Purcell-Gates, author of Stories, coupons, and the “TV Guide”: Relationships between home literacy experiences and emergent literacy knowledge, says children’s first experiences with literacy are meditated by the ways in which parents and other caregivers use reading and writing in their lives. Parent and child interactive bookreading is one example of how adults can incorporate literacy into children’s lives beginning at birth. Interactive bookreading is a book-sharing experience for a child and a more knowledgeable adult. In this practice, both people are contributing. This process, where both people are contributing, should start when a child is born. Typically, a parent utlizes sturdy cardboard books and the child looks at pictures of animals, babies, or colors. At this point in a child’s literary experience, the objective is not for the child to listen to a story but to become fascinated by books themselves. Soon a child will listen carefully and look at pictures with meaning as an adult reads to them. Then, parents will make connections from the book to the child’s life. As a child develops, parents will become more proactive and begin to ask questions about characters and events from the story. In turn, children will be expected to actively engage in answering those questions. As teachers, we know as children begin to read, the questions we ask should relate to the understanding of the text. Eventually, the child will be ready to read to the adult—changing the roles quite a bit.
As teachers, we acknowledge students with larger vocabularies and an interest in books are often the children that were exposed to books at an early age. It is our job to recognize the students who might not have had these opportunities and work to “fill in the gaps.” Teachers play a vital role in children’s literacy learning, and if every classroom is filled with wonderful stories and books that fascination with books can be taught and applied to the entire classroom. Educators must provide all students with opportunities to be read to, to be heard reading, and to create their own written pieces.
Booksharing is one example of an experience adults can use with children to improve their emergent literacy. An initiative commissioned by a Boston- based nonprofit, Strategies for Children, suggests expanding and strengthening work with families across learning settings and within communities. This report supports the need for better education and more information to improve early literacy. Examples of these strategies go well-beyond booksharing. School events such as literature nights, workshops, or book talks allow teachers to provide parents with strategies that can be used at home to better equip their children. PTAs can implement programs (i.e. “A book a week”) to send home books to families who might not be able to afford them.
1 comments:
After reading the first two chapters, which focus on literacy before a child is school age, I too thought about of the importance of the home school connection as well. Parents are solely responsible for a child’s literacy skills from 0-5 years old and then of course continue to be a once the child has entered school. Parents need to be informed on what they can do and should also understand what the teacher does to help her students.
Recently the Reading Committee at my school held a Literacy Workshop for parents. We set up stations for guided reading, writing, word work, and comprehension. Each station had information for K-2 and then 3-5. For example, we demonstrated for parents what word work looks like in our classroom. Then we explained simple and easy things they could choose to do at home with their child. We made sure we created packets full of these ideas that parents could take home. The feedback we received from parents about this was very positive. Many of them hear us use phrases like “word work” and “guided reading” during back to school night but don’t actually understand what their child is working on at those times. I feel school events like these should be mandatory because literacy education is a “team effort” between teachers and parents.
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