Emergent Literacy

Emergent literacy refers to the "reading and writing behaviors that precede and develop into conventional literacy." It is the earliest literacy concepts and behaviors of children and the varieties of social context in which children become literate. (Graves, 2011)

Children need to acquire two insights about language in order to become successful readers: the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the insight that spoken words are made up of a sequence of somewhat separable sounds, called phonemes.

Listed below are steps that you can take as an educator to facilitate a child's growing literacy.

Creating a Literate Environment

You must create a language rich environment or a classroom that abounds with opportunities to read, write, listen, and talk. A language rich classroom includes:

walls filled with posters, signs, labels, and student work
reading center with a library chock full of books, comfortable chairs, pillows etc.
special area for writing that contains paper, crayons, markers, alphabet strips, and colored papers
science center where children can explore insects, plants, and animals (click picture below)

Teach your students about the elements of a story: conflict, character, settings, theme etc. Click on the picture on the left to access the Flocabulary rap!

In teaching vocabulary, remember there are three strategies that students need to become independent word learners: 1) using context clues, 2) using word parts, and 3) using the dictionary.

Word Sketches: a creative way to teach vocabulary to students. Click on the following picture:

Reading Opportunities

In the picture above, I have given you an example of what a literature friendly classroom should look like.

Here are some other ideas to give students the opportunity to read in the classroom.

The Morning Meeting: The beginning of each school day is an ideal time to gather your students in a comfortable place and meet with them as a community of learners. The morning meeting has dual purposes which include nurturing a sense of belonging and purpose and engaging students in a variety of literacy experiences.

Free Reading: Each day, students should have several opportunities to "read" books of their own choosing in any way they like. Some may wish to share a book with a friend. Others may choose to listen to a book on tape or CD.

Selecting Books for Specific Purposes: There are three main purposes that books can serve: 1) motivating students, 2) high-lighting sounds, and 3) enabling just-beginning readers to read.

Writing Opportunities

Create authentic writing opportunities for your students.

Shared Reading and Writing Experiences: The teacher and the students compose a rhyme, poem or story together.

Making books: Throughout my career as an educator, I allowed students to make books about various topics. I often gave students gift bags to cut and use as the cover of their books.

Mailboxes: A classroom mailbox system in which students can post one letter a day and have pen pals to correspond with reinforces print awareness and gives students motivation for writing and for reading their own writing.

Play centers: In these centers, students can act out real or imagined situations and events. They might act out what happens at a restaurant or events in a story. Students can include other literacy activities such as pretending to be the waitress and writing down an order or printing recipes for the cook.

Journals: Journal writing must be modeled for children and they have to be shown the many ways that they can express themselves in writing: drawing pictures, making squiggles, writing letters, and combining several forms of expression.

Language Experience Activities: Copying down children's dictation and then having them read their own words has been termed the Language Experience Approach. This approach is totally student centered. The vocabulary is familiar because the student generated it, and the y have prior knowledge related to content because it is based on their experiences.

Language Arts in the Elementary classroom