The interaction between a parent and a child significantly impacts the child during the beginning phases of literacy development. The environment at home plays a major role in a child's development. As a result, it is important for teachers to gain an awareness of children's family literacy practices, especially when the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the children's families are different from their own. This helps them tap into children's prior experiences, draw upon their strengths and interests, and address their individual needs.
In order for a child to be most successful, learning needs to take place at school and at home. Home is a great place for reinforcement to take place. As a kindergarten teacher, I use many activities during reading groups that promote phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness improves children's word reading, reading comprehension and spelling. There are a number of strategies that I implement in the classroom, such as using songs, rhymes, poems, and chants, working with syllables, concentrating on the beginning sounds of words and playing word games. At home, parents can support their child's phonemic awareness by singing alphabet songs with their child, read stories that their child chooses, help their child clap the beats or syllables in words, point out letters in words around the house and play with language and rhymes. Parents can help further their child's learning by making sure that reinforcement takes place at home. By engaging parents in their child's reading acquisition, children will find greater success in school.
Annie, you provided some really great suggestions for creating an environment that promotes literacy. Following your message, I found an article at Scholastic Online by Linda Espinosa titled "Set the Stage for Literacy — Literally." The article promotes engaging children in early literacy activities in home through playing, but the article takes the idea a step further by explaining that children learn best in environments that make them feel safe and cared for. I think that your blog has provided many wonderful examples of literacy activities that both parents and teachers can use. After reading Espinosa's article, I believe that it is additionally important to promote literacy by creating a classroom environment that is safe and secure, much like a home.
ReplyDeleteYour blog touched on many of the important aspects of the reading. I agree that it is important to support literacy at home and in class, but I wonder what can teachers do to support students who do not get read to at home?
It's funny that while I was reading your post, I was thinking that I just looked at an A-B-C sing along CD that I purchased for my 11-month-old. Good to know that I am honing in on building his phonemic awareness! An attentive and engaged parent is vital to reinforcement at home of previously taught skills. Parents, that are not educators, are sometimes unaware of the "simple things" they can incorporate into the daily routines with their children that would not completely derail their schedule. As educators it is our role to inform parents via literacy blogs, teacher websites, newsletters, or reading night of this information. It is easy to forget that our "go to" strategies are not always at parents fingertips. Let's give them a fighting chance by arming them with information.
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