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Dr. Trawick-Smith: Whether you've had formal
training in literacy or not,
chances are that you already do many activities
with your children throughout the day
that researchers have shown to be effective
in preparing young children
to become readers and writers.
Watch while Early Childhood Educator
Dr. Theresa Bouley shows you what you're doing right,
and why it works.
Dr. Bouley: There's a great deal of research
in early childhood focusing on early literacy
that has produced five predictors or characteristics
that are known to predict
later reading and writing achievement.
So, if children have a lot of rich experiences
in these five areas,
they'll learn to read and write with more ease.
Those five areas are, oral language,
phonemic awareness,
alphabet awareness,
concepts about print,
and early writing with inventive spelling.
It's really important that preschool teachers
are aware of these five predictors,
and are thinking about them in their planning,
as well as throughout the day,
and looking for spontaneous teachable moments.
Girl: What's that?
Teacher: That's called an anchor.
Girl: anchor?
Teacher: (mm hmm) And they lower it down
into the water and it lands on the ground
and it keeps the boat...to stay in one place.
Dr. Bouley: A teachable moment is when a child
is really interested in something,
it's purposeful to him,
and the teacher sees that and takes that opportunity
to come in and to help the child to further understand
or expose the child to a new aspect of literacy.
Oral language is a foundation for
future reading and writing.
There is a lot of research that shows
there is a correlation between vocabulary
and reading comprehension.
Patty Gardenr: You make eye contact,
and you know that it's all about them,
and they want to share that,
they want to make the eye contact,
and talk about all the things
that you're talking about,
and they just get into it.
Teacher: Willoughby, Wallabee, Wannon.
The elephant sat on...
Dr. Bouley: Phonemic awareness is ability to hear,
identify, and manipulate sounds
or phonemes in a language.
It's an ear-like skill,
so children using phonemic awareness
are able to hear and identify
how sounds are the same
or how they are similar.
Teacher: Willoughby, Wallabee, wee. The elephant sat on me.
Willoughby, Wallabee, watrick.
The elephant sat on...
Children: Patrick!
Teacher: Her name ends with an "e" sound.
"eee" sound
Teacher: Can you spell "Kaela?"
Child: K, A,
Dr. Bouley: When discussing alphabet awareness,
it's important to remember
that we're not just talking about children's
awareness of letters,
the names of the letters,
and the sounds of the letters,
but really, it's extremely important to remember
that children need to understand
the purpose of those letters:
What are those symbols?
How do I use them?
Patty Gardner: Take those basic letter recognitions,
and you just incorporate it into your day.
We had a child come in
and she was talking about the tooth fairy;
she had lost a tooth.
So we go on the big screen TV in our classroom,
and we Google teeth
and we spell it out together,
and "Oh what letter do you think teeth begins with?"
They guess T,
and the next two letters are tricky because,
you know, they are three and four and five,
although they could get the E sound
but not two E's, and we put in "teeth"
and then we hit search
and it comes back with this amazing picture of teeth.
And they could find teeth
and they could recognize mouth,
I think it was,
because they talked about how it was in your mouth.
And now it turns into a counting activity
and you just take it wherever the kids are
and just run with it.
Dr. Bouley: Children should be bumping into
opportunities to see print in their environment,
in their centers, in their dramatic play centers,
their names on their cubbies,
signs around the room,
so they understand the purpose of the function of print
and they learn a lot about print and how it works.
Patty Gardner: In our classroom we have
environmental print all the time.
We have the exit door;
we have all the toys labeled in English and Spanish.
We have children that have their names,
they come in and sign-in in the morning;
all the names are on the cubbies.
The pictures that we do over the course of the day,
any activity we do we take pictures
and everything is labeled underneath,
so it's like they're constantly being inundated
with words and letters and letter sounds.
Dr. Bouley: To expand children's print knowledge
and concepts about print,
teachers need to be really careful
or explicit in their read-aloud practice.
If they're reading a book to children,
be aware of using words like,
"the title is..." or "the author is..."
or use words to describe what they're doing.
Teacher: "Apples and Pumpkins," by Anne Rockwell.
Pictures by Lizzy Rockwell.
Dr. Bouley: Or help children to look carefully
at the illustrations.
>> Teacher: I wonder if they're going to go anywhere?
Antonio says there's a car.
Child: There are color trees!
Teacher: *gasp* Color trees!
Teacher: I need you to be able to see the story.
Dr. Bouley: Teachers can follow along with their finger
with the text to demonstrate
that there is something there they are reading,
that that text is important.
Even though children aren't able to read that yet,
they learn that the text tells the story.
Teacher: Antonio, can you point to
the father in the picture?
Dr. Bouley: There are a lot of ways that teachers
can encourage children to get meaningful,
purposeful writing experiences.
Sign-ins are a wonderful way
where children can understand the purpose of writing.
When they come to the classroom in the morning
they know that no one will know they are there
if they don't sign in.
Patty Gardenr: One of the first things that the children
tune in to when they're learning how to write
is how to write their name.
They usually start with the first letter of their name.
Then they progress to the first letter
in people that are close to them.
Dr. Bouley: There is so much research that shows
that these five predictors are critical in children's
future reading and writing development;
oral language,
phonemic awareness,
alphabet awareness,
concepts about print,
and early writing with inventive spelling.
It's really important that the teacher be aware of them
and be able to think about them
and sort of think through the lens
of these five predictors throughout the day.
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