Archive for the ‘Language and Literacy for Young Children’ Category

Phonics – the relationship between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language

Phonemes – smallest units of speech

Phonics is a method of teaching speakers of English to read and write that language.

Phonological awareness:

  • teach children to attend to and manipulate speech sounds in words
  • effective under a variety of teaching conditions and with a variety of learners
  • teaching sounds in language helps the children to learn to read
  • decode novel words, remember and read familiar words
  • boost reading comprehension
  • learn to spell
  • instructions should be suitable for child’s developmental level
  • teach in small group and bits by bits
  • aware that alphabet letters is important
  • blend phonemes
  • important to lean letter shapes, sounds, and names
  • let them know the importance of phonics in their life
  • instructions does not need to consume long periods of time to be effective
  • computer can be used
  • understand and use alphabetic system to read and write
  • critical foundation piece
  • short and as relevant as possible
  • cannot guarantee later literacy success

Phonemic awareness training exercise:

  • directing children’s attention to rhyme
  • segmenting morphemes and syllables
  • categorizing sounds
  • identify syllables
  • illustrating phonemic contrasts
  • experience relevant articulatory gestures
  • using segmentation and identification games at the phonemic level

Different phonics approaches:

  • Synthetic phonics
  • Analytical phonics
  • Analogy phonics

Parents roles:

  • read to children
  • talk and read to the children about their surrounding or books
  • have regular story time
  • let children read newspapers, magazines, books etc.
  • do activities together and talk about it
  • sing to or sing with the children
  • surround children with opportunity to play with words
  • encourage children to draw
  • tell children family stories
  • write to the children
  • let the children see you write

Teachers’ roles:

  • Teacher as a model
  • Teacher as a provider
  • Teacher as an interactor
  • Teacher as balancer

How to work with children:

  • Children need “envelop of language”
  • Children must use language to learn it
  • The most verbal chidlren tend to monopolize language interactions
  • Adults should know the individual child
  • Home language are to be invited into the classroom
  • Dialect differences expand speech community
  • Some children may have speech and language disorder
  • The language of the teacher influences the classroom
5
Jul

Storytelling

   Posted by: admin   in Language and Literacy for Young Children

Possible child competencies and understandings promoted by storytelling, experiences include developing a sense of:

  • personal story
  • curiosity about others stories
  • drama
  • a story’s power
  • phonemic awareness
  • cultural similarities and differences
  • social and group enjoyment during story telling
  • gestures and acting actions effective in communication ideas, feelings and moods

Selecting story for storytelling:

  • Age appropriate
  • Plot
  • Style
  • Values
  • Memorable characters
  • Sensory and visual images
  • Additional selection criteria
  • Themes and story structure
  • Storyteller enthusiasm

The desirable and valuable features a children book should have:

  • character development
  • color
  • with human courage, cleverness or grit as examples
  • suspense
  • humour/wit
  • fantasy
  • surprise
  • repetition
  • hope
  • charm
  • sensitivity
  • realistic dialogue
  • cultural insight
  • action
  • predicatability

Benefits of illustrations:

  • Provision of pleasure
  • Nourishment of the imagination
  • Promotion of creative expression
  • Development of imaginary

Categories of children books:

  • Story books (picture books)
    • family and home
    • folktales and fables
    • fanciful stories
    • fairy tales
    • animal stories
    • others
  • Nonfiction books
  • Wordless books
  • Interaction books
  • Concept books
  • Predictable books
  • References books
  • Alphabet and word books
  • Novelty books and magazines
  • Teacher- and child- made books
  • Therapeutic books
  • Seasonal and holiday books
  • Books and audiovisual combinations
  • Toddler books and board books
  • Multicultural and cross-cultural books
  • Oversized books

Stages of emergent reading:

  • Listens
  • Looks at the book’s illustrations while listening
  • Talks about the illustrations
  • Recognizes logos
  • Pretends to read
  • Memorizes test and pretends to read
  • Recognizes some words in context

Reading mehtods:

  • The Natural Approach
    Popular. Centers on the idea that a child can learn to read as he lean to talk, with adult attention and help with early skills.
  • Language-Experience Approach
    Popular. Based on children’s language development and firsthand experiences, stressed on children’s interests, experiences and cognitive and social development.
  • The Whole-Language Movement
    Offering children meaningful and functional literature in full texts rather than through worksheets or dittoed handouts
  • Literature-based Learning Programs
    Teachers use this for reading instruction.
  • Decoding-Phonetic-Reading Approach
    To read, children must know how to “decode”, able to pronounce the letter sequences they see on apage based on what they know about the link between spelling and sound.
  • Look & Say Method
    Based on recognition and familiarization.

Multilingualism – Ability of a person to speak in a language other than their native language with a degree of fluency (Gordon & browne, 2004)

Simultaneous acquisition happens when a child is exposeed to two languages from birth.

Successive acquisition occurs as a child with one language now enters the world of a second language.

Multilingualism development:

  • The preproduction or silent stageL respond to language by listening to or “take in”
  • Early production stage have limited vocalization and growing comprehension
  • Expansion of production stage increased comprehension and the ability to speak simple sentences

Teacher’s role:

  • Understand the whole child
  • Appreciate the countless ways in which children learn and do not rely on a set curriculum for teaching oral language or literacy
  • Be sensitive and encourage the child to communicate in his own way during social interaction with other children
  • Involve their parents in activities and understand the different learning styles each child may have

Guidelines for teaching children who speak other langugages:

  • Understand how children learn a second language
  • Make a plan for the use of the two languages
  • Accept individual differences
  • Support children’s attempts to communicated
  • Maintain an additive philosophy
  • Provide a stimulating, active and diverse environment
  • Use informal observations to guide the planning of activities
  • Find out about the family
  • Provide accepting classroom climate

Multiliteracies is a multiple form of knowledge including prints, images, videos, combination forms in digital context.

  1. Inadequate stimulation (talking and playing with the child)
  2. Delayed or problem in general development, physical development, and cognitive development
  3. Specific difficulty in language learning
  4. Inadequate awareness of communication, lacks “communication intent”
  5. Changes in child’s environment such as moving to another place
  6. Expose to too many languages
  7. Inadequate opportunity for speech
  8. Emotional factors
  9. Short attention span

Play can help children in stimulating their language and literacy skill as they will interact with their peers to express themselves.

Dramatic play is one way to do so. Example, they can pretend to be a waiter taking order from a diner and when doing so, they have to take the pencil and paper to record the orders.

  • Uses various props and objects
  • Combines multiple roles and themes
  • Creates pretend scenario and solving disagreement by talking and negotiating

Roles of dramatic play:

  • develop conversational skills and ability to express ideas in words
  • understand feelings, roles, or works with other
  • connect actions with words
  • develp vocabulary
  • develop creativity
  • enhance social interactions
  • cope with life, e.g. acting out troubling situation which this is a way for them to express their emotions
  • assume leadership and group-participant roles

Promote dramatic play:

  • Field trips
  • Discussion/reading by visitors/guest speakers
  • Sharing books
  • Discussions based pictures
  • Films, videos, slide shows
  • Kits, equipment and setting for dramatic play
  • Parent career presentation

Stages of emergent writing:

  • Drawing
  • Scribbling
  • Invented or pseudo-letters
  • Random letters
  • Emergent spelling

Instructional approaches in printing:

  • Traditional approach
    Play and learning, given with materials and free time and let them discover.
  • Readiness approach
    Provide writing materials and models, program is planned.
  • Natural approach
    Provide writing and reading materials and models, planned program emphasizes print in daily life.

Indentifiable stages in invented spelling:

  • Spelling awareness
  • Primitive spelling with no relationship between spelling and words
  • Prephonetic spelling
  • Phonetic spelling
  • Correct spelling
19
Jun

Language Development

   Posted by: admin   in Language and Literacy for Young Children

Why do we learn language?
To connect with others
To understand understand the world
To reveal ourselves

Language development of young children:

  • Baby’s cry
  • Cooing
  • Smiling and laughing
  • Babbling
  • Association
  • One word usage
  • Recall
  • Telegraphic speech
  • Multiword speech

Language skill development:

  • Stage 1: Response (0-6 months)
    E.g. Smile, gaze when hearing voices
  • Stage 2: Vocalization (6-10 months)
    E.g. babble, use other vocal signal other than crying
  • Stage 3: Word development (10-18 months)
    E.g. mama, dada, doggie
  • Stage 4: Sentences (18 months – 3 years old)
    E.g. me want chok-quit(chocolate)
  • Stage 5: Elaboration (3-5/6 years old)
    E.g. you’re my best mummy, you can hold my turtle at bet-bis(breakfast)
  • Stage 6: Graphic presentation (5+-8 years old)
    E.g. drawing

Theories of language emergence:

  • Behaviourist/Environmentalist (Stimulus-Response) Theory
  • Maturational (Normative) Theory
  • Predetermined/Innatist Theory
  • Cognitive-Transactional/Interactional Theory
  • Constructivist Theory