Elizabeth L. Angeli
Relationship between language and literary development
Literacy development process is a very complex issue because it involves numerous experiences that intricately coincide and complement each other (Antilla, 2013). Literacy development begins at birth as a young baby hears and starts to interpret meaning from the spoken word. Thus a child’s very early experience set the stage for the development of literacy. As children discover and get to know the world around them, they tend to find the ways to connect with their environment and communicate with others. Thereby oral language becomes the foundation for a child’s entry into literacy.
Language and literacy development strategies for classroom and home
Isolated skill instruction is rarely appropriate in development strategies as literacy is known to develop in everyday activities, life situations and daily conversations. The children innately obtain a great power of observation and imitation. All the language skills are greatly connected and interwoven: consequently, developing of the receptive skills, such as listening and reading, advances the level of performance in the areas of writing and speaking (which is productive skills). As we consider the multiplicity of factors which influence language and literacy development, it also becomes evident that the development of language and literacy is a correlated process that should be approached integrally. Thus successful and fast-developing language and literature skills are by all means the outcome of well-structured and efficiently executed strategies.
A highly inquisitive mind of toddlers makes them extremely sensitive and vulnerable to any surrounding factors. That is why child’s home environment and parental literacy interactions are the key elements of the pre-school literacy development. The role of a parent is to support their children on the learning way, inspirit their achievements and create such kind of environment which is favorable for early learners. For the purpose of helping all the parents out in this important mission, Karen Ford, a senior lecturer in primary care nursing, developed several strategies which she willingly shared. The strategies include providing explicit and systematic instruction in vocabulary, enabling active communication with both adults and peers, supported by feedback; encouraging young learner's development and ensuring the child's access to rich and diverse vocabulary through reading or talking activities (Karen Ford, 2010). Home learning is very special because it can be more individualized than classroom activities, and thus better adjusted to a child's personal needs and interests.
Even though the classroom possesses a second place, the classroom still has a great capacity to provide quality educational experience and interactions to support and strengthen literacy development (Antilla, 2013). The key points which classroom activities should be focused on are the phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and early writing. It would be a good approach to practice all the mentioned skills by combining a few of them (f.e., storybook reading and alphabetic skills). A wide range of activities and materials (alphabet games, storytelling, role-plays, collage creation, craft-making games connected to spelling or thematic vocabulary flashcards, songs and rhymes, interactive books etc.) may be equally applied to both home and classroom learning structures, too.
Strategies for disabilities and deficiencies, abilities
The extreme value of language and literature development for early learners was already mentioned above. Therefore the disabilities should by no means be considered an impenetrable border on the way to child's development, but rather as a case where a special, peculiar strategy is needed. Education for students with disabilities serves a purpose to equip them with a set of skills which they would require to be the full members of community.
There is a range of educational projects created for the needs of people with disabilities. One of those, led by Paul A. Alberto and Laura D. Fredrick, can be provided as an example of a well-planned strategy in literacy development. The purpose of this project was to examine the efficacy of three different components of an integrated literacy program (visual literacy, sight-word instruction, phonics instruction), and to determine the effectiveness of each component.
The lesson activities differed depending on the curricular component: in visual literacy one, students were taught to read and demonstrate comprehension of individual pictures and sequences of pictures by looking over a wordless book and answering wh-questions and prediction questions.
The sight-word and phonics instructional components included teacher's interactive storybook session (which contained a controlled vocabulary of the sight or blending words, suggested for learning), puppet plays, comprehension and language-expansion questions. Phonics instruction consisted of individual probe session (for revision and evaluation) and daily teaching session, where the students were taught to produce and practice individual sounds, identify letter-sound correspondences, blend previously taught sounds to read words, and apply previously taught skills to novel words.
As Paul A. Alberto and Laura D. Fredrick state, the word reading goal for students with disabilities should include “a pool of sight words and sufficient phonics-based word analysis skills to have a high probability of decoding untaught words in their environments, with sufficient fluency for comprehension” (Alberto, Fredrick, 2011). Upon finishing of the project Paul A. Alberto and Laura D. Fredrick drew the conclusions that students with moderate intellectual disabilities are able to develop an appropriate level of literacy skills.
References
Alberto, A.P., Fredrick, L. D. (2011). Integrated Literacy for Students with Moderate and Severe Disabilities. SREE Conference Abstract.
Antilla, A.J. (2013). The Effects of Early Literacy Development on Academic Success in the Educational Setting and Implications for Educational Learners and Teachers. Michigan, MI: Michigan University.
Karen F. (2010). 8 Strategies for Preschool ELL's Language and Literacy Development. Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/8-strategies-preschool-ells-language- and-literacy-development
Shiel G., Cregan A., Mc Gough A., Archer P. (2012). Oral Language in Early Childhood and Primary Education. Dublin: National Council for Curriculum and Assessment.
Raising Children Network (2014). Developing Literacy. Retrieved from http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/developing_literacy.html
