Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Collaboration in Early Literacy


Do you think collaboration in early literacy is important? Why? Collaboration is so important because it develops children oral language and because it develops children’s literacy. In the other words, when children are allowed to collaborate with another, they will learn things effectively, quickly, and joyfully. There are two main areas for developing children’s collaboration, collaboration in writing and collaboration in reading.
            Collaboration in writing can lead children to generate their ideas, select the words to express them, order the words in phrases and sentences, and figure out what letters to use to represent them. That is why it is an important factor for children. Dictation is a great way for practicing collaboration and as children do that, they can express their thoughts and ideas in their mind on paper with writing words. Once children are done with it, teachers should provide responses such as providing a model to copy, repeating the child’s words, attaching the works in the classroom, and praising the children’s works.
            Collaboration in reading can be practiced with predictable books. Not only children love predictable books, but also the books help children have guessing skills and engage in reading easily. Also, predictable books can lead to develop reader’s knowledge. In this area, teacher should make sure the predictable books have patterns so children can easily understand and engage. Rhythm, rhyme, and repetition will be helpful.
            To close, in my opinion, teachers should always create supportive environments for language learning for children. Many writing and reading activities will enhance children’s enthusiasm and purpose of learning. 

5 comments:

  1. I really agree with your point about dictation being important for self-expression. Collaboration between an adult and a child helps children learn how to express themselves more clearly because the adult acts as a model. This will help children be more capable of expressing themselves with their peers. When an adult takes the time to listen to a child's words and write them down, it also lets the child know that what they have to say is important and encourages them to share again in the future.

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  2. I think that collaboration is a really important thing for children to be able to do. Working in teams is going to be a big part of life for all children as they move through school and learning how to work with others is essential. Collaboration allows them to feed off of eachothers ideas and learn new things that they may have never thought about.

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  3. I agree that collaboration is very important. Teachers should create different activities that allow for collaboration to take place. If these are meaningful activities children will learn and grow from these experiences.

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  4. I also really liked that you discussed the importance of dictation. It provides a great one-on-one experience between adult and child. Dictation can also be a good forum to help adults facilitate children's expression of creative ideas as well as to elaborate and expand on these ideas.

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  5. I LOVE this blog entry! As teachers, we sometimes discount the amount of knowledge and information children have. By allowing children to work together, share ideas, defend beliefs, and create new stories, we expand their literacy experiences. Children are social learners, and their literacy should not be exempt from this. Great point!

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