Literacy Playshop Approach

This approach allows student's to use their own unique creativity in multiple ways. They can work alone or together, and compile a story, play, or movie with different kinds of toys, puppets, stuffed animals, etc. Through writing, reading, and acting these movies come alive. It is incredible to see what students can come up with either together or individually. 

Certain aspects come into this type of playshop, such as characterization. Students have to use different tones for different character's voices . They also must show which character is speaking. This is very rewarding for the children because after they are finished, they can watch the final product and show it to friends.

This method is a very rich way to incorporate literacy into students' learning. They are practicing skills and they don't even realize it because they are having so much fun doing so. It also works on their social skills and teaches them how to work with others. This approach is very beneficial and should be used in all early childhood classrooms!

A Classroom Without Furniture

This classroom is bare

With room for activities 

No seating charts here

The children can move

All while they grow and they learn

And knowledge is gained

Collaboration

This classroom is united

We are all a team

Literacy in the Community

Living in a college town, literacy looks slightly different here than in other places. There are flyers posted on campus about different concerts, philanthropies, and sports teams. There are always different posters of the IU athletes on signs and light posts as well. This type of literacy is important for my community because it keeps people updated on events and activities coming up. Although we have the IDS newspaper, not every student has access to it or reads it every week. Flyers are the biggest way for individuals or teams and groups to get their word out to other people.

As for more world-wide literacy, social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are also a form of literacy in my community. These types of media help individuals stay connected with their friends, family, and colleagues.This is an extremely important form of literacy to keep people connected. Facebook can also be used to read news articles, whether it be national news or local, which keeps people updated on the world around them.

Language Learners

Thinking of children as "language learners" is much more in-depth than I had realized. After reading Children's Language by Judith Wells Lindfors I began to truly understand the complexity of the overlooked task of learning a language. Lindfors discusses how by kindergarten, children have already had their own language experience. She refers to the child as an "observer" as well as a "participant." These children have watched and listen to everyone around them communicate with each other, and they have learned to mimic this to the best of their ability. This, though most believe to be a child's only connection with language at this point, is not. Children can learn language through written text as well as through pictures. This helps to solidify the importance of literacy in children of all ages. Even these picture books can make a huge advance in these kids' language development. I have seen this to be true when working with children as young as two-years-old. Even conversations that parents have with their children when they are babies can stay with the children's language throughout their years of learning.


"Every child is born with universal linguistic structures wired in the mind/brain." (Lindfors pg 9)

Kinderchat: Documenting with Photographs

Kinderchat provides rich information on early childhood education and classroom characteristics. The post that I observed was called Documenting with Photographs. This is a technique that I have seen in every classroom that I have had field experience in, as well as in my class lessons. These experiences have involved teachers taking photos of children's work so that the child can take his/her work home, but the teacher can also display the masterpiece in the classroom.

Taking photographs of children's art is very beneficial in telling a story and a purpose of an event or an experience. This can be done by having the child explain what is meant by his/her picture, while the teacher writes it down. Children's art will usually tell an entire story, and the teacher needs to make sure that this story is captured by photos as well as words.

This is also a good way to document your student's learning and development; specifically their development of ideas and literacy. It can be a rewarding experience for the documenter and the child because it can help both to understand the value of the collected artwork. 

Teaching Strategies for Early Literacy

There are 8 essential teaching strategies for literacy in an early childhood development. These strategies provide children with support, materials, settings, and experiences that are appropriate for their development. These specific strategies are listed below.

1. Storybook Reading (read alouds)

reading aloud to children can get them comfortable with literacy. Having story time daily will acquire language skills, will form word-sound awareness, stimulate cognitive skills, and will build motivation, curiosity, and memory in children.

2. Phonological Awareness Activities

These types of activities build child's language skills. Through phonemic awareness, children will learn to associate sounds with symbols and create links to decoding skills for reading as well as word recognition.

3. Shared Book Experience

This type of activity promotes whole-class readings followed by discussion and exploration of the book. Connecting the class around one book can be very benficial due to the use of collaborative learning. This can support a child's reading and comprehension by providing a safe environment for the children to practice reading techniques. 

4. ABC Activities

Activities centered around the alphabet are a great way for children to learn and practice alphabet recognition. This can be done in many ways; ABC mat, letter search and find, alphabet discovery bottle, letter "I Spy", and many others. These different games make letter-learning fun for children while also teaching them in unique yet effective ways.

5. Rich Teacher Talk

Engaging children in conversation in large groups, small groups, and one-on-one. This can be accomplished by using rich language, listen and respond to what children say, and repeating their sentences back to them in a more developed way.

6. Support for Emergent Reading

This gives opportunities to encourage children to read books, environmental print, and other print. These resources should be provided in the class library and even in other areas such as the dramatic play area for the children to immerse themselves in this type of reading.

7. Support for Emergent Writing

Encourage children to write in whatever form is developmentally appropriate for them as an individual. This includes scribbling, single letters, letter strings, and words. You can support this by having the children first scribble a picture and then the teacher should write down what the meaning of the picture is to the child. Then once they start writing letters the teachers can support this by talking to the child about what the meaning is of his/her writing. this progresses until the child can write words and sentences on his/her own. 

8. Integrated, Context-focused Activities 

This is focused on each child's interests. The teacher should provide materials and activities that support the children's specific hobbies to encourage enjoyment in learning. 

The link below describes more in-depth these literacy strategies and how they can be incorporated into 

the classroom.

http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/200303/Essentials.pdf

Dramatic Play in Literacy

Dramatic play is when children each have a  role that they act out. This is a very important part of learning for preschoolers. It allows children to leave the norms of reality, be someone or something that they are not, and act out in dramatized situations. This supports the children's developmental skills and helps them to better understand how the world works.

Dramatic play can also be incorporated into literacy. This bring the benefits of literacy and the benefits of dramatic play together into one aspect of learning for children. In this type of literacy, the teacher and the students will have a shared reading experience. This is when the teacher is reading aloud to the students, and the students are actively engaged and participating in the story. The type of story chosen for dramatic play is very important. One example of a vital characteristic of a book for a shared reading experience is repetition. If a book have repetition, it is easy for the children to catch on and be able to join in with the reader, which in turn keeps them more engaged in the story.

Creating roles for the children to play to go along with the book is a great way to create dramatic play in a read aloud. The students can each be given a role as a character, and wear bibs with the character's picture on it to identify who is what character. One book that this activity can be easily incorporated is the book The Mitten by Jan Brett.

For this book, each child can represent a different animal in the book, and any extra children can represent the mitten. As the story is read allowed, the child who is representing the animal on the current page will be acknowledged and have to fit into the "mitten." This makes the story much more interactive and interesting to the students.

Another way to get children involved in the story is by having them represent an aspect of the book for example in the book The Jacket I Wear in the Snow by Shirley Neitzel. 

The students are able to stand for the different articles of clothing in this book by having a printed out word of the article of clothing as well as an actual piece of the clothing. Then when the clothes are said in the story the student who represents the clothing can stand up. With this books great use of repetition, this kind of activity can be very enjoyable for children. After reading this aloud in the class, the teacher can keep the book in the classroom and provide all of the clothes hat are in the book in the dramatic play area. This allows for children to continue to explore this book and make up their own unique way of using dramatic play with the story.

Dramatic play through literacy can ignite interests in the children that they may not normally have, while also being in collaboration with not only the teacher but the peers in the classroom. This can greatly increase the enjoyment through story-telling, and can also improve developmental skills of children. This is an activity that should be incoporated into all preschools and early childhood programs.  

Bringing Literacy Into the Home

Studies have shown that the major reasons why children are under-prepared for reading is due to the lack of printed material at home, as well as one-on-one story time with a parent or caregiver. This is why bringing literacy into the home is so important.

Q: What is take home literacy?
A: Take home literacy is a way for children to bring their literacy to their home-life. They can be in "bags" or "kits" that the children bring from school, and have their parent or caregiver read it to them. They can stem from themes discussed in the classroom, or from the individual child's interests. These sets contain multiple books for the parents to read, as well as easier books that the children can try reading on their own. They also have materials and activities that correlate with the chosen theme. This gives the child a more in-depth understanding of the material being taught, while also improving their abilities to read, listen, and comprehend.

Take home literacy is the most direct connection made between school life and home life. Having the constant themes and story-telling or read alouds in a child's life can greatly improve his or her ability and desire to read. It also benefits the child to collaborate with his or her family through literacy, causing reading  to be associated with the feeling of comfort.

Below is a video that gives a great example of how to create a take home literacy kit. 

Benefits of Reading Aloud

Reading aloud is one of the most important literary activity for children to engage in. The main benefit from children getting read to is that it helps them to acquire early language skills and can ultimately set them up for success in reading and comprehension.

• "Children who fall seriously behind in the growth of critical early reading skills have fewer opportunities to practice reading. Evidence suggests that these lost practice opportunities make it extremely difficult for children who remain poor readers during the first three years of elementary school to ever acquire average levels of reading fluency." Torgeson, J. Avoiding the Devasting Downward Spiral, American Educator. (2004)

This activity can also build curiosity and motivation in the child, due to the language stimulation taking place. Also, this personal child-parent or child-adult interaction builds a sense of comfortability that can later be linked to books and reading. This can create more interest in reading for these children and later life. They could also begin to see reading as a coping mechanism due to the complacent ties formed to books through reading aloud.

Reading aloud also teaches children the skill of listening. This is very beneficial because it is an important characteristic for students to have when entering school. This can ultimately increase students' success in their schooling, while decreases the risk of having future school-related issues as an adolescent.

Below is a link to a short video discussing the importance of reading aloud to your children at home. It also provides multiple ways in which you, as a parent can incorporate reading into your child's every day life, as well as an easy way to create readings in your home that cater to your child's own personal interests.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HThtiOkD2k#

Literacy Is A Cultural Practice Article

The most interesting part of this article is was the explanation that every family is literate. It described how every family has its own way of communicating, whether it be with words or symbols, and each family uses these in a different way. This shows how even each family in different cultures has its own form of literacy. These diversities need to be incorporated into the classroom for students to receive a rounded eduction.