Literacy in early childhood

About supporting early writers , the recent Australia National Quality Standard newsletter uploaded a video for educators to ponder about. Comments seem to be critical. Here I share some learning stories relating to children at various stages of literacy capabilities, and they are all 4 years old.

Mya decided to WRITE her story today. She emphasized that she was not going to dictate her story for me to jot down, as we did before. Instead, she would write the words while I spelt them out for her. Mya was definitely confident of her emerging ability and knowledge of letters of the alphabet.

So, Mya narrated her story sentence by sentence, and I broke the sentence down into words and spelt out each word slowly. Mya had visual image of some letters, and she was able to write them independently when I named the letters. She mostly used the capital letters, but she was gradually learning the lower case of some letters. For those letters she did not know, I wrote them down on a piece of paper and Mya copied. It was amazing to see Mya writing diligently letter by letter. During her story writing, Mya was interrupted by lunch. But she remembered to return to her writing task afterwards.  Mya was definitely taking responsibility for her own learning.

What learning was happening here?

Mya was learning to write by being involved. She has been creating stories lately, so writing a story was a meaningful activity for Mya to practice her literacy skills. On her own initiative, Mya decided to challenge herself to write. She was really motivated to learn and demonstrated confidence and enthusiasm. Mya told me she wrote at home on a notebook. I can see the literacy link between home and kindergarten. I would like to thank Mya’s family for being very supportive of her literacy development.

Sam asked me to help her write up a list. I know she is able to write all letters, so I decided to jot down what she wanted to write and let her copy. She was happy with the idea, and she organised a set of pen and paper for me and another for herself.

The first thing on her list was chocolate. I wrote them in small letters, but when Sam copied them off, she converted them into the capital letter. Interesting! Sam has knowledge of both the upper and lower cases of the letters of the alphabet, and she feels more comfortable to use the upper case.

The next item on her list was computer games. I tried to demonstrate the thinking process behind hearing the sounds in word, so I said the word slowly, ‘com-pu-ter’. Sam was learning to hear the consonants of the word, and she made an informed guess that the word had a ‘p’ in the middle and that it sounded like there were an ‘e’ . It’s a joy to watch Sam grow in her early writing efforts.

Recently, children at the kindergarten have been buzzing around with enthusiasm, producing puppet shows.  Grace was keen to stage her own show.

First, she dictated the story for me to write down. Grace developed a simple but interesting plot for her show, sharing her fantasy and imagination. Grace also wanted to make sure that she would not lose her story, so she punched a hole in the paper and threaded a piece of string through it and hung the paper round her neck. What a unique idea!

Next, Grace drew the characters, including Rapunzel (the princess), the baby Rapunzel, the queen and the prince. Grace needed help to cut out the puppets and she asked her friend, Mya to cut them out for her. The last step was laminating the puppets so Grace could keep them for a long time. But then, it was lunch time. Grace was so eager to complete the preparation that she suggested working through lunch. I said ‘no’ and she quickly finished her lunch and came back to her work.

As we have been using mat-times for the children to showcase their talents, Grace was all smiles when the bell rang for mat-time. During mat-time, while I narrated the story, Grace and her friends held the puppets and acted out the story. We all had a good time, including those who were performing and who were watching.

I am so amazed that the show/story telling project has been achieving so much learning for grace. It’s about creative expression and literacy development (both verbal and written language). Also, the experiences support the disposition of perseverance and a sense of responsibility.  The teachers are impressed that grace took ownership of her show and her contribution was valued.

Ava and Manaia wanted to put up a show and wanted to make a sign to advertise their show. Manaia chose a long strip of paper to be the sign. She intended to inform everyone at the kindergarten about the event.  She asked me to write down the name of the show for them and planned to decorate the banner by herself and with Ava. They drew the octopus and the mermaid, but they did not feel confident to draw the dragon.  Manaia knew that Eden was good at drawing dragons, so she persuaded her to draw a dragon on the banner. When the banner was ready, Manaia suggested using the cellotape to secure the banner and even fetched me a chair to stand on when I hung up the banner high above, so ‘everyone can see it’, as suggested by Manaia.

Mya and Sam are ready for independent writing, and they know messages and ideas can be represented in print. To respect Mya's determination to write all by herself, so I focus on practising letter writing, whereas I extend Sam's knowledge and skills in sounding out the words, i.e. letter-sound relationship. Grace is not ready to write letters and I promote her interest in emergent literacy by modelling writing. I wrote while she narrated a script, which was performed in front of the whole kindergarten. Ava and Mania's story shows that writing sign to inform is a valid way to promote awareness of print.