Early Literacy Essay Sample

English

2015
Essay
Children include an important resource of every nation. They are beautiful and innocent as God himself. They are open to learn even before their schooling starts. Their minds are exactly like clean slates on which anything can be written. Family represents the first school that inculcates learning behaviour among the children. However, the literal literacy of the children more or less depends on the schooling. Elementary schools are meant to provide the children with apt aura of understanding the world around. In simpler words, elementary schools initiate and develop early literacy among the children, which makes them more mature to interpret the world. However, the word literacy is not confined only to basic reading and writing but, it includes developing vital abilities to analyse and interpret behaviours, attitudes, and other psycho-social phenomena. Imparting early literacy requires apt understanding of the behavioural and psycho-social processes of the children. There could be many strategies or very important points (VIPs) that a teacher can employ in order to get the desired benefits so far as the early literacy of the children is concerned.
Early literacy represents an incipient set of associations between reading and writing. It percolates down that there are very important points which are insightful in teaching early literacy in a more fruitful and effective manner.
One of the very important points which I would like to discuss here is that a teacher should always implement warm talk. This strategy is very crucial develop a very rich relationship with the children. It proves much fruitful even to assess and evolve positive behaviour among them (Piasta, and Wagner, 2010). Warm talk can induce humble behaviour and attitudes among the children, and the children could be engaged in conversations in small or large groups, or in one-to-one settings etcetera, which can intensify the learning capabilities of the children. Such strategy involves utilizing important words that are not in much use in daily conversations (Layzer, 2002). Also, it would offer a substantial space for the concerns or statements of the children. Such stratagem is democratic in nature and can offer better podium to impart efficient literacy and thus, efficient teaching. Early learning (reading and writing) of the children is Children’s early reading and writing learning, in other words, is rooted in a broader evolving structure of oral communication.
Early literacy is a notion of being able to write and read, being capable of interpreting the meaning and understanding the symbols. Early literacy begins too early before a formal school education hovers over the head of a child. It forms a stepping stone in the academic perspective of a child. In early literacy, a teacher makes a child familiar with writing and reading. And reading in early stage means to comprehend the printed word whereas writing means to be able to make use of printed word and to communicate by using such words. In Early literacy, teacher helps to makes a connection between child and the rest of formal world where the education awaits for him.
Psychological development represents another very important point that affects the early literacy of the children. Early literacy is more viable in early childhood development. It prepares a child brain for learning behaviour. It helps him to develop cognitive skills with social behaviour. The process of performances starts right up there at early literacy level and continues till adulthood (Christie, & Roskos, 2003). The overall development of brain takes place in the early literacy stage and hence forms a lifelong persona of a child. It not only fosters the rendition of a child but nurtures the good relationship with family and immediate people. Exploratory nature of early literacy gives a child flair for becoming a writer. In early literacy stage the inhibitions in a child remain at bay and help to overcome shyness and other impediments of personality development. The reluctance otherwise remains in the child and often leads to personality failure (McGee, & Richgels. 2000.). Early literacy engrains child with cultural values and sense of society. Early literacy bridges the social relations with child. It helps child to develop relations with books and rest of the world.
The third very important point would be creating learning communities or groups. Such stratagem facilities better understanding of the conceptions of early reading and early childhood development. Strictly speaking, such point elucidates the importance of group learning where every child would be influenced by every child present in the group (Leslie, and Allen, 1999). Such strategy plays an important role to imbibe and develop certain qualities that result in the growth of personality development. It provides a vital stand to extend the children’s comments into more descriptive and grammatically correct statements. Moreover, there is technology aspect that could play a very important role in enhancing the community learning processes (Neuman, & Dickinson, 2001). Audio-visual instructions are more efficient in imparting a basic understanding of the required concepts, making the children more engaged within the learning process.
Multimedia devices augment the learning process and hence direct a positive and appropriative way of enhancing early literacy and development. Subsequently, early literacy teaching should essential be unambiguous and straight, which means that it should not be script-like, inflexible, and unyielding (Schickedanz 2003). But, it should be implanted in the elementary undertakings of early learning properly encompassed by early education exercise and research. These comprise reading aloud, small group activities, circle time, adult-child conversations, and of course, play. All these aspects lead the children to newer developmental avenues, enriching their apt understanding of analysing text, audio and images. This enhances their physical and cognitive behaviour immensely.
Another aspect of early literacy rules out the conventions of reading and writing but puts emphasis on whole developmental process of a child. Which implies that early literacy not only helps to write and read but to understand the complex set of phenomena like changing attitudes, adapting behaviours and acquiring the habits as well.
`Child’s learning capacity and early literacy are somewhat synonymous. Early literacy stage is the beginning of world, where child is taught to tackle the impending life, with ease. Early literacy stage forms a long term relationship with academic literacy. The quest of curiosity, the interpretations interest of communicating with rest of fellow beings and inclination to be part of family and community at large is all the learnt at early literacy stage. We can infer that whatever knowledge child seeks at early literacy centres forms bedrock for rest of the acquired knowledge. They learn to retrieve and reconstruct the information at a very early stage thus this capability enhances and widens the horizons of mind.

References

Christie, J., & K. Roskos. 2003. Literacy in play. In Literacy in America: An encyclopedia of history, theory and practice, ed. B. Guzzetti, 318–23. Denver, CO: ABC-CLIO.
Layzer, C. 2002. Adding ABCs to apple juice, blocks and circle time. Paper presented at the conference, Assessing Instructional Practices in Early Literacy and Numeracy, September, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Leslie, L. and Allen, L. (1999), Factors That Predict Success in an Early Literacy Intervention Project. Reading Research Quarterly, 34: 404–424. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.34.4.2
McGee, L.M., & D.J. Richgels. 2000. Literacy’s beginnings: Supporting young readers and writers. 3d ed. Needham, MA: Allyn & Bacon
Neuman, S.B., & D. Dickinson, eds. 2001. The handbook of early literacy research. New York: Guilford
Piasta, S. B. and Wagner, R. K. (2010), Developing Early Literacy Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Alphabet Learning and Instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 45: 8–38. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.45.1.2
Schickedanz. J. 2003. Engaging preschool-ers in code learning. In Literacy and young children, eds. D. Barone & L. Morrow, 121–39. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.