Literacy development for young children

E C L E C

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Aa Bb

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Phonic Method

Look & Say Method

J e a n P i e r r e M U G I R A N E Z A

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L i t e r a c y d e v e l o p m e n t f o r y o u n g c h i l d r e n

Introduction

Children start to develop their literacy at their early age. Their literacy develops as early as their

first encounter with sounds. It is generally admitted that young children from the fourth month of

their mothers’ pregnancy, they have already started developing their literacy. It is important for

parents, teachers and caregivers to know that every child is born with ability and potentialities to

become literate. What is needed is to develop properly their literacy. When children are given

opportunities for literacy development, they respond naturally as literate. This can be successful

only when the process used is valid; valid to the cognitive reach of a child and valid to his/her age.

In this article I want to share about literacy development for young children. With this regard, I

will emphasize on how the literacy development should be taken as a mean to and end not an end

to itself using Rwanda Educational context.

Perspectives of Literacy for young children

Generally, the word “literacy” is referred to the ability to read, write and listen. This is a good

definition but one important component is mission; “Literacy is also the one’s ability to understand

the world around him or her”. This last component summarizes all skills listed in the first

definition. But, of course it is difficulty for one to understand his/her environment without knowing

how to read, write, and listen to the environment itself. For relatively adult children “literacy” is

about the ability to communicate verbally and through writings for them that is enough, when it

comes to young children things become a little bit difficulty because they really rely on “Literacy”

in its real sense. In a number of definitions provided by Julia Scheba de Valensuela in 2002, one

of them really reflect to the need of young children; “an individual's ability to read, write, speak

in English, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job,

in the family of the individual and in society”.

Critically, I am not saying that all people should be literate in English, this can be even for any

other language. The important point is this definition; is when she tried to pin point out the “link”

between literacy and the society, which is what young children really need from their birth. It is

not only true but it is “vital” because failing to link with the society children can risk them to death.

In developing young children literacy, it is like linking children to the society and through that

connection children will be able to read and write about their surrounding society.

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EDC is an organization whose first mission is to create learning opportunities for people around

the world. In their view (EDC) on the definition of literacy, it is like they wanted to complete the

one of Scheba (2002) by emphasizing that literacy has the power to help people to read, write and

also to help people to put those skills to influence their lives. Now, imagine the influence of literacy

on children? If they need to be literate somehow to be able to communicate, to report their pain,

to claim for satisfaction, to request extra care, etc.

Important tips in Literacy development for young children

As the growing pace of children differs from one child to another, they vary in the rate at which

they achieve developmental milestone. Let us take an example of language development [one of

important aspect of literacy development]. It is true that there is always a given language skill

children should exposed to at a given period of time in a given stage. To understand more this,

let’s refer to what psycholinguists have discovered about linguistic development. With this regard,

Githinji (2009) pointed out five phases adapted to the language development from the birth to eight

years old: Pre-linguistic, one-word, Telegraphic, symbolic language and adult language stages.

The pre-linguistic stage; this phase is from the birth to eight months old children. In this period

children come with the ability to differentiate and infer the difference in voices. For example an

eight to ten months children can differentiate phonemes within their first language of exposure.

Without going far, an infant can change vocalization depending on who is around when requesting

for care. This vocalization include: crying, coughing and hiccupping. We all know that all

vocalization of infants are initially reflexive and become non-reflexive thereafter when the infant

start to include; cooing, gurgling and babbling sounds. Towards the end of this stage sometime

children behave like conversing with someone else in another language. This is a good signal to

formalizing their language. In next stages they start to talk some words.

One-word stage; this stage is generally between nine to thirteen months. In the previous stage, the

child does not know how to formalize words or how to adapt his/her feeling in words and sounds.

Therefore, from nine month children start to mediate between expression and content (meaning).

At this stage the child has started “wording”. Of course don’t expect the child to pronounce words

other than those in his/her surroundings; for sure she/he will start saying like mamama or papapa

to express their parents. If the child goes further, he/she can start talking words of those object in

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the house, or which she or he interact with every day like; milk chair, etc. in a gradual process the

child can shift from one-word to two-words stage.

The telegraphic stage; this stage can take thirty weeks. The children who have been able to speak

only one or two words without any logical emphasis, he/she can now produce three or more word-

like phrases in a telegram-like version. Of course don’t expect from them the usage of preposition.

They also do not have the ability to inflect like the marker of possession and plural. It is amazing

at this stage, as the child confront more with his/her environment [remember at this age she/he can

walk] sometime he/she is obliged to respect some grammar rules in their native language.

Symbolic language; this stage is between two to five years old. At this stage the child can gain the

representation skills. For example he/she is able to connect the word “cup” to the object cup. In

addition to that, children in this stage are able to recall about this word even in the absence of the

object cup. Parents or caregivers can ask him/her to bling the cup and she/he won’t confuse it with

some other object. This is a good stage for language development as the child become useful in

the family. Even though she/he can words to object, still there is a problem to socialize language.

That is why at this age children are funny because of the funny worlds they pronounce.

Socialized language; from the age of 5 the child is able to understand the form, the grammar and

the meaning of his native language. Of course, the child needs to be exposed to this language

otherwise it can be difficult to find meanings. He/she is able to express the plurality of words. This

is the opportunity for parent to start teaching their children more about language and they can go

even deeper to morphology. The child can be taught to read and write, she/he has mastered the

syntax of his/her native language.

Adult language; at this stage [6-8] the child is becoming more literate. She/he can speak, and write

effectively. Researchers are saying that, the language the kid learn at this age will permanently

reside in him/her. She/he is able to correct the phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatist

errors. At this stage they know like everything. However, when exposed to unfamiliar object they

can easily get confused and give wrong meaning, but they are ready to receive correction which

can be easily internalized. For example, in our country children from urban easily confuse the

“dog” and the “goat” because in their environment there are familiar with dogs only.

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How to develop children’s literacy

The development of literacy for young children should be taken as a gradual process, a means to

and not an end to itself. Young children should be assisted by teachers, parents and caregivers to

ensure that this process is smoothly conducted. Before you start developing literacy skills in young

children, you need to ensure that young children have inherited capacity to learn. Nzarora (2010)

expressed the fear that many parents in different society do not consider or neglect the capacity of

young children in learning. Absolutely, young children can learn as confirmed by githinji (2010)

young children are born with a natural ability to acquire language. In his book about language

activities githinji mentioned that a device called “Acquisation device” was developed in our brain

before we are born to help us to be able to learn languages. However, this device must be

influenced by various activities aimed stimulating it to learning. These activities are normally set

and organized by parents, teachers and caregivers by selecting suitable methods and approached

that can be useful in developing young children’ literacy. In this approaches, parents, teachers and

caregivers need to be more creative in giving young children a variety of options to choose from

to improve varied abilities in literacy.

In this article, I would compare the development of literacy and an approach quasi-similar to the

one of teaching. The same comparison was also used by Odula (2009) when he realized that young

children should develop their social studies skills and or abilities if parents, teachers and caregivers

provide them with opportunities that expose them to rich and varied experiences within their

environment. Stressing on this argument, nzarora (2010), brought in another important note about

the importance of providing a variety of opportunities to young children as to develop their literacy

skills; student should be exposed to varied activities to have a wide idea on the world around them.

Methods to develop young children’s literacy

In the same angle of reasoning, I want to emphasize on the methods used in literacy development

and how they should be conducted. Odula (2009) and Wafula (2010) have the same ideas on how

these approaches should look like. Of course the list of processes that can be used in this kind of

learning is exhaustive, but some are more important than others: Observation, Discussion,

Experiments, Assignments, demonstration and projects.

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Observation methods; young children are very curious about their surrounding environment.

Parents, teachers and caregivers should take this opportunity to develop their literacy effectively.

As we quoted earlier, one of the major component of young children literacy is; understanding of

their surrounding environment. This is done through educational observation. Observation is a

method that can be used by parents and caregivers not only to check on their level of literacy but

also to help them to discover new things. This method goes hand-in-hand with the discovery

method. Parents and children caregivers can take them outside and allow them to have a free look

on the nature and processes in the nature.

For teachers and caregivers, Laurie carpenter an eHow journal contributor, developed an article

saying that; “observation is a method of gathering information by systematically watching and

noting what children do and say”. From this definition, parents and caregivers are given

opportunity to monitor the literacy progress of their children through observation. With no doubt,

this method helps teachers to know at which level of literacy their children are and how to increase

it. This method can be more successful when combined with project-method.

Project; a project is an undertaking that involves several deliberate steps to achieve an anticipated

result. In this method children can work individually or in small manageable groups. An effective

literacy development for young children is that one that connects students to the society they live

in. the project method enhance group dynamics, it enables total participation and exploitation of

all available resources and individual talents. For example, children can be given the project of

painting pictures. In this project, they need first to observe from the already painted posts to get

inspired. The project can be done in groups but allowing all children to dip the brushes in the paint,

children should be allowed to paint freely on the paper pinned on the drawing board. This activity

improve the social skills as well as painting skills which are part of literacy skills. The project

method of developing young children’s literacy can be more successful when combined by

assignment method.

Assignment method; According to odula (2009), the teacher/caregivers can give tasks to a group

of children so as to develop a kind of project. For example a teacher/caregiver may ask children

to model animal after the discussion of the them “animal”. Depending on their

background/environment, they may model domestic or wild animals. The finished work of art

should be displayed and have names of the children written on it to motivate them. This helps them

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feel appreciated and encourages them to keep practicing this reads to an effective literacy

development. Before giving assignment or a task to children, you need first to explain what the

task is about. With this regard you can demonstrate the whole activity. The demonstration is

another method to enhance the literacy development for young children.

Demonstration; in the view of Githinji (2010), he wanted to emphasize that; demonstration is about

showing how something works or is done. It is simply showing something as it is. In literacy

development, demonstration can be used where the teacher, parents and caregivers give children

language activities so as to demonstrate how they can carry out a certain language activity. This

method can be used together with the project method. For example, children can be asked to carry

out a project on language and then demonstrate to the class how the activity is carried out. In

storytelling aimed at improving listening skills, children can be given a task to go and collect a

story during the weekend or holiday and present it to the other children when back to school. To

make this method feasible, teachers need appropriate materials that will be used by students when

demonstrating. Using demonstration methods helps students to develop their language skills and

be familiar to stand still on their ideas.

Experiments; Experiment involves measuring the causative effect between independent and

dependent variables. In an experiment there is normally an experimental and control group. As far

as literacy development is concerned, experimentation helps teachers, parents and caregivers to

try out the different skills on different items. Children must be actively involved in this process,

curiosity of children leads them to discover different things when they do experiments. Children

can be led through an experiment of mixing colors. For example, a group may be required to mix

blue and red colors in equal proportions. This will give purple or indigo. Such finding, will excite

children, hence, arousing their skills in how to read and differentiate colors.

Methods of developing reading and writing skills for young children

The list of methods are directed to developing literacy in general. Specifically, for language

literacy; like reading and writing there are appropriate methods that can improve reading and

writing skills. These include: Phonic method of developing reading, look and say method of

developing reading, eclectic method of developing reading.

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Phonic; in this method children are taught the various sounds of the letters of the alphabet. When

children have mastered the sounds then they are shown how to combine the letters to make

syllables and syllables into words. This method is suitable for reading introduction. In the view of

auroville resource for educators, phonic method is useful in teaching/learning of language from

pre-school, through early elementary primary school. And this method has really helped learner

taking English as their second language. The phonic method involve the listening method. When

using this method teachers and caregivers should ensure the importance of listening and seeing.

Admittedly, listening to the sounds and seeing their correspondent letters is more important that

just seeing and write them. In many languages children will be taught various syllables before

construction of words.

Look and say method; this is considered as the most used method in early childhood education. In

this, children are shown a sound, a letter, a symbol, a word or even a sentence and asked to read

after the teacher. They are trained to associate words with objects. It is also used to train children

in visual discrimination; whether they can tell the difference between letters, words, shapes,

objects, and colors among others. In this method, the teachers and caregivers are requested to

produce many printed materials as to show symbols of letter, numbers, word, shape according to

their appropriate name. Children will be involved in exercises of connecting hence arousing the

reading skills.

Eclectic; many teachers and professors confirm that; there is no one method adequate for an

effective teaching. Sometime teachers need to combine various method depending on the audience.

In eclectic method there is a combination of several methods. This is a more integrated way of

developing reading literacy in young children. For example a caregiver or teacher may show a

letter and ask the children to identify it. Next they will be asked to sound them and to combine

consonants and words and vowels to form words. This is the reason why teachers should be

acquainted with a number of methods of teaching.

To conclude, parents, teachers, caregivers and librarians should not ignore the fact that children

are born with abilities to develop their literacy. What we need is; selecting a suitable method and

approach adapted to their cognitive reach. Our consideration about literacy development for young

children should not be limited to skills like reading, listening and writing. It should go far to

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helping them understand the world around them and in turn help them to socialize within their

society. That is all about literacy development for young children.

References

1. Carpenter, L., (2013), types of observations for children in daycare centers, eHow journal,

posted on October 27th 2012, available on www.ehow.com

2. Nzabona, A., Twinomujuni, K., (2010), Basic physical geography; teacher’s guide for year

1, Fountain publishers ltd, P.O.Box 6567 Kigali-Rwanda

3. Odula, V., Gichuhi,J., Gichuba,C., (2009), Creative activities; little birds ECDE teacher

education, Longhorn publishers, funzi road, Industrial area P.O.Box 18033 Nairobi-Kenya

4. Scheba, J.V., (2002), Definition of literacy, Available on

www.uum.edu/~devalenz/handounts/literacy.html

5. Wafula, I., (2010), Music and movement activities for little birds ECDE teacher education,

longhorn publishers Kenya ltd, funzi road, Industrial area P.O.Box 18033 Nairobi-Kenya

1.

http://www.ehow.com/

http://www.uum.edu/~devalenz/handounts/literacy.html

Literacy development for young children

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