This document discusses creating a literate environment in the preschool classroom. It emphasizes the importance of considering learners, texts, and instructional practices based on a framework that addresses the cognitive and affective needs of students. Specifically, it stresses getting to know individual students, selecting a variety of text types and levels that are engaging, and using developmentally appropriate practices to facilitate literacy development.

1. CREATING A LITERATE ENVIRONMENT
IN THE PRESCHOOL CLASSROOM
Tiffany Hupp
Walden University-EDUC 6706
October 23, 2011

2. INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION
PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS: STANDARD FIVE
 “Candidates create a literate environment that fosters
reading and writing by integrating foundational knowledge,
instructional practices, approaches and methods,
curriculum materials, and the appropriate use of
assessments” (International Reading Association, 2010).
International Reading Association. (2010). Retrieved from:
http://www.reading.org/General/CurrentResearch/Standards/ProfessionalStandards2010/Professio
nalStandards2010_Standard5.aspx

3. WHAT COMPONENTS ARE MOST IMPORTANT?
 Learners-Affective and cognitive
aspects of literacy learning
 Texts-Text structures, types, genres, and
difficultly levels match to literacy
learners and literacy goals and
objectives
 Instructional Practices-Developmentally
appropriate research-based practices
used with appropriate texts to facilitate
affective and cognitive aspects of
literacy development in all learners
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Changes in literacy education.
[Webcast]. The Beginning Reader. Baltimore, MD: Author.

4. Learners Texts Instructional The Framework for
FRAMEWORK FOR LITERACY INSTRUCTION
Affective and Text structure, Practices
cognitive aspects types, genres, and Developmentally Literacy Instruction
of literacy learning difficulty levels appropriate has provided me
matched to research-based
literacy learners practices used with
with a way of
and literacy goals appropriate texts to looking at my
and objectives facilitate affective literacy instruction
and cognitive
aspects of literacy from different
development in all perspectives as it
learners
relates to learners,
Interactive Use a variety of
informal and formal
Determine texts of the
appropriate types
Use instructional
methods that address
texts and
Perspective
Reading and assessments to and levels of difficulty the cognitive and instructional
determine areas of to meet literacy goals affective needs of
writing accurately,
strength and need in and objectives for students and the
practices.
fluently, and with
comprehension
literacy development. students. demands of the Incorporating all
particular text.
three perspectives
Being strategic and Promote students’ can prove to be
metacognitive independent use of
readers and writers reading strategies difficult, especially
and skills. with young children,
Critical Perspective Find out about ideas, Select texts that Foster a critical but necessary to
Judging, issues, and problems provide opportunities stance by teaching
evaluating, and that matter to for student to judge, students how to create “well-
thinking critically students. evaluate, and think judge, evaluate, and rounded readers”.
critically. think critically about
about text Understand the texts.
learner as a unique
individual.
Response Find out about Select texts that Provide opportunities
Perspective students’ interests connect to students’ for students to read,
Reading, reacting, and identities. identities and/or react, and formulate
interests and that a personal response
and responding to
Understand what have the potential to to text.
text in a variety of matters to students evoke an emotional
meaningful ways and who they are as or personal response.
individuals.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Perspectives on
Literacy Learning. [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader. Baltimore, MD: Author.

5. LEARNERS
 It is important for teachers to get to know the
“whole child”, including the child’s present
abilities, personal interests and motivations,
and background knowledge.
 For preschool children, I have found it helpful to
complete a parent interview at the initial home
visit, the Brigance 3-5 Screening, the Observational
Checklist of Literacy Habits: Early Emergent Literacy
Stage (Devries, 2004), and direct observation of
students in the classroom setting.
 Gail Tompkins stated “By linking assessment and
instruction, teachers improve students’ learning
and their teaching” (Tompkins, 2010, p.75).
 Andrews, J. (2001). Getting to know you. On Classic Julie – Classic Broadway [CD].
Universal Classics Group, a Division of UMG Recordings Inc.
•DeVries, B. A. (2004). Literacy assessment and intervention for the elementary classroom.
Scottsdale, AR: Holcomb Hathaway, Publishers, Inc.
•Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Getting to know your students. [Webcast].
The Beginning Reader. Baltimore, MD: Author.
•Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

6. SELECTING TEXTS
 In selecting texts, it is important for teachers to
provide a variety of texts. The important inmatrix is
Informational texts are
following
useful for “plotting” texts and making sure all text
the preschool classroom! One
types are being showed that only 5% of books
study utilized. Books can be considered
narrative or informational,children were
read aloud to but also linguistic (word
oriented) or informational (Pentimonti, communicated in
semiotic (message is Zucker,
Justice, & Kaderavek, 2010)!
a way other Sharing informational books with
than words, i.e. pictures).
Linguistic
young children increases their
background knowledge and their
understanding of text structures,
increasing their chances of
Narrative “fourth grade slump!”
avoiding the Informational
(Laureate Education, 2010b).
Semiotic
•Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Analyzing and selecting texts. [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader. Baltimore, MD: Author.
•Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Informational text in the early years. [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader. Baltimore, MD: Author.
•Pentimonti J.M., Zucker T. A., Justice L. M., & Kaderavek J. N. (2010). Information text use in preschool classroom read-alouds. The Reading Teacher, 63(8), 656-665. doi:
10.1598/RT.63.8.4

7. TEACHING THE
INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE
 Goal is to help students become strategic
readers and writers. I feel that at the preschool
level, this means laying the foundation for later
literacy learning, such as letter recognition,
phonemic awareness, concepts of print and
writing processes.
 The application for week five of this course
included creating a lesson plan that addressed
word study and comprehension. I based my
lesson off of my students’ current interests,
which happened to be lizards that week!

8.  Because my lesson was geared around
comprehension, I had my students help create
picture]. United States: Nickelodeon Movies.
Verbinski, G. (Director). (2011). Rango [Motion
a K-W-L chart. We first discussed and recorded
what we already Knew about chameleons,
which was quite a bit thanks to the movie
“Rango” (Verbinski, 2011).
 Then we discussed what we Wanted to know
about chameleons before reading the
informational text Chameleon, Chameleon by
Joy Cowley.
 Next we did a quick “word study” activity
searching for words that started the same as
“chameleon”.

9.  We also read the narrative text “The Mixed-Up
Chameleon” by Eric Carle and talked about
which parts of the story could really happen,
and which could not.
 Before finishing this lesson, we discussed and
recorded what we had Learned about
chameleons from these two books.
I really enjoyed week five’s lessons
focusing on the interactive
perspective, and I think my students
did as well!

10. TEACHING THE
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE
 Goal is to help students judge, evaluate and
think critically about a text. This can be
accomplished by examining text from different
perspectives, judging the validity of the text,
completing character studies, discovering the
author’s purpose for writing the text and etc.
 This perspective was very hard to implement in
my preschool classroom. I chose to look more
closely at the characters of a text, and their
importance in the story. I didn’t feel this
perspective was easily taught with texts on
lizards or chameleons, so we switched our
focus to social/emotional development in
week six.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Critical Perspective.
[Webcast]. The Beginning Reader. Baltimore, MD: Author.

11.  First we read Pinkalicious together as a whole group. During the
first reading, I would stop at appropriate times to create
suspense, ask questions and allow for predictions.
 After the first reading, the students tried to remember all of the
characters in the story. I helped them remember some by
flipping to the illustrations of them.
 Next the students were placed into small groups, where they
were read the book again. The students then picked a
character from the story and a puppet and tried to recreate the
story. The students truly enjoyed this experience, although it
was difficult for them to act the story out and not simply retell
the stories events.
 We finished the critical perspective by judging if the text was
reality or fantasy.

12. TEACHING THE
RESPONSE PERSPECTIVE
 Goal is to help students to react or respond to
a text in meaningful ways after reading or
listening to that text.
 Since it is still very close to the beginning of the
school year, my students are still very
consumed with making friends. They often are
so worried that their friends will think poorly of
them that they are not being their true selves. I
thought it would be appropriate to share a
book that is about accepting yourself for who
you are and what you like instead of changing
for others.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Response
Perspective. [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader. Baltimore, MD: Author.

13.  This lesson, although somewhat “simple”, was very meaningful
to my students. We first read the book Purplicious together as
a class. Just like with Pinkalicious, I paused at appropriate
times for my students’ questioning and comments.
 After the book, I encouraged my students to think of a situation
they may have been in when they liked something their friends
did not. The students were then broken into small groups to
discuss their stories with their friends and create a picture and
dictate their story to a teacher.
 We came back together as a whole group to allow the
students to share their stories and to discuss how Pinkalicious
felt in this book and what she and her friends could have done
differently.

14. THANK YOU FOR VIEWING MY PRESENTATION!
 As a note, I have enjoyed learning from this course’s
resources and have many useful ideas to use with
my students.
 I plan to continue incorporating all three
perspectives, with more emphasis placed on the
critical and response perspectives, because they
are the two perspectives I have not used often in the
past. Some of the books we plan to read to
incorporate these perspectives are Oliver Button is a
Sissy by Tomie dePaola, Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon
by Patty Lovell, and Chrysanthemum by Kevin
Henkes. Since I have also learned the importance of
using online texts in this course, I plan to incorporate
the online reading of Chrysanthemum at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxMlxbgYvLI