(3344) Blog #2: Chapter 4 Summary

This chapter was very interesting and had very good examples of what exactly they were saying. It started with giving an in-class scenario of how a teacher (Mrs. Kirkpatrick) applies all these new approaches in emerging into literacy. Some examples of this were setting up centers, reading books aloud and responding to them, and most importantly not only providing instruction, but also giving children opportunities to experiment with these new ideas.
Other teachers can also provide the same opportunities as Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Some examples to provide children with the opportunity to experiment with reading and writing were; posting signs in classroom, list classroom rules, write notes to parents, label classroom items, and drawing or writing in journals. This chapter makes it clear that children should not only be exposed to written language but also have experimented with it before entering school. This can be done by simply reading to our children and allowing them to practice with pencil and paper.
This chapter also provided us with the stages of understanding the concept of a word. I guess I just took for granted knowing so many words that I really never realized there were so many stages. There are four stages to understanding the concept of a word: 1st- children don't differentiate between words and things. 2nd- they describe words as labels for things. 3rd- words carry meaning and understand that stories are built from words. 4th- they understand that words are made with letters and they also understand words have different appearances, they can be spoken, listened, read, and written. The first words that children can recognize are those they see most often in their environment. These are called environment print. This is usually how "reading" begins. Most children recognize signs they see most often. For example, me and my family pass by Bill Miller's everyday on our way home, she now knows every time there is a Bill's near by, she also loves their ice tea. The same idea comes to play in writing. Children scribble and later have enough experience that they can turn that scribble into an actual word. We can help their ability to read and write by providing the children productive centers. They can learn to play and learn at the same time. The alphabet also plays a major role in the children's way of reading and writing. I always believed the alphabet was the only important system in helping the children emerge in reading and writing. After reading this chapter four other language systems were introduced: phonological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic, as well as their own knowledge of things.
There are stages that children have to go through while learning new things. This is also true when children are being emerged into reading. The same stages they go through in reading are also gone through in writing. These stages are emergent, beginning, and fluent. In emergent reading children gain an understanding of the communicative purpose of print. This is where environmental print comes in play. In the beginning reading stage children learn phoneme-grapheme correspondences and begin to decode words. This leads them to the fluent reader stage where they are able to concentrate more of their "cognitive energy" on comprehension. Reading now becomes a learning tool at this point. The same steps are taken for emergent writing. In the emergent stage children use scribbles to represent writing. With some experience they will be able to line up the scribbles from left to right and top to bottom. During this stage children will also be able to tell you what they wrote, "read it to you." In the beginning stage the alphabetic principle comes in. Here they use invented spelling to represent words. In the fluent stage children are now able to write in paragraphs and vary according to genre. In this stage they mainly use correct spelling and other conventions of written language.
I really enjoyed this chapter because as a future teacher it really gives you ideas of you should set up your classroom. This really helps to see how even the posters you hang in your classroom can make a difference. I really liked the idea of different centers in the classroom. I remember having some similar to these in elementary school. I always thought they were the best time of the day. Maybe now with this information I can really make some productive centers in my classroom some day.