Early Literacy

For those older children who have shown an interest, I’m excited to have started some small early literacy groups. I’m doing this because some children are showing an interest in print awareness, so I’m simply guiding them as they explore this. As a former elementary school teacher, it’s important to me that this be done in ways that are natural and meaningful to the children, and not in a regimented, and excessively didactic way.

As parents and educators, it’s important to be mindful of our children and their development, and not become obsessed and push our children before they’re ready. We should give children time to get used to, and familiar with the look of letters and words, before beginning any type of formal instruction. This is a very good reason, among many others, for letting the child themselves decide when he/she wants to start to read. And we want our children to build a love for reading, so they become life-long readers. So many older children and adults have a dislike of reading, and it makes me wonder, why?

Back to the topic of print awareness. I would like to share this analogy. If you take a sample of printing of a different language, say Japanese or Arabic, and try to find the words that occur most often on the page, it would be difficult as the words may look like a jumble of strange shapes. In the same way, it takes a child some time to get used to the shapes of letters and words, to the point where he/she can see at a glance that this word is like that word, and this word altogether, is different. One of the reasons why children from unlettered homes are at a disadvantage when they start learning to read may be because they lack familiarity with the shapes of words and letters.

Terra Luz is a print-rich environment and a wonderful selection of books are everywhere throughout the schoolhouse. The children have a HUGE passion for books and having stories read to them. So, one project I began working on with some of the children is asking them to make up a story and dictate it to me based on a picture-only book. Not only does this help your child’s cognitive, creative, and speaking skills, the other children are working on listening to their friends in an informal setting. This is meaningful and fun.

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We are also going to begin sending informal Home Reports home. For those veteran Terra Luz families, this is similar to what I used to do with our Home-School journals last year. The home school report is simply a short update on your child and their experiences and our observations at school. We tossed around the idea of bringing back the home-school journal (in which parents actually write back and return to school), but we want to make sure this doesn’t end up being too time consuming for all parties. We'll see how the home school reports work, and go from there.

Have a fabulous weekend!
Andrea