This presentation is on the topic of emergent literacy. Emergent literacy awareness is important for parents/families, teachers, and students.
The "emergent" part of emergent literacy means "early". Emergent literacy is NOT teaching children to read and write. It is exposing children to all types of literacy in the household, community, etc. Children need to be exposed to literacy beginning at birth. Babies' brains are rapidly developing and they have the most capacity for developing literacy skills at the ages of 0-5 years.
Parents and families are responsible for beginning the early literacy learning process. Parents and families should provide a healthy environment in which literacy skills can naturally unfold. This environment should include books, social interactions, and literacy-rich experiences. Parents and families can model literate behavior through writing notes, answering phone calls, reading books, reading newspapers and magazines, etc. Through activities and exposure, parents and family members can help to build young learners' vocabulary. Parents and families should provide the tools for their children to partake in early literacy learning.
Early childhood educators and primary teachers should be aware of the importance of early/emergent literacy. They need to know that children without any or limited early literacy exposure can potentially have reading difficulties. Educators need to know that early learning requires the understanding of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. Phonological awareness teaches students the importance of sounds and the meanings of words. This means breaking the sounds apart from the words and identifying rhyming sounds. Phonemic awareness is letter recognition and relating the sounds to the letters. Educators need to make sure that parents and families are informed about early/emergent literacy. They should send home handouts, provide information meetings, etc.
Children need exposure - it's simple. They will model parents, family members, and teachers. Take them to places in the community and repetitively show them common words. Show them books, newspapers, etc that are around the house. A method of exposure is also to use sign language or finger spelling. There is some information on the Internet about that and it works best with very young children. Technology provides a wonderful tool of online interactives which young children can use on their own for exposure to literacy. Starfall, Lil'Fingers Storybooks, and Enchanted Learning are just a few online websites that can greatly enhance early literacy for children.
To wrap-up this presentation - exposure is key! This can be done by talking, reading, singing, and listening. By doing all of these things, you can stimulate a young child's brain growth and build connections in their brain. This will jump-start their building blocks for reading and increase brain capacity for learning language and literacy skills. This will also decrease a chance of reading difficulties in the future. Of course, we all want to start young children off to the best start we can - this can be done through emergent literacy!
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