Teacher Would Teach/Facilitate a Child

¶ … teacher would teach/Facilitate a child to read and write.

Literacy -- Acquisition, Reinforcement, and Assessment in the Classroom

Learning to read and acquiring greater literacy skills is not something that occurs in a series of neat, definable steps, like learning how to drive or ride a bike. Ideally, a child's literacy education should occur even before he or she enters the classroom. "Babies are fascinated by bright colorful books. If an adult talks about the pictures and reads the words, this helps to develop language skills. The young child also begins to understand that the content of a book never changes...[Soon] children begin to play read and turn the pages of a favorite story while chanting parts of it aloud" if they are properly exposed to reading at a young age ("How children learn to read," 2007, BBC). By turning the pages of a book, associating words and letters with meaning, and associating pictures with symbols, the foundational skills of literacy are laid within the young child's neurological makeup.

Thus repetition and recognition are two key elements of acquiring literacy. This is one of the reasons why small children take such delight in having the same books read again and again ("How children learn to read," 2007, BBC). The first foundation of literacy, however, comes even earlier -- through listening to others speak and speaking themselves. "Young children continue to develop listening and speaking skills as they communicate their needs and desires through sounds and gestures, babble to themselves and others, say their first words, and rapidly add new words to their spoken vocabularies...By age one, most children begin linking words to meaning," although they may sometimes confuse words for certain kinds of objects with all similar objects, like calling all four-legged animals "doggie" (Koralek & Collins, 1997). By age two, children can usually make simple sentences like "all gone" (Koralek & Collins, 1997).

As their language skills grow, young children may begin to tell stories themselves, and can "talk about the people, feelings, places, things, and events in the book and compare them to their own experiences" (Koralek & Collins, 1997). A teacher can read a book about a simple, common experience, like a child accompanying a parent to the store, and ask the children to compare and contrast their own experiences to the child in the tale. Teachers can incorporate writing into such lessons by asking children to write a pretend grocery list.

Although reading instruction in the classroom will be more formalized than the exposure the child experiences at home, it too must be built around the same principles of recognition and repetition. As early as possible, children must be exposed to familiar word patterns, in books that are read aloud and also in posters with simple phrases in the classroom. Having the alphabet posted encourages children to begin to notice letters from their names or other familiar words. Ideally, the alphabet should contain pictures, such as an apple next to the letter 'a' to show the connection between letters and words.

Teachers should also prompt children to identify printed words such as their names by offering them name tags, and ask them to write their names on paintings and creations to identify themselves. This lays the foundation of writing, which should be acquired at the same time as reading skills. Teachers can reinforce reading, writing, and meaning even beyond specific reading or writing units by doing things like talking about something exciting, like a trip the class is planning, writing information about the trip on the chalkboard, and then reading the information back to the class, to show the connection between speech, writing, and reading. After the trip, the children can write short thank-you letters to the persons who helped with the excursion, perhaps illustrated with pictures to enhance the connection between verbal and visual things, and symbolism and real-life objects.

Additionally, in classroom assignments, even for the pre-literate: "sorting, matching, classifying, and sequencing materials such as beads, a box of buttons, or a set of colored cubes, contribute to children's emerging literacy skills...[and]strengthen and improve the coordination of the small muscles in their hands and fingers. They use these muscles to control writing tools such as crayons, markers, and brushes" (Koralek & Collins, 1997). Thus even simple crafts and fun art projects can expand literacy skills, as can games like playing a matching game such as concentration, which show children that

"some things are exactly the same" like letters, and this "leads children to the understanding that the letters in words must be written in the same order every time to carry meaning" (Koralek & Collins, 1997). Reciting rhyming poems or singing songs that contrast short and long letter sounds teach children phonics basics. "Research has shown that phonemic awareness is the best predictor of early reading skills. Phonemes, the smallest units of sounds, form syllables, and words are made up of syllables. Children who understand that spoken language is made up of discrete sounds - phonemes and syllables - find it easier to learn to read" (Koralek & Collins, 1997). "When children achieve phonological awareness, they are able to think about how words sound, apart from what words mean. For example, they appreciate that the word kitchen has two spoken parts (syllables), that the word bed rhymes with bread and that the words cat and king begin with the same sound. Children can and should develop some degree of phonological awareness in the preschool years, because it is a crucial early step toward understanding the alphabetic principle and, ultimately, toward learning to read" (Burns, 1998). Children who are unable to do so, after repeated exposure to the concept of different word sounds being connected to different letters may experience difficulty later on, and may need to receive added attention in this area.