Unit 1 Lesson 1 - Characteristics of Emergent and Early Reader

Emergent Literacy
Emergent Literacy is a concept that supports learning to read in a positive home environment where children
are in the process of becoming literate from birth.
(Vacca, 1991).

• Children are in the process of becoming literate from birth and are capable of learning what it means to
be a user of written language before entering school.

• They learn to use written language and develop as readers and writers through active engagement with
their world. Literacy develops in purposeful ways.

• Children progress as readers and writers. Reading and writing (as well as speaking and listening) are
interrelated and develop concurrently.

• Children learn informally through interactions with and modeling from literate significant others and
explorations with written language.

• Children learn to be Iiterate in different ways and at different rate of development. (Vacca, Vacca, and
Gove, 1991)
Sequence of language needs of early readers
Preprimer - Initial consonants; recognition of rhyming words: plural nouns ending in s
Primer - ending consonants; capital and lowercase letters, digraphs wh, th, ch; root words (verbs); ed
ending of verbs: possesses
Grade I - medial consonants; digraphs wh, th, ch, sh; consonant blends rhyming endings: long vowel
sounds, final o rule: verb endings ed, s, ing: compound words
Grade II - short vowel sounds; double vowel; diphthongs; contractions; soft and hard sounds of c and g:
similar sounds; x / cks: doubling consonants before adding ing: changing y to l before adding es
plural
Grade III - three-letter blends; silent letter; kn, gh, wr; variant vowel sounds; syllabication; plural les;
changing f to ves; suffixes y, ly, er, en, ful, est, less, self; prefixes a, be, un; voiced s and z;
hyphenated words (Villamin, 1999)

Developmental Reading
The Four Stages in Reading Development
Children grow through four general stages in their reading development. The period from birth to beginning
formal reading instruction in school is the period of Initial reading readiness. During this time, children develop
strong concept and oral language backgrounds, learn how to work and play with other people and develop
physically and psychologically. A number of skills, strategies, and attitudes are established that are fundamental
to later success in reading.
Children also begin to be curious about print and to use it in meaningful kinds of ways, such as recognizing the
logos of the stores in which their families shop. The stage of beginning reading is the time during which children
read dictated charts and stories, teacher prepared materials, very simple books such as predictable books,
other trade books, and beginning basal texts. Children continue to grow in the understanding that print is
meaningful and purposeful.
Recent terminology has also been developed which pertains to these first two stages. Emerging literacy
captures the developmental nature of literacy acquisition, as well as the process nature of reading and writing.
Smith suggested that children join the literacy club, the association of people who use written language.
Membership comes gradually and painlessly as novices learn the purposes of written language, how it works,
and how it contributes to one's sense of identity. Much, If not most of the learning that leads to membership
happens outside the school as individuals go about their lives using print as one of the natural sources of
information.
The third stage, the period of rapid progress encompasses the work of children at the second and third reader
levels. Comprehension is stressed along with word recognition and other useful reading skills and strategies.
The final stage of reading growth, refinement of reading skills, is exemplified by readers in the secondary
schools. These students must not only continue all of the skills and strategies developed earlier, but must also
refine them and add to them the thinking skills of formal operations. (Maggart and Zintz, 1992)
 Beginning Reading
Teaching reading is being taught because, to the public and it happened naturally. It requires human
intervention and context also the number of complex actions such as eyes, brain and psychology of mind. It
involves two processes which are phonological awareness and word recognition. It serves as very foundation in
reading (teaching beginning reading) Thus, teaching beginning reading is of extreme importance and must be
purposeful, strategic, and grounded in methods proven by experts and research.

The Sounds of Words

The unnatural" act of reading requires reader to identify letters or symbols in English which is necessary to be
translated in sounds (to sound off the letters). To be able to do this, a beginning reader must enter school with
conscious awareness of sound structure of words and ability to manipulate sounds in words". Phonological
awareness makes the beginning reader to become more successful and it enhance the experience with written
and spoken language and lastly it makes the beginning reader to become ready for word recognition.

Teaching Tips: Phonological Awareness and Alphabetic Understanding

• Make phonological awareness instruction clear, also the techniques, strategies, and make phonemes
familiar to students by modeling specific sounds and asking them to sounding off the letters.
• Ease into complexities of phonological awareness, must start from easy to more difficult words.
• Provide support and assistance. The ff. research-based instructional sequence summarizes the kind of
scaffolding beginning readers need (a.) model the sound or the strategy for making the sound; (b.) have
students use the strategy to produce the sound: (c.) repeat steps a and b using several sounds for each
type and level of difficulty: (d.) prompt students to use the strategy during the guided practice; (e) use
steps a through d to introduce more difficult words.
• Develop a sequence and schedule, tailored to each child's needs, for opportunities to apply and
develop facility with sounds (prioritized it).

Reading Words
According to Juel, children who are ready to begin reading words have developed the ff. prerequisites skills.
They understand that (a) words can be spoken or written (b.) print corresponds to speech, and (c) words are
composed of sounds. Beginning readers with these skills are also more likely to gain understanding that words
are composed of individual letters and that these letters corresponds to sounds.
This “mapping of print to speech” that establishes a clear link between letter and a sound is referred to as
alphabetic understanding.

A reader must see the words and access its meaning on its memory by the ff.
1. Translate a word into its phonological counterpart
2. Recall the proper sequence of sounds
3. Bland the words together
4. Search his/her needs.

Teaching Tips: Reading Word

• Develop explicit awareness of the connection between sounds and letters and sounds and words: teach
letter-sound correspondence by presenting the letter and modeling the sound. Model the sounds of the
word, then blend the sounds together and say the word.
• Attend to (a) the sequence in which letter sound correspondences are taught (b.) the speed with which
the student moves from sounding out to blending words to reading connected text and (c.) the size and
familiarity of words
• Support learning by modeling new sounds and words correcting errors promptly and explicitly, and
sequencing reading tasks from easy to more difficult
• Schedule opportunities to practice and review each task according to the child's needs, and they top
priority.

Where Does Aware Awareness Fit Into This Process?

The key to the process of learning to read is identifying different sounds and know how to manipulate these.
Components which are essential to reading process are segmenting words into a constituent sounds rhyming
words, and blending sounds to make words. Processes of phonological awareness and phonemnic awareness
must be taught conspicuously. Readers really need to be expose to language at home exposure in reading at
early age, as well as in dialect because it really affects the ability of children to understand the phonological
distinctions on which the language English is built. Thus, teachers must apply sensitive effort and use a variety
of techniques to help the children learn these skills when the standard English is not spoken at home.

How is Phonological Awareness Taught?

Demonstrating the relationships of parts to wholes the first step teaching phonological awareness. Then model
and demonstrate how segment short sentences into individual words, showing how the sentence is made up of
words. Use chips or other manipulative to represent the number of words in a sentence. Lastly, move to
phoneme tasks by modeling a specific sound and asking the students to produce that sound both in isolation
and in variety of words and syllables. Five characteristics to make a word easier or more difficult:

1. The size of the phonological unit.

2. The number of phonemes in the word.
3. Phoneme position in words.
4. Phonological properties of words.
5. Phonological awareness challenges.

Glimpsing the Model in Kindergarten and 2 Grade

In this model, beginning reader was given much emphasis or attention. Teachers were working for building their
reading vocabularies. Also in beginning their study of Phonics by analyzing the structures of words that is in
their listening, speaking, reading vocabularies.
Thus, in teaching beginning reader the teacher must introduce a picture then label it or identify that picture (its
name) then, sound off the word, next breakdown the letters, then sound of the breakdown letters and finally
pronounce the word slowly and when familiarization is already obvious, pronounce directly or with the increase
speed.