Emergent Literacy: Playing with Language!

Learning to read and write are arguably the most important accomplishments that young children make during their early childhood years. Knowing this, many parents begin working with their child on these processes at home using the tools and techniques that they remember best from their schooling experience. For example, many parents devote hours to helping their child "learn the letters" or "write their name" before heading off to Kindergarten. Although these are important skills to learn, parents and educators must ensure that they are introducing literacy skills in a developmentally appropriate sequence. After all, becoming literate is just as much of a developmental process as learning to walk; there are several different phases a child must go through before they are truly independent with either!

Children first begin learning about reading by observing. They watch as parents and other trusted adults read to them, write notes, write their name, and so forth. After countless hours observing, they work up enough courage to being "playing with language" on their own.

Their language play will be based on the 3 main dimensions of literacy: reading, writing and speaking. Following are some specific examples of how children "play" with each of these processes to learn.

Writing Play:

• Scribbling
• Drawing people (You've got to love those large heads with no neck or body!)
• Drawing familiar shapes or places (house, the sunny day, etc.)
• Writing letters
• Attempting punctuation

Speaking Play:

• Misusing pronouns (Saying "he" when they should have said "her," etc.)
• Getting the phonemes in the wrong place with longer words ("psaghetti"/"spaghetti.")
• Rhyming

Reading Play:

• Requesting for you to reread familiar books again and again and again. . .
• "Reading" that familiar book on their own using the pictures
• Making up their own story to a book using pictures

To make the anaology to walking again, when children are "playing with language" they are crawling with literacy. They are attempting to do this huge task on their own-- but, they don't have all the tools yet! This is when the rich instruction of a teacher is most needed to guide each child along to their next developmental stage!

In the book "What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction" (2002), the following components were identified as being critical to effective literacy programs in preschool and Kindergarten:

• Language development with an emphasis on vocabulary and concepts
• Understandings about the functions of print (in written language)
• Print awareness and concepts about print
• Literacy as a source of enjoyment
• Knowledge of narrative structure: Characters, setting, beginning/middle/end, etc.
• Storybook reading
• Knowledge of the alphabet
• Phonemic awareness
• Opportunities to write

When early childhood classrooms are rich with these types of experiences, literacy development can truly blossom.