Developing+Early+Literacy

__Developing Early Literacy__
 ‘Literacy is reading, writing, speaking and listening and involves the knowledge and skills required to engage in activities required for effective functioning in the community’. (Hill, 2006) Learning to read, write and gain word knowledge is a developmental process which begins at birth and continues steadily as children develop. (Hill, 2006)   Theories of language development by Piaget (1955) and Vygotsky (1978) examine how children acquire language and the relationship of language to thinking; these theories make unique contributions to what we understand about young children’s literacy development. (McGee and Richgels, 2004)  Piaget’s and Vygostsky’s key concepts in early literacy development stated Children’s learning is dependent on having experiences that lead to the formation of concepts or schema's. Concepts are mental constructions about objects, people, events, activities, and places. Language is critical for learning when it provides a label for new concepts and when it is used to scaffold children’s attempts at difficult tasks. Children develop special concepts that they use in reading and writing, they develop concepts about the functions of written language, including using reading and writing to label and record. Their concepts about written language reflect their experiences with different text, may it be stories, shopping lists etcetera, from this they learn concepts about letter forms and features, words, sentences, text and left to right organization. They develop understandings about meaning-form links, including unconventional concepts and gradually acquire conventional concepts such as using letter strings and matching spoken units with written units. Children’s concepts about written language change and grow with their reading and writing experiences. Children begin with un conventional concepts: phase of awareness, exploration and experimentation, and gradually acquire conventional concepts or reading and writing. (McGee and Richgels, 2004)   Each child’s experiences with language and literature prior to school will have an effect on their later literacy development, this is because language and literature and generative processes and the more children talk, read and learn, the more they can talk read and learn. It is important to remember that all children are different and learn at different rates, they also take many different pathways in literacy development, which emphasizes the teacher’s need to access children’s symbolic and social resources to build bridges from home to school. (Hill, 2006)   There is a no-one teacher proof program in teaching literacy and all teachers modify, weave together and adapt programs, to achieve a literacy program that challenges and inspires children to learn, and one which makes sure that children acquire skills and strategies in a consistent way so they feel successful. (Hill, 2006) 