The Importance of Phonemic Awareness

           All teachers know that teaching phonemic awareness to young children is one of the most important things for enhancing young children’s reading and writing skills. Then, how they can teach? It is easy but it is not so simple. If children follow rules and instruction well, it will be easy and fun for young children. However, as many children do, when they get stock or are not interested in it, they might have hard time to learn phonemic awareness.

           Knowing and understanding letters, sounds, and words are the basic things in developing phonemic awareness. When children are family with letters and sounds, they can make or read words and then sentences. Before teachers teach phonics to young children, they should assess what level they are and how much knowledge about phonics they have. Then, teachers can have systematical plans and instructions for each child. Because some children are good at phonics but some children are not. Therefore, even thought the time could be consuming, teachers need to assess individually. The important thing is that when children are wrong, teachers should think with reasonable guess and provide a lot of opportunities for practicing what they are learning. Finally, teachers can set up a shared reading and writing curriculum. For shared reading, teachers may use big books or overhead projections. For shared writing, children can learn some new rules from teachers and can develop to independent writing.

Community Literacy Dig: Kroger

           For my assignment, community literacy dig, our group went to Kroger, a grocery store. When I got there, I firstly could see Kroger sign. Our group thought Kroger would be good one for children to explore their literacy world and have unique experiences. In Kroger, children easily could see environmental prints or words with real things. For example, when children see a word “apple,” they also can see all kinds of real apples.

         

            Children also can learn how they can find things as they see categorized signs. The categorized signs will help people find things that they want to buy. For example, when children want to buy some candies or cracker, they should find where the “candy, cracker” sign is. For instance, children drink milk and milk can be found in “dairy” section. So this will help children develop association skills.

           Next, children can learn about price and it is one of the important things for children’s literacy. Children recognized numbers as prices.

           Finally, Kroger has a lot of advertise signs so it is a great way for children to read literacy there. Because those signs are made in very unique, interesting, attracting ways, children easily can focus about the signs.  

The Arrival by Tan

           When I watched the video, The Arrival, I did not fully understand what the story is. However, I watched it again; it was a story about immigrant. After I understood about the story, I had a different positive and negative opinion.

           Firstly, I really liked the illustration and it was beautiful. When children read the book or watch the video, they will be impressed about its illustration. Because the book’s background is the old, the brown ton of the color is very suitable with the story.

           I also liked the video’s background of music. It there is no music, it could give people to feel empty. When I watched the video, I felt the music also told me the story.

           However, in my opinion, it could be a bit hard to understand for young children. I think before teachers introduce the book, s/he should explain about immigrant and its history. Because a lot of young children do not know about what the immigrant is and why people immigrated in the old time. So they should have some knowledge about it before they have the book.

Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children

            Are reading books, preparing lesson plans, and doing activities are most important things for children’s literacy? I think those are important, however, sometimes children learn literacy from themselves as they have critical thinking. When I read Chapter 3 of the book, Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children, I was surprised and smiled because I could see that the children were learning real thing from the real world. The chapter 3 was about there is a boy, Curtis and he wanted to go French Café which was just for older students who were attending in French class at his school. Therefore, he decided to agreements from his classmates, Junior Kindergarteners, and Senior Kindergarteners for going the café next year. He and his classmates started to make petition letter and Speaker’s Corner tape. In this part, I realized that the teacher just did not help them go to the café; however, she supported children’s ideas.

           “Children need opportunities to learn the relationship between the circulation of knowledge through language use and the power associated with certain forms of language (p. 96).” We often observe that young children say, “It’s mind” even thought things are not belonged to them. As children have a concern about French café, they will learn problem solving, consequences, collectivism, how to change their social position with reasonable ways, and how to address their feeling about things that they thought it was not fair. Children will create opportunities for changing and when it works, they will get full sense of accomplishment. Having this kind of real experience is very important for children’s literacy because they will learn interaction, communication and more professional language skills. Before the children had this issue, they might had no idea what the word, “petition” means but as they do that, they learned what it is with full of understanding.

           As I mentioned above, in my opinion, like the book, teacher would better step back from children and just observe what they are going to do. If they seem they need some helps, teachers can support children’s idea.

Maria , V. (2004). Negotiating critical literacies with young children. (1 ed., p. 96). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Early Technoliteracies

Today, lots of schools and teachers use technology in their school for literacy. With using technology, children learn many things in easy and effective ways. They can write, watch, read, draw, paint, and even speak. For writing, if children have some mistakes in their grammar or spelling, the computer automatically fixes it. For watching, children can watch anything they want and for reading, children just select which book they want to read and just click the title. In drawing and painting parts, I observed that my nephew had a great art game CD and when he clicked any color he want to use and click wherever he want to put, then the section was filled in the color he chose. How awesome is that! Because when I was a preschooler, I did not have that kind of technology, I was kind of surprised even though I have technology recently. Children also can talk to computer with their avatar. As the time has been changed, children’s learning style also will be changed. Children are learning their literacy in more understandable and accessible ways with just clicking. Technology provides useful information to children.

 

I agree with the technology is one of the biggest and important part for children to learn literacy. However, I am sometimes concerned if children focus and obsess on technology too much, it would be worse than that they do not have technology. Therefore, teachers, caregivers, and parents should manage their children to use technology in appropriate ways with relevant time. Also, teachers and parents should not forget about real materials and environments have more authentic meaning for children sometimes. 

Sociodramatic Play and Literacy

          We often can observe that children do pretend play in their school a lot. In my opinion, sociodramatic play is one of the most important activities in children’s school life because it has lots of influences for children’s language and literacy. Sometime, sociodramatic play affects children’s real life so teachers, caregivers, and parents should not ignore it in children’s daily routine.

           As children do sociodramatic play, they will have new experiences more and they will explore their ideas and thoughts in creative and spontaneous ways. Pretend play is also important because it is one of the ways that children can express themselves freely. If the child wants to be a doctor, he may want to do doctor in his pretend play. Furthermore, with this play, children may consider what they want to be in the future and this activity gives encouragement for children. Children also can learn several relationships such as teachers and students, doctors and nurses, employee and employer, mom and dad, and so on. Lastly, children’s language and vocabulary skills will be really developed. The might learn new vocabulary from their peers or situations.

           To sum up, because pretend play helps children develop social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills, teachers should provide more opportunities to children to have more experiences.

Take-home Literature Packs

           Let’s do “take-home literature packs!” It is a great way to engage to children’s books for family members and the children. The reason take-home literature packs is important is that it can make the family members and child to have more ideas and be interested in books. For families, it firstly gives opportunities to explore and interact with various children’s books in fun ways. The families also can have a great time with their child and make the child to develop the reading and writing abilities. For children, the packs will give really good experiences for intending the world knowledge. As children are doing the packs with their family, they can learn about collaboration and connecting with the family members.

           One of the great examples of take-home literature packs is “alphabet.” Because knowing and learning alphabet is very important to children to have the basic skills of reading and writing. If the child does not know how to read alphabets or write alphabets, his or her reading and writing skills will be stopped.

<Book>

Eating the Alphabet, by Lois Ehlert

: As using fruits and vegetables for instroducing each alphabet, children will have fun with learning alphabets.

Alphabet City, by Stephen Johnson

: Alphabets are hiding in the urban and children will find where the alphabets in the city.

<Activity>

1) Using magnetic letters on a cookie sheet or the refrigerator, name the letters, put them in alphabetical order, spell names of family members, and spell as many words as you can.

: The colorful magnetic alphabet will be better for children to be interested in learning alphabets.

 

2) Create an ABC book. Write one letter per page, and then draw pictures to illustrate.

: With this book, children may be asked to fill the blank with appropriate alphabet sticker. For example, if the book shows the child a picture of apple and a word of "__ pple," s/he will fill "a" in the blank. This will help children to learn about alphabets quickly and interestingly.