Building Literacy Foundations in Children

Did you ever write notes or signs to relay a message when you were a child? I know that I did. Whether it was 'keep out' signs for my little brother on my bedroom door, a shopping list for me and my doll, or made up wedding invitations, my immature writing was everywhere.  It was previously frowned upon to let children fake write because it was thought to grow incorrect grammar habits. However, due to numerous studies it has been decided that letting your child adventure in pretend reading and writing will encourage good learning habits in the future.  As a teacher and/or parent it is important to encourage children to pretend read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See or write out and mail their fake wedding invitations to family and friends.

Link

As a pre-k or kindergarten teacher to teach phonemic awareness.  Children really enjoy these activities because most of the time they have a desire to learn how to read and write just like their parents or older siblings.  It is important to start with tasks and words that the children will understand ,such as other student's names or the names of popular fast food restaurants.  It is important for children to begin to understand the different sounds that letters can make, the idea that the letter sounds make up the different words they are seeing, and understanding the length difference in words.  Phonemic awareness can be blended into any subject area, daily activities, and other sections of student life in order to set a strong emergent literacy.  How would you start a literacy foundation for students in your classroom? How much do you think that the home life of a student has to do with their excitement to learn reading and writing? If so, how as a teacher can you overcome that?

Here is a great link that I found for early literacy education. Try it out!