Emergent Literacy

With adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) virtually the whole of the United States is involved in aligning curricula, lesson planning, implementing, and professional development. However, only a small fraction of CCSS activity or commentary focuses on early childhood education at the preschool and kindergarten levels. Thus, it is crucial to examine closely the links between the standards themselves and applications in practice so that teachers and administrative personnel have a clear understanding of both what the standards imply and do not imply for aligning classroom practices to accomplish the CCSS in early childhood. This article focuses on clarifying issues that have been especially subject to confusion or misinterpretation with respect to curricular and instructional practices in preschool and kindergarten. It begins with a brief account of alignments between the CCSS and developmentally appropriate practices currently common in early language and literacy instruction and supported by research, followed by in-depth analyses of four issues that have generated some or considerable confusion for early childhood educators: pedagogical approach, text choices, understanding developmental progressions, and performance assessment.

Sure Start is a UK government initiative addressing social exclusion in local communities through a multi-disciplinary team approach. The Early Years Librarian can be a significant team member in responding to child development and early years literacy. A case study of the Wakefield district investigates the role of the Early Years Librarians in responding to the government agenda. Partnership work and focusing of provision based on parental consultation are key issues.

T his chapter is about the beginnings of writing in early childhood. It describes what writing looked like and how it developed for one group of children between the ages of 2½ and 6 years of age. The portrait of young writers presented in this chapter is built on the foundation provided by emergent-literacy research, but also expanded and reframed using sociocultural perspectives on writing development. Until recently, most of what we know about writing in early childhood was shaped by the emergent-literacy perspective (Teale & Sulzby, 1986b). Prior to the 1960s, researchers working from a readiness perspective assumed that young children began to learn literacy through school instruction, and further assumed that learning to read preceded learning to write (see Teale & Sulzby, 1986a). From this vantage point, there was little reason to take note of children's mark-making activities prior to the start of formal schooling. Early childhood writing became an important focus for researchers and educators only when the beginnings of reading and writing were retheorized from an "emergent literacy" perspective (Teale & Sulzby, 1986b). Emergent-literacy researchers provided evidence that young children began to learn about literacy very early in life through informal interactions with parents, siblings, peers, and teachers. Whereas readiness perspectives focused primarily on reading as the precursor to writing, this new perspective broadened the focus to "literacy" and argued that reading and writing were interrelated and learned concurrently.

The purpose of this study was to explore patronage and usage of the children's section of a public library. Patrons of the children's section of a public library in a small Northern Arizona city were observed for a total of 24 h over 12 sessions. Analytic induction was used to formulate categories based on field notes made during these observations. An observation of a story time session was also conducted. Data from an interview with a librarian was triangulated with observational data. In terms of patronage, the clear majority of parents/adult caregivers accompanying a child or children to the children's section were observed to be female and speaking English. In terms of usage, the following three categories of early learning were identified from the data: early literacy learning; learning how to use a library; and other developmentally appropriate learning. Study results offer insight into both the role of females in the intergenerational transmission of literacy and the rich learning young children experience at the library. At a time of library cutbacks and closures across the United States, this study speaks to the continued relevance of the children's section of the public library in providing free early learning experiences during the pivotal birth to five age range.

Recent migration towards Europe is characterized by the massive presence of adults whose educational paths have been interrupted and who are thus developing literacy for the first time in a new language. A literacy test elaborated at the University of Palermo, Italy, showed that, on a sample of 774 migrants, about 30 percent could not read and/or write short words. This test assessed the learners’ abilities to read and write, whether in the Roman alphabet or in other writing systems, and whether in Italian or in other languages of learners’ repertoires. These learners with emergent literacy mostly came from sub-Saharan Africa, an area characterized by diverse forms of multilingualism, and are representatives of “connected migrants” due to the centrality of digital communication practices in their migration experience; hence, the importance of research on such communication practices. This study examined the multilingual writing on Facebook of 10 migrants in Italy with emergent liter...

The aim of teaching "religion and culture" is to develop a competence in dealing with religious issues and traditions. The teaching follows the concept of teaching about religion, which means that students should learn about religions that are present in our society.

This paper uses a case study of the drawings, early writings and imaginative role play of two children to illustrate how children use a variety of modes to make meaning in ways that are creative and beyond the design and expectation of adults. It aims to valorise the kinds of practices in which children routinely engage but which are often overlooked and devalued by adults, both parents and teachers. Framed by social semiotic theories of communication, multimodal pedagogies and cognitive accounts of children's drawings, it illustrates how the children in this study work easily and seamlessly across a variety of materials and modes, using the semiotic resources available in their environments, to create imaginary worlds and express meanings according to their interests. In profiling these children, this paper lends support to the claim of multimodal pedagogies that it is the shifting across modes, as well as the freedom to choose the mode of expression, that engages the child's affect and creativity and builds agency and voice.

When children enter public kindergartens in the current atmosphere of high-stakes testing, they often encounter an emphasis on correctness that casts doubt on the integrity of their personally invented messages, prompting them to ask not “What did I write?” but “Is this right?” This ethnographic case study examines early writing by 23 kindergarten children within the context of their free-writing time and their teacher's plan to restore intention to compensate for a mandated curriculum that overemphasized convention.

The overall design for this longitudinal study of storybook reading was case studies embedded within larger scale studies. Four separate studies over a year's interval included all of the children currently enrolled in a local day care center. From among those children, four children were interviewed monthly. Each study and the case studies are discussed separately. This chapter appears in Psychological Bases for Early Education, A.D. Pellegrini(Ed.), John Wiley.

The challenges for young children learning to write are many, as they try to respond to their teachers' expectations, 'school language' and the complex, abstract notion of writing. Scaffolding the learning of young children is challenging for teachers, as they attempt to respond to the diverse needs of students, curriculum requirements and the expectations of employers and the community. Through conversation teachers and students work at understanding the expectations and needs of the other. The research study discussed in this article examined teacher/student conversations that focused on writing in three Australian Kindergarten classrooms in 2007. In some of the conversations analysed, the teachers and children appear to 'connect' and the children move forward with their learning as a result. This was not, however, always the case. The language of school literacy appears to be a particular barrier for some students. The author identifies the need for a 'shared language' if teachers' efforts to scaffold children's early attempts at writing are to be fruitful. Teachers must also know their children well.

[The Uses and Pleasures of Children’s Literature for Ages 0-3 Years. Reflections on Literary Literacy and Reader-Response Theory]

This essay examines the epistemological issue of defining children’s literature for ages 0-3 years and investigates the dynamics and the methods that lead children to develop, in a gradual but increasingly autonomous manner, the myriad methods of reading picturebooks and building an initial rapport. These methods help broaden the shared experience of reading a picturebook with an adult and turn this educational practice into a key stage in the development of a core skill: literary literacy. The paper also introduces a reflection on the validity of applying reader-response theory to literature for toddlers within a theoretical and methodological framework revised on the basis of international observational studies in this field. The aim is to present potential paths for studying and analysing both how to promote reading at school and how to conduct academic research.

Most young children love to draw and they all need to learn to write. However, despite the research over the past 30 years which identifies a strong relationship between emergent writing and drawing, in some classrooms young children are being obliged to see drawing and writing separately rather than as a unified system of meaning making. In this article I highlight one outcome of the fourth phase of an ongoing research project which focuses on writing in the first year of formal schooling. In 2009 I challenged 10 teachers working with children in the first year of school to make drawing central to their writing program, particularly during the first half of the year. I wanted to examine the relationship between children's drawing and learning to write in the first six months of formal schooling in an era where visual literacy and linguistic literacy combine. This required a shift in teachers' priorities. The result of the research is unambiguous: if teachers encourage emergent writers to see drawing and writing as a unified system for making meaning children create texts which are more complex than those they can create with words alone. The findings, if not new, are significant for two reasons. Firstly, in an era where visual literacy is central to new literacies it does not make sense to ignore the research which identifies the important relationship between drawing and emergent writing. Secondly, the findings remind us of the power of building on from the known to the new; meaning making through talking and drawing are the known, and writing as script is the new. The approach discussed also leads children to develop a positive attitude towards themselves as writers.

Historically, comics have been viewed as a "debased or simplified word-based literacy," explains Dale Jacobs, who considers comics to be complex, multimodal texts. Examining Ted Naifeh's Polly and the Pirates, Jacobs shows how comics can engage students in multiple literacies, furthering meaning-making practices in the classroom and beyond. We are better able to "hear" the narrator's voice because we can see what words are emphasized by the bold lettering, and we associate particular kinds of voices with the narrative voice of a pirate's tale, especially emphasized here by the shape of the text boxes.

TEACHING PRODUCTIVITY AND ITS ENEMIES is a distribution of my original doctoral dissertation "Language Tangle : Predicting and Facilitating Outcomes in Language Education" ( http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/804346 )  with a new title better reflecting its actual theme, barriers to teaching productivity.

Although the keys to teaching success are elusive, some of the destructive forces at work against success have enough constancy to be worth the trouble of a well-developed defence system. I will collectively describe forces acting against teaching success as “the enemies of language teaching productivity”.  A productive teacher is one who adds to the learning productivity of students. A productive student is one who  acquires and retains what needs to be learned (a skill, a body of knowledge or a method of thinking) with the most efficient use of his or her mental resources, time and money...

As a working teacher, I am concerned with managing the psychology of my students as well as my own. The “enemies” in this ghostly arena of the human mind are well known to any experienced teacher. However, the bulk of this book is concerned with other distractors – enemies without. Typically they take the form of individuals and groups within institutions who have agendas which clash with what the teachers and students are trying to achieve. Productivity for these other players has an altogether different meaning from the learner’s pursuit of knowledge...

"Recently, educators have begun to consider what is required in literacy curricula and best teaching practices given the demands placed on the educator sector and on literacy in general.

Multiliteracies and Technology Enhanced Education: Social Practice and the Global Classroom features theoretical reflections and approaches on the use of multiliteracies and technologies in the improvement of education and social practices. Assisting educators at different teaching levels and fostering professional development and progress in this growing field, this innovative publication supports practitioners concerned with teaching at both a local and global level."

Synsemia means the deliberate and conscious disposition of elements of writing in the space in order to communicate in a reasonably unambiguous way and in a regular manner, through the space articulation. These regularities can be valid only for a specific text (but coherent, rigorous and interpreted without the aid of the author), or defined by specific patterns and consolidated habits of use.

CHILDREN IN literate societies have been found to have knowledge about written language long before reading conventionally from print. It is suggested that they are sorting out oral and written language relationships in activities like storybook reading with parents and that what they are learning can be detected by asking them to "read" to an adult from familiar, or "favorite"' books. In Study I, the emergent reading attempts of 24 children at the beginning and end of their kindergarten year (during which there was no formal instruction in reading or writing) were content-analyzed in light of theoretical considerations about general and language development. The reading attempts appeared to fall into a classification scheme with developmental properties. This scheme documented significant improvement in chil-dren's emergent reading over the kindergarten year. Srudy n examined reading attempts of two-, three-, and four-year-olds; each child read two books per session for four sessions spaced over a year. Children's storybook reading attempts were stable over different storybooks read in the same session. A comparison with data from Study I revealed a developmental progression across age-levels. Results are discussed in light of the need for future research in emergent literacy and of implications for parents. schools. and instructional/assessment design. U:z lecture naissante chez les enfants de leurs histoires preferees: Une etude de developpement ON A TROliVE que les enfants dans les socieces lettrees ont des connaissances concernant le langage ecrit bien avant Ia lecture conventionnelle de materiel imprime. On suggere qu 'ils trient les rapports de langage oral et ecrit dans des activites telles que Ia lecture d'histoires avec les parents et que ce qu'ils apprennent peut etre detecte en leur demandant de "lire" a un adulte des livres familiers ou "favoris." Dans !'Etude I, les essais de lecture naissante de 24 enfants au debut et a Ia fin de leur annee de maternelle (au cours de laquelle il n'y avait pas d'instruction fonnelle en lecture et en ecrirure) ont ete analyses dans leur contenu afin d'e-claircir des considerations theoriqut;s au sujet du developpement general et de la langue. Les essais de lecture semblaient s'integrer dans un schema de classification avec des proprietes de developpement. Ce schema documentah une amelioration significative dans Ia lecture nais-sante des enfants au cours de l'annee de matemelle. I.:Erude II a examine les essais de lecture des enfants de deux. trois et quatre ans, chaque enfant a lu deux livres par session a raison de quaere sessions espacees au cours d'une annee. Les essais de lecture d'histoires chez les en-fant.S etaient stables a travers differentes histoires lues dans Ia meme session. Une comparai-son avec les donnees de !'etude I a revele une progression de developpement a travers les niveaux d'age. Les resultats sont en cours de discussion afin d'eclaircir le besoin pour Ia recherche future du niveau lettre naissant et les implications pour les parents, les ecoles et le projet instruction/evaluation. El surgimiento de Ia lectura de libros de cuentos favoritos en los ninos: Un estudio evolutivo 458 SE HA ENCONTRADO que Ios niiios de sociedades alfabetizadas tienen conocimientos sobre el lenguaje escrito mucho antes de leer material impreso de Ia manera convencional. Se ha

This guide is adapted from a monograph and accompanying videotape developed by the CIEL project at The University of Michigan for NCREL.
NCREL The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory is a nonprofit organization supported in part by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, under Contract Number 400-86-0004. The opinions expressed tn this publication do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Laboratory or the funding agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred.
CIEL Computers in Early Literacy (CIEL} iS a research project that approaches
the computer as an evolving literacy tool in the lives of young children. Located
at the University of Michigan, CIEL Is investigating how young children and their
teachers use the computer as a tool during the periods of emergent literacy and
early conventional literacy (kindergarten and first grade). CIEL is collaborating
with NCREL to produce materials for use by classroom teachers. This videotape was developed cooperatively by Elizabeth Sulzby of the School of Education and Susan Gardner of Gardner Communications. CIEL Direc:tor: Elizabeth Sulzby .

The purpose of this study was to examine whether early literacy skills uniquely predict early numeracy skills development. During the first year of the study, 69 3-to 5-year-old preschoolers were assessed on the Preschool Early Numeracy Skills (PENS) test and the Test of Preschool Early Literacy Skills (TOPEL). Participants were assessed again a year later on the PENS test and on the Applied Problems and Calculation subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Three mixed effect regressions were conducted using Time 2 PENS, Applied Problems, and Calculation as the dependent variables. Print Knowledge and Vocabulary accounted for unique variance in the prediction of Time 2 numeracy scores. Phonological Awareness did not uniquely predict any of the mathematics domains. The findings of this study identify an important link between early literacy and early numeracy development.

This chapter in Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, 4th Edition, R.B. Ruddell et al, contains a postscript addressing the issue of whether Sulzby's Classification Scheme for Emergent Reading of Favorite Storybooks is a stage theory or a repertoire theory of emergent literacy.

This paper seeks to improve our understanding of the challenges faced by teachers and student-teachers in the process of implementing small group work (SGW) in early childhood education (ECE). In light of the discrepancy between the clear benefits of SGW in education – its solid theoretical foundation – and its sparse and poor implementation, we posed the following research questions: (a) What are Israeli teachers' perceptions of and attitudes toward small group work and its implementation in ECE? And (b) What do teachers see as problematic or, conversely, helpful in overcoming difficulties related to its implementation in ECE? Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed: a questionnaire with closed and open-ended questions to measure the attitudes and perceptions of thirty experienced teachers, as well as action research documenting the implementation of SGW in two cases. Findings showed more positive attitudes toward SGW than toward the feasibility of its implementation, which was frequently associated with drilling skills, rather than discourse that supports the construction of knowledge. Difficulties in implementing SGW included a lack of coordinated staff work and the absence of routines and planning of space and time. The action research indicated that the effective implementation of SGW necessitates planning, observation, and documentation of both the interactions in groups as well as classroom management aspects related to its implementation, and that it requires a commitment to the children's well-being and learning.

Nicaragua es uno de los países del Hemisferio Occidental con mayor vulnerabilidad al cambio climático. A la par de la vulnerabilidad ambiental, se suma la ausencia de la infraetructra adecuada para hacer frente a los desastres naturales. Después del Huracán Mitch en 1998, el país inició un proceso de mejoramiento de sus capacidades de prevención, mitigación y atención de desastres que llevaron a la creación de un Sistema Nacional que ha venido funcionando con moderadas capacidades. Sin embargo, en el ámbito municipical, esas capacidades son aún muy limitadas. En ese sentido, he elaborado este “Protocolo Modelo para Gestión de Riesgos y Desastres Naturales en Municipios Rurales de Nicaragua” como un aporte para los municipios de mayor vulnerabilidad ante desastres naturales en Nicaragua. Este documento pretende responder, al menos parcialmente, a la pregunta: ¿Cómo pueden las agencias de desarrollo, apoyar a los municipios de mayor vulnerabilidad en situación de desastres?

Al respecto, el presente protocolo de actuación, presenta una breve reseña sobre la situación actual de amenaza y vulnerabilidad de los municipios y establece las principales acciones que se  podrían desarrollar, desde una agencia de cooperación o programa de desarrollo municipal. Con este fin, se sugieren roles y responsabilidades del equipo técnico en cada uno de los componentes que podrían formar parte de un plan operativo anual, tanto para aquellas acciones preventivas como aquellas post y durante. El propósito de este protocolo es el de servir como “modelo” o ejemplo para programas de desarrollo municipal, que bien pueden ser programas del gobierno central o de la cooperación.

Al leer este Protocolo Modelo, es muy importante tener en cuenta que su propósito no es se usado de forma mecánica o directa en todos los municipios que han sido tomados como ejemplo, sino más bien servir de guía o de modelo ilustrativo—especialmente para agencias de cooperación para el desarrollo—que pueda ser adaptado a necesidades particulares de cada municipio. También es importante recordar que ningún programa de desarrollo municipal auspiciado por una agencia de cooperación, sustituye el rol protagónico del estado en la creación de capacidades de respuesta. En ese sentido, el estado—tanto a nivel local como municipal—continúa teniendo la mayor jerarquía a la hora de la toma de decisión, por lo que este protocolo sólo aborda los posibles espacios de acción que tendrían una agencia de cooperación como entidad complementaria a la acción estatal y comunitaria. Finalmente, es justo aclarar que si bien este es un documento técinico, las opiniones o ejemplos son enteramente responsabilidad del autor.

The national exam was an unfortunate series of events and the troubles are pouring in like Lemony Snicket’s thought-provoking fiction. They keep coming and disturbing everyone, certainly for the test taker students, their parents and teachers alike.

In this study, the student texts and teacher guides of two reading intervention programs for at-risk, first-grade students were analyzed and compared: Fountas and Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) and Scott Foresman’s My Sidewalks (MS). The analyses drew on the framework of available theory and research on beginning texts developed by Mesmer, Cunningham, and Hiebert in 2012. This framework includes attention to word-level, text-level, and program-level features. The student texts of the two programs had similar average percentages of single-appearing words and words that can elicit a mental picture (concrete words); however, LLI texts featured more repetition of words, a slightly higher percentage of highly frequent words, and a considerably higher percentage of multisyllable words. MS texts contained a higher percentage of phonetically regular words and a higher lesson-to-text match between phonics elements in teacher guides and the words in student texts. Instructional implications and future research directions are discussed.

Вторая часть монографии посвящена осмыслению истории и предыстории семиотики. Рассматриваются знаковые системы, относящиеся к моделированию универсума и его частей, таких как календарные системы, древо мира с его классификацией частей универсума на верхнюю, нижнюю и земную, понятие центра мира, оси мира, модели среды обитания, диахронические модели возникновения мира, возникновения речи, к типам когнитивных систем в форме которых передавались истинные и мнимые сведения о мире и его строении таким, как миф, мистериальная картина мира, как переходная когнитивная система от мифа к философским системам. Прослеживается процесс возникновения и становления письма, первых грамматических описаний в пособиях для писцов. Далее рассматриваются зачатки семиотической мысли у древних китайских мудрецов, в древнейших индийских текстах (Ригведе, Атхарваведе, Упанишадах). Наиболее подробно рассматривается древнегреческий период семиотических поисков. В центре темы оказывается диалог Платона "Кратил". Рассматриваются взгляды Платона на структуру и функционирование знака. Выясняется, что до настоящего времени схема структуры знака лишь неправомерно упрощалась. Выясняется, что его представления о структуре знака глубже и точнее, чем таковые современных исследователей. Далее рассматриваются некоторые семиотические идеи Каббалы (Сефер Ецира), семиотические идеи византийских мыслителей. Подробно анализируется как сложный семиотический текст св. Кирилла глаголический алфавит. Рассматриваются идеи создателей первых искусственных языков, а также основные идеи основателей семиотики: Ч. С. Пирса, Ф. де Соссюра и Г. Фреге.

This study explored Clay’s (1998) notion of “by different paths to common outcomes” in the
area of early literacy assessment. Specifically, the idea of multiple pathways in early literacy development was examined in terms of individual differences within a developmental assessment framework. Using the developmental progression and ability estimates generated from a larger validation study, this study analysed the response patterns of two children who were estimated to share the same ability level. An examination of the two children’s scored and raw responses suggested that despite them sharing the same estimated ability level, the children demonstrated distinct patterns in the ways they responded to the assessment tasks. In particular, the children’s raw responses indicated that they focused on different levels of text features when attempting the tasks. The findings suggest multiple pathways can be operationalized within a developmental assessment framework as deviations from a particular developmental structure. To provide teaching that is developmentally appropriate for individual children may require taking into consideration both developmental structures and variations when assessing early literacy development.

The purpose of the qualitative research was to assess models of education developed for the study to investigate how and when to incorporate second and third languages into the curriculum to improve language acquisition. Research indicates that L3 enhances and reinforces L2 and L1. The stratified systematic grounded theory study explored the perspectives of neurolinguists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists, and interdisciplinary education researchers to derive variables for constructing a new model of education. The outcome of the Internet survey revealed that 100% of the participants agreed that education must change and that teacher training must improve. Variables from the cross-disciplinary data contributed to the construction of an integrated model of multilingual education consisting of four primary models and other models to serve as tools for designing curriculum, instruction, and assessment as well as determining demographics and student meta-analysis of language abilities and storage in the brain. The first model emerged from the data to offer multilingual principles of education. The other primary models are macro, meso, and micro models. The macro model represents schools, instruction, assessment, and the curriculum cycle. The meso model depicts the developmental domains of the individual learner and includes a cyclical equation. The micro model delineates multilingual processing in the brain based on neurolinguistic research, variables from the current study, and Kees de Bot's bilingual adaptation of Levelt's language processing model. Recommendations include the incorporation of notional-functional pragmatic-aesthetic concepts as depicted in the models developed for the study and enhanced by input from published researchers with unique language and research repertoires who were located on four continents.