Literacy
Learning to read is one of the essential tasks of childhood. As the Literacy Coach at Stevenson School one of my goals is to support our students as they develop into successful readers and writers.
Research studies show that a balanced approach to literacy instruction is necessary to enable children to become successful readers and writers. Reading is a complex, problem-solving activity. Children must simultaneously integrate many different sources of information in order to read text successfully. Writing is integral to children’s development as readers; reading and writing are reciprocal activities and serve to strengthen each other.
The literacy support provided at Stevenson includes small group instruction using text at the students’ instructional reading level. Small group instruction focuses on developing and strengthening reading strategies through reading, writing and word study. The lessons focus on meeting the students’ needs in the areas of phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and effective reading and writing strategies. Selection of students to participate in literacy support is based upon careful assessment of students’ strengths and weaknesses.
Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds. It is one of the best indicators of early reading success. Phonemic awareness is not the same as phonics. It deals with sounds in spoken words, whereas phonics involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols (letters). Before children can make the connection of sounds to letters, they need to connect their speech to individual sounds. Lessons include tasks that focus on rhyming, blending and segmenting sounds.
There is more to reading than meets the eye! It is more than naming words; it is a process that develops over time and is characterized by specific reading behaviors. As students become proficient readers, they progress through different stages: emergent, early, transitional and extending. Following is a description of the characteristics of each stage and a few suggestions on how to support your child at each stage.
- The earliest stage of reading is referred to as the emergent stage. As an emergent reader, the child will:
- Rely on the pictures to gather information about the story’s meaning.
- Understand that the actual message comes from the printed text.
- Realize that the reader has to move from left to right across the text.
- Point to words as they develop one-to-one matching.
- Locate words that s/he knows in text.
- Begin to develop phonemic awareness– an understanding that words are composed of a series of sounds.