Emergent Literacy

I enjoyed both articles for this week.  The first article I read was Parents and Teachers Talk About Literacy and Success, I found it interesting and eye opening that the parents and teachers were not talking to one another, but to an evaluator.  It was eye opening in the fact that I remember when I used to assume my empathy was needed knowing that the families had outside issues (poverty, long work hours, no transportation, etc…) I think all of that changed when I began doing hoome visits with my families.  Through home visits, you get to see a child’s home environment and you get to observe the differnet types of print available.  On home visits I get permission to take pictures of the children and their families in and around their homes to make classroom books. 

In the article Genres at home and a t school:  Bridging the known to the new, it talked about the types of print and literacy in a families home.  Since I began working with the More at Four Program, I have tried hard to make those connections.  I’m not sure if it started from the ECERS scales or just because it made sense, but I incorporate restaurant menus, grocery lists, telephone books, cookbooks, blue print books, and others into the many learning areas of preschool.  The children I have had the pleasure of teaching had a knowledge of these things and we used them quite often.  My favorite was one little girl wanted to see if her name was in the phone book,  we searched, we found her mom and grandmother, but not her name so in the front of the phone book where you can but emergency numbers she wrote her name and a made up number to her cell phone.

I felt reassured with the video.  I have taken workshops on teaching english language learners.  I use many of the techniques I was taught.  My favorite is the taking of a family photo during home visits.  All my families enjoy coming in on the first day of school to see each others families.  Also, we do a lot of singing in our classroom.  We sing everything.  This also helps my children learn english.  I feel that the bottom line to teaching all children is to be patient and always offer a smile.  Our non-verbal lanugage helps greatly with communication.

In this article it followed a little Australian girl thorough a Reading Recovery lesson.  She was selected to be followed because she was considered a lower learner.  Reading Recovery is done daily and on a one-on-one basis.  A typical lesson is 30 minutes divided into three 10 minutes slots.  During the reading of the Little Red Hen, Eloise is often correcting her own mistakes in her reading.  The teacher offered a sort of support, she did interject information once Eloise self-corrected herself.  In the second slot Eloise is left alone to read.  After Eloise has had a turn to read the teacher comes back and comments on her reading.  Eloise does have a difficult time with decoding and comprehending.  In this part she is not making comments on what she is reading as before.  The article argues that Eloise was being expected to shift contexte like those who where marked as achievers.  The authors of the article suggest that the Reading Recovery program is training literate subjects in a narrow range of literacy skills.  They also argue that mandated teaching processes and testing rely on narrow definitions of what literacy learning is.

I felt for Eloise and the teacher.  The teacher was doing what she had been trained to do and Eloise was trying her hardest, knowing it wasn’t quite right.  I agree with the authors in that learning skills can not happen as a “one-size-fits all” sort of way.

From the articles this week it is evident that my job as a teacher is a great responsibility.  To help my at-risk children, which happens to be more than half of my class, I focus on their social and emotional development to get them ready for kindergarten.  In the article Promoting emergent literacy and social-emotional learning through dialogic reading, I found a new way to achieve this.  When disruptions have occurred in my room, I have usually handled them by asking the children how they feel about the situation and dive them words to help the other children understand his/her wants and needs.  Though I have read many of the stories in this article, I have never done so in a small group setting.  I will now. 

As I stated in an earlier log I had attended a workshop on embedding literacy in the preschool curriculum.  We used the article Repeated interactive read-alouds in preschool and kindergarten.  Everyone in my group took from this article the significance of oral language and analytical talk.  We discussed how sometimes we talk at children, but not talk with them.  I enjoyed reading this article again, and in less then a week.  I gained even more incite on how to incorporate multiple reads in my classroom.

Also from the workshop we discussed the importance of giving children informational text to further their learning and understanding of the world in which they live. In the article The Case for Informational Text, i reflected upon my own classroom and how I try to keep a variety of informational text available for my students according to their interest.  We are working on learning about Lebanon, for our school’s world fair and the children have enjoyed finding Lebanon in a world atlas as well as using a book that one of our families donated about the country. 

And for the last article Nurturing Emergent Readers Through Readers Theater, I have done some dramas and re-enactments from stories, but not enough.  I guess I have always felt that I was unsuccessful with them, because I did not get the children engaged in the story.  It was a book I choose and I choose who had which parts, depending on their shyness, and it was preformed once for the parents, in a graduation ceremony.  I think I know better know.

What a workshop.  I went with a friend earlier this week to a workshop offered by Project Enlightenment.  We learned statistics and the new focus from the reading world, Oral Language.  We also had to practice reading.  Reading and conversing through the second and third read of a story, but children listening during the first read, with no picture walk.  I also was shown how to define unfamiliar words without interrupting the flow of the story.  I enjoyed the networking and back patting from others and the presenters for what we preschool teachers do.  I admit I came away a little scared with the knowledge that I help build vocabularies and comprehension that the children will be tested on (EOG’s) in the third grade.  The presenters kept emphasizing that I as a preschool teacher must look beyond getting my children ready for Kindergarten, but also getting them ready for third and fourth comprehension assessments.  The power of pre-k is great.

I have used Microsoft only in my classroom before, simply because it was all we had.  It was amazing to watch the children type and type and type and then bring me their printed papers to read.  I always keep the line spacing on 2.0 so I could fill in what they wrote so I would remember.  This year I do not have a computer in my room and I am sorry for this sort of.  I know our world is evolving into this technological wonder, but I am an old fashioned person and like reading nursery rhymes, newspapers, and magazines.  All of these things are found in my classroom for the children to use and write about.

From the article A culpable CALP:  by Maruen Aukerman, I have to admit I wasn’t sure what it was talking about in the beginning.  I worked last year with a class of 18 ELL students.  I struggled with understanding their needs and wants as much as they struggled with me.  However, I would have never considered any of them negligible or limited.  We all spoke a different language or a different dialect.  Working in Preschool I never really had to do language proficiency tests, so to me all my students were where they needed to be.  We used lots of smiles, signs, and modeling.   The ideas are very helpful,  last semester I worked on an emergent curriculum project and my kids still refer to all the things they thought of and we carried out together.  I can see how following their interest will increase their confidence in the language/languages they speak, read and write.

First of all wow,  what a trip down memory lane.  I have to be honest and say that I have done some of the practices in the article N is for Nonsensical, by Susan B. Neuman.  In the very beginning of my career, the first facility I worked at encouraged all teachers to do letter of the week and tasks to support that letter.  I worked then with 2 year olds.  I was new, knew better, but really needed my job.  I did try to relate the letter of the week to things the children knew. 

As I grew older and more confident in my college degree and myself and moving from one facility to another, I put away the letter of the week  and begain to share stories.  Books that children would bring in from home, or back to school from the library, or books that they liked to read in the library area.  In my classroom today, we talk about letters, but usually after the book Chica, Chica, Boom, Boom has been read.  We do lots of reading in large groups, small groups, one on one.  I usually pick one new book a week that follows our theme and we read it and read it and read it.  I also add items from the book to each interest area as well as develop some art activities.  I’m feel confident that the children are getting what they need, because we are having fun!

Being a preschool teacher myself, I felt very overwhelmed with all that Ms. A. and Ms. B. do in a four hour period.  I enjoyed reading the model and was able to get some ideas to incorporate and reinforce some things that I already do in my classroom.  In the beginning of the year I also started journal writing with my preschoolers, my parents didn’t get the concept through many conferences.   How do I explain better to parents that writing begins with scribbling and then drawing.  One of the things I will incorporate is the small group journal writing time with topics.  Maybe in hindsight I see that I should have given children topics for thought instead of just free choice.

This study/article was interesting.  I think that Barbara Wasik, Mary Alice Bond and Annermarie Hindman, did a wonderful job.  I was surprised a little by the outcome of the control group versus the intervention group.  All children in this study were better prepared in literacy, but the study showed that training over a period of time works better than a one day session.  I also liked that they observed the teachers in action, which held the teachers accountable for what and how they were introducing literacy to the children in their class.