  occasionally over relied on it and did not
  produce a response that sounded like language.
• Sarah learned to be an independent responsible
  reader, who takes risks, monitors, and solves
  problems for herself.

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• Sarah continued to refine her literacy, expanding
  her understanding of what we do with written
  language and inventing how she can read and
  write.
• The more Sarah wove reading and writing into her
  everyday life, the more reasons she found to read
  and write.
• Without hesitation she invented not only reading
  and writing but the forms, particularly of
  writing to fill functions and purposes she
  needed.

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• Sarahs writing expanded quickly and her
  inquiries What are you doing with that written
  language.
• Sarah entered kindergarten as a sophisticated
  reader and writer in need of opportunities to
  continue to test and refine her inventions for
  functional authentic proposes in a literacy-rich
  environment and community.