Emergent Literacy:

Success in beginning reading is significantly related to phonemic awareness that develops

gradually and in tandem with reading instruction. The greater the phonemic awareness of a
beginning reader, the more fully he/she will be able to process the letter-sound properties of
individual printed words.
Prior to formal reading instruction, however, children need to be afforded many opportunities to
play with language orally. For many children, this begins before they ever reach a formal school
setting. For those children with a weaker oral foundation with language play, early intervention
with an emphasis on phonological skills is essential to closing the gap. (INTASC 1, 2, 3, and 8)
Explicit, regular instruction in reading foundational skills is the key to acquisition of early
reading skills. Many of the students I work with need this daily explicit instruction. I find that
in Kindergarten, this is the case. Teachers know what to teach and when to teach it so that their
students move along the reading development continuum and their curriculum usually supports
this teaching. Our data, however, has shown that our students begin to be less successful as they
move through first and second grade. As a coach, I have worked with my teachers (many of the
new) to analyze our curriculum and our teaching practices around foundational skills. What we
found was that our curriculum lacked a sequential and explicit teaching of phonemic awareness
and phonics skills. (WI Standards 1, 3, 6, 8, and 9)
This course has helped me to better help my teachers understand the sequence of skills their
students need, and ways that they can assess whether or not their students have acquired those
skills. Students are engaged in more powerful instructional strategies which are tied to other
emergent literacy activities such as the shared reading of big books in which the teacher helps
students take a closer look at text to examine words. A balanced approach of phonemic
awareness, explicit sound-symbol relationship instruction, and reading in leveled text is helping
our struggling students make achievement gains.
In my experience with upper level students (grades 3-6) who struggle with reading, drill back is
necessary to pinpoint just where the breakdown may have occurred in their early reading skills
acquisition. The challenge is to find the right intervention strategies that meet a particular childs
needs without using materials they might find too babyish. Emergent literacy has many
components, and if any of the stages are skipped or not cemented in the childs learning, reading
difficulties occur.