Being an early childhood educator, I am often bombarded with parents who are concerned about their child’s progress because this is their first experience in school, and they want to make sure they are doing everything in their power to make sure it a successful one. There are a set of critical areas when it comes to emergent literacy and reading instruction. These include phonological awareness, print knowledge, oral language and vocabulary, and comprehension. In order to provide strategies to my parent I would provide a scale for them to complete in each area. I would ask them how they think their child falls within the scale one being the lowest, five being the highest. After the parent fills out the questionnaire, I would have a better sense of where the child struggles and the strategies I can provide for the parent to implement at home.
The questionnaire will consist of questions such as:
My child can identify all letters and sounds
My child asks and answers questions about a story
My child can distinguish words within a sentence
My child can combine and delete syllables from a word
My child can combine and delete a word from compound word
We live in a literate home environment (reading and writing materials are easily accessible, positive attitude about literacy, adult modeling of reading and writing activities, print rich environment)
“A rich home literacy environment, pretend play embedded with a variety of literacy tools, shared interactive book reading, and explicit instruction all serve important functions in creating a strong foundation for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Children with exposure to diverse oral language of varied complexity, exposure to print materials, access to writing implements, and an awareness of the function and purpose environmental print enter kindergarten primed for literacy learning” (Terrel & Watson, 2018, p.158). I would advice my parents that creating a positive literate home environment is the first step in helping a student who is struggling with beginning reading skills. Creating this type of environment gives a child a new sense of motivation to learn and gives them exposure to environmental print. The child will begin to make connections and build on this new knowledge. Parents need to actively participate in exposing their child to print everywhere. It can be on food packaging, mails, television, or even homework from their siblings. If they have older siblings, this is a perfect way to build literacy. Older siblings can participate in shared reading or pretend play activities focused on literacy such as playing school. It is important to make it fun and engaging, especially at this age level. Shared reading is beneficial because children begin to draw connections between pictures and words and oral words and alphabetic representations. Parents may even want to make their own books with real life pictures and words (Our family, our summer vacation, etc.). Children will be able to make the link between the pictures and words because they are familiar. This also increases their vocabulary through exposure. When they encounter this word again, they will already know its meaning. If the child struggles with comprehension, I would suggest the read, stop, think, ask, connect method. During shared reading, the parent will read the story and stop at strategic points to ask questions. The parent will then ask them to think about certain story elements to support their understanding. They will then connect what they have learned to their prior knowledge. Obviously, this is a higher order process but with correct scaffolding, modeling, and guidance the child would be able to comprehend text effectively. Lastly, hands on activities are always beneficial for early literacy and reading to teach basic phonics. Such things as hiding letters in sand, going on a letter hunt around the home, looking for words in the environment that start with a specific sound, and using many different forms of learning (kinetic, physical, visual, auditory, and reading/writing) would help the child target different parts of their brain and help them gain understanding of the letters and sounds. Their child will begin making gains in both reading and writing by building proficiency in phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, print knowledge, vocabulary and comprehension by using some of these strategies.
Student literacy is such an important aspect of a child’s education because it impacts so many different areas of their lives. Having a school wide comprehensive approach to literacy makes it easy for teachers to address parent concerns. There is a step by step protocol in addressing these concerns so we can provide early intervention if necessary. Classrooms are divided into Tiered Intervention groups when it comes to reading, writing and math. If teachers notice that a student is falling behind, the child will be placed in a tiered group that is appropriate to support the child in reading his/her grade level. This will continue until they have met their goals. Parents also have a choice to request that the school’s specialists review their child’s progress. This request will go to a screening committee at the school. This team will then decide whether the child should be checked for speech or language delays, attention deficit disorders, dyslexia or other conditions that might be affecting how the child is learning. If help is needed, it will be provided in the child’s regular classroom or with a specialist. It is very important for teachers, administration and parents to all be on the same page and share the same goals when it comes to learning. If problems arise, we all work together to solve it with the child’s best interest in mind.
Terrell, P., & Watson, M. (2018) Laying a Firm Foundation: Embedding Evidence-Based
Emergent Literacy Practices Into Early Intervention and Preschool Environments. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 148-164.
Comments