E13 Early Childhood Literacy
Assignment 04
Modeling, Providing and Facilitating Early Childhood Literacy
“Many people believe that children learn to read and write in kindergarten or first grade; however, the foundation for literacy skills is laid years before children enter school. Emergent literacy, much like any other cognitive skill, begins at birth” (Zero to Three, 2014). Because literacy skills begin at birth, it is important that the adults in a child’s life are aware of how they can encourage and further the development of these skills. When working on literacy skills with young children, educators should act as a model, provider and facilitator.
It is a common phrase that “children are like sponges,” meaning that children listen and watch everything that we do. What they see and hear from others around them is often portrayed in their play and their vocabulary. For this reason, it is important that teachers model attitudes and behaviors in speaking, listening, writing and reading (Machado, 2015). One way to model literacy with young children is to engage in conversation with them. According to Machado (2015), when adults engage in conversational exchanges with children they provide them with opportunities to draw conclusions, infer cause-and-effect, evaluate consequences, evaluate what is happening and much more. It is easy to respond to children’s comments with “I see” or “Wow, that’s great,” but when adults make these comments it ends the conversation, not encouraging any growth. This is why it is important for teachers to model speech by extending the conversation by providing explanations to the child for further understanding. This type of conversation is called explanatory talk (Machado, 2015). An example of explanatory talk may look something like this: “I am putting the marker caps back on the markers because if we leave them open the marker