Early Literacy: Building a Early Literacy: Building a Strong FoundationStrong Foundation
Early Literacy: Building a Early Literacy: Building a Strong FoundationStrong Foundation
Dr. Denise P. Gibbs, DirectorDr. Denise P. Gibbs, DirectorAlabama Scottish Rite FoundationAlabama Scottish Rite Foundation
Learning Centers Learning Centers
[email protected]@aol.com
In this session, we will….
• get familiar with essential early literacy skills including: oral language, print concepts (experiences with books) and phonological awareness.
• Learn about techniques, which can be used in every day interactions with children to stimulate oral language development.
• Learn about techniques, which can be used in every day interactions with children to stimulate development of early print concepts.
• Learn about techniques, which can be used in every day interactions with children to stimulate phonological awareness skills.
Emergent Literacy: Infant’s
environment…
•Skills which lead to literacy begin in earliest infancy as the baby has..–interactions involving talking
–interactions involving print
Five Key Environmental
Factors…
•“Good” language partners•“Positive” experiences with
print•Phonological awareness and
letter recognition•Family attitudes•“Effective” storybook activities.
Importance of early experiences…
•Research indicates that the environment of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers plays a critical role in their successful reading development. – What we do every
day (from the daywe bring them home from the hospital) really matters!
Creating positive experiences involving
talking• Talk or sing during most Talk or sing during most
interactions interactions with the baby.with the baby.– Do use correct speech sounds-”NO
BABY TALK” – Don’t use long sentences– Do talk/sing directly TO the baby– Do use a gentle and loving tone of
voice– Make intonation “interesting” and
varied– Do say baby’s name often! (it
cues them to listen to what comes next as they get older)
Never too young for Never too young for positive experiences with positive experiences with
talkingtalking
Creating positive experiences involving
talking
• Some things to say….Some things to say….–While changing a diaper
•Ooo, Cam you’re wet! Wet-all dry, stinky-all clean, wet diaper, stinky diaper, clean diaper
•Change your diaper-all done–While giving a bottle
•Time to eat, you’re hungry, hungry baby, mmmm good milk, all gone milk
Create positive experiences involving
talking
•While giving a bath– Water, soap,
wash your arm, wash your leg, wash your…
– All clean, towel, dry your….
Create positive experiences involving
talking
•While feeding– Mmmm yum
carrots!– More carrots– Want some
carrots– Another bite– Eat carrots– All gone carrots
Create positive experiences involving
talking
While holding or rocking
– SING! – Snuggle– speak your speak your
heartheart – I love you. you’re a big boy, my sweet baby, I love you’re fingers, sweet little fingers
Create positive experiences involving
talking
• Include siblings/cousins!– Babies like
to listen to people who are closerto their size!
Morgan-3 yrsCam-3 mo
Cam-3 yrsAubrey-17 mo
Good language partners provide indirect
language stimulation
•Indirect language stimulation – do not tell the child to “say this” or to “say that”!
•Child may withdraw from speaking due to the pressure to perform.
–Do provide words to “frame” the child’s play and activities.
Indirect language stimulation techniques
• Parallel TalkParallel Talk (child-centered)– Adult describes what the child is doing,
hearing, seeing, etc as he does it•You’re building the fence.•You see the horse.(adult gives the child 4-5 words to describe the action that child is involved in)
Indirect language stimulation techniques
• Self-TalkSelf-Talk (adult-centered)• Adult describes what she is doing,
hearing, seeing, etc as she does it•I’m washing your foot.•I got the soap(give the child words for what he sees you doing)
Indirect language stimulation techniques
• DescriptionDescription (object-centered)• Adult describes the objects the child
sees or interacts with.•That car is broken.•That block is big.(give the child words to describe things he seems to be interested in looking at)
Indirect language stimulation techniques
• CommentsComments • Adult gives information or describes
upcoming activities.•We are going to go outside.•We need to put on our shoes.•This is our new friend.(provides words to help the child begin to think with words)
Indirect language stimulation techniques
• Open-ended questions (can not Open-ended questions (can not be answered yes or no nor with a be answered yes or no nor with a single word answer)single word answer)
• Adult asks questions to get the child to verbalize their thinking.
•What do you think will happen if the lid gets stuck?
•I wonder what we use this thing for?
Indirect language stimulation techniques
• ExpansionExpansion • Adult repeats the child’s short sentences
or single-word utterances as an adult would have said them.
•Child says “ball”– Adult says “It is a ball.”
•Child says “doggy run”– Adult says “Yes, the doggy is
running.”
(Lets the child know you understood them and that you were paying attention!)
Indirect language stimulation techniques
• Expansion PlusExpansion Plus • Adult lengthens the child’s short
sentences or single word utterances and adds a new bit of information.
•Child says “ball”•Adult says “It is a ball. It’s a red ball”(Lets child know you understood them and have words to say more soon!)
Indirect language stimulation techniques
• RepetitionRepetition • When child says something with
speech sound errors, the adult repeats the utterance with correct sounds.
• Child says “wed wabbit”•Adult says “red rabbit”(Lets child hear correct sounds without being “corrected”.)
Use everything in the environment for language
learning
Pets! Anything
that moves is
interesting
Cooking!
Snack time
A word about vocabulary and ses….
• Average child from welfare family hears about 3 million words per year while average child from professional family hears about 11 million words per year. – By age 4 the gap is 13 to 45 million words
heard!– Child from professional family speaks more
than adult from welfare family
(Hart and Risley, 1995)
Creating positive experiences involving
•Start book play early.Start book play early.–Earliest books need toEarliest books need to
•Have good pictures of Have good pictures of familiar thingsfamiliar things
•Not have page clutterNot have page clutter•Be durable!Be durable!•Be “played-with” every Be “played-with” every day (over and over and day (over and over and over)over)
Creating positive experiences involving
print• Let’s see some in Let’s see some in
sequence….sequence….– Single items on page with very familiar
things– Multiple pictures on the page but
separated– Touchy Feely– Repetitive and predictable– Rhyme– Tag - Big brother “reading” to little
brothers!
Touchy Feely Books
Adjectives
Repetitive
Familiar things
Repetitive and
predictableand
rhyming
Familiar and connected
And rhyming!
Children sharing Children sharing booksbooks
• What is Morgan doing?• What is Jordan doing?• Can you tell what Cameron is doing?
Tag (from Leap Frog) – Morgan can read to his brothers!
Dialogic Reading: the “right way to do books”
• First described by Whitehurst in 1988.
• Wonderful way to use books for:1.Language growth2.Social connection3.Positive print experiences
Dialogic Reading – Little one takes the
lead• Don’t worry about the baby not “sitting
still.• Coming and going is really fine!
Dialogic Reading: Question types-CROWD
• C – Completion questions (e.g., Baby bear said, somebody's been sleeping in my bed and________!)
• R – Recall questions (e.g., Can you remember what happened to baby bear's chair?)
• O – Open-ended questions (e.g., What is happening in this picture?)
• W – Wh-questions (e.g., Who ate baby bear's porridge?)
• D – Distancing questions to connect to world knowledge (e.g., Have you ever been for a walk in the woods? Tell me about your walk.)
Dialogic Reading: PEER
• P – Prompt - Ask child to respond to the story through using any of the CROWD questions. (e.g., Can you remember what happened to baby bear's chair? Student answers It got broken.)
• E – Evaluate - Evaluate or affirm a child’s response. (e.g., That's right.)
• E – Expand – Add information to the child's response. (e.g., Goldilocks sat in it and it got broken.)
• R – Repeat – Ask the child to repeat your expanded comment. (e.g., Can you say that?)
Bed-time stories…Bed-time stories…Good Night Moon …Good Night Moon …
yet again!yet again!• What things happen during these
minutes?
That’s Not My Tractor
How about phonological awareness and then phonemic awareness
• Thinking about words – Words in phrases– Words in sentences
• Thinking about syllables– Compound words– Two syllable words
• Thinking about sounds – Rhyming words– First sound in the word
Powerful (and fun) Powerful (and fun) Phonological Awareness Phonological Awareness
ToolTool• Goldsworthy, C.L. (1998). A Sourcebook
of Phonological Awareness Activities: Children’s Classic Literature
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Word-level activities– Counting words
• That chair is too soft.
– Identifying missing words• forest, window, flowers / window flowers
– Identifying missing words in phrase/sentence
• Goldilocks woke up at once. / Goldilocks woke up at __.
– Supplying word• She tasted the porridge in the big __.
– Rearranging words• Girl little; I sleepy am; three Goldilocks and
bears the
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Syllable-level activities (use pictures from the story and print contexts)– Syllable counting
• Papa, nobody, porridge, chair, shiny, middle, Goldilocks
– Syllable deleting• Say bedroom without bed; say sleeping without -
ing
– Syllable adding• Add stairs to the end of up; add –est to the end of
for
– Syllable reversing• Add some to the end of body (bodysome) what do
you think the word was before we switched the parts
– Syllable substituting• Say asleep. Instead of sleep, say cross (across)
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Phoneme-level activities: 25 different types of activities– Beginning with sound matching
(initial)– Includes sound blending,
recognizing and producing rhyme– Identifying and matching sounds at
the beginning, middle, and end of words
– Concludes with deleting sounds, pig Latin, and phoneme switching.
• alphabet knowledge (AK)– : knowledge of the names and sounds
associated with printed letters • phonological awareness (PA):
– the ability to detect, manipulate, or analyze the auditory aspects of spoken language (including the ability to distinguish or segment words, syllables, or phonemes), independent of meaning
• rapid automatic naming (RAN) of letters or digits:– the ability to rapidly name a sequence of
random letters or digits
Report of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) 200911 Skills and Abilities that Predict Literacy
Success
Report of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) 200911 Skills and Abilities that Predict Literacy
Success
• RAN of objects or colors:– the ability to rapidly name a sequence of
repeating random sets of pictures of objects (e.g., “car,” “tree,” “house,” “man”) or colors
• writing or writing name: – the ability to write letters in isolation on
request or to write one’s own name • phonological memory:
– the ability to remember spoken information for a short period of time.
Report of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) 200911 Skills and Abilities that Predict Literacy
Success
• concepts about print: – knowledge of print conventions (e.g.,
left–right, front–back) and concepts (book cover, author, text)
• print knowledge:– a combination of elements of AK,
concepts about print, and early decoding
• .
Report of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) 200911 Skills and Abilities that Predict Literacy
Success
• reading readiness:– usually a combination of AK, concepts of
print, vocabulary, memory, and PA
• oral language:– the ability to produce or comprehend spoken
language, including vocabulary and grammar
• visual processing:– the ability to match or discriminate visually
presented symbols.
Some awesome Some awesome resourcesresources
Some awesome Some awesome resourcesresources
Preschool Early Literacy Assessment
Tools
• Test of Preschool Early Literacy – Authors: Lonigan, Wagner, Torgesen &
Rashotte– Publisher: ProEd www.proedinc.com– Ages 3 yrs to 5 yrs 11 mos.– Assesses print knowledge, definitional
vocabulary, and phonological awareness– Provides standard scores to compare child’s
performance to same-age peers
Preschool Early Literacy Assessment
Tools
• Individual Growth Development Indicators (IGDIs) http://igdis.umn.edu
• Picture naming, alliteration, rhyming
• Ages 3-5• Can graph results and provides
instructional suggestions
Get Ready to Read(www.GetReadytoRead.org)
• 20 question early literacy online screening test
• Literacy environment checklists• Literacy activities and materials
– Print knowledge– Emergent Writing– Listening (phonological) awareness
Read Together, Talk Together Kit A and Kit
B• Materials for dialogic reading!• Kit A for 2-3 year-olds / Kit B for 4-5
year-olds• Includes 20 picture books
– both fiction and nonfiction titles• Teacher and Parent Notes for each
book• Program Handbook explaining the
dialogic reading technique• Teacher Training Video• Parent Training Video
Every Child Ready to Read: Literacy Tips for
Parents (Lee Pesky Learning Center)
Topics are individually tailored for three age ranges–infant, toddler, and preschool–and include:
• read-aloud books to develop sound awareness
• perfect picture books for encouraging letter knowledge
• ways to promote verbal language and build vocabulary
• the benefits of symbolic play• fun (and educational) games for car trips• helping youngsters “write” at home• Literacy gift ideas for kids• warning signs of a learning disability