Reading Development of Reading from Birth - Essay Example

Report; teaching beginners First middle last name Institution Date Reading development of reading from birth and into early years of school Reading has with time been replaced by dynamic reciprocal and interaction process between the reader, text as well as the context of the reader prior literacy schema characterized by an interactive and dynamic process. Dutcher, (1990) explains reading to the process where there is an interaction between readers background knowledge, through information inferred in by written language as well as reading situation context. Considering that reading process cannot be observed directly Powell (1989) argues that all data produced by tests of reading are direct measures of reading as a process. Generally in reading process teacher takes more assertive role in creating authentic evaluation methods that address particular needs of learners. There is the importance of fostering literacy and reading to children very early in life especially between the age of zero and three years as this is the period when brain development is very fast. Specifically, it is notable that if children are not stimulated to read by engaging them through questions, mostly their brains weaken. Literacy development is not limited to a certain critical period although it is at peak during early childhood which culminates around the age of ten years. From this view, if a child has unlimited access to literacy as well as language experience in their home, they will probably experience more grounded reading and learn through a more expanded learning opportunity in preschools and daycare using cross-age partners. Huttenlocker et al., (2002), refers to this age of late infancy and late childhood as the period when synaptic density reaches a plateau and is featured with maximum responsiveness to environmental stimuli. The foundational reading together with writing skills that infancy gains from birth to age five is strongly related to child later conventional literacy skills. Early childhood reading founded mainly on basic variables with an introduction to reading has a significant impact in children later life. Emergent literacy are skills, understanding together with attitudes that young children usually demonstrate early in life even before they are capable of portraying conventional forms of reading and writing. Basically, this theory holds that young children acquire literacy through exposure and encouragement and not only through direct instructions. Children literacy in the early life of infancy develops from their day to day exposure activities through sounds, words, speech, and print even before they get exposed to formal schools where reading and writing is taught (Neuman, 2006). The building blocks of reading and writing start to develop early in infancy life. Benasich and Tallal, (2002) explained how infant reading ability stems from auditory and visual discrimination with most infants noted to have preferences for patterns displays with six-week-old infants noted to have the ability to differentiate orientations of identical line forms. Also, there is evidence of ability of six months infants to develop spatial relations with discern for visual patterns like the difference between dot patterns as well as images of animals. There exist a strong relationship between oral language and reading in infants as both are mutually supportive and develop with time. As parents interact with their children in their early days in life through sounds and by reading aloud books for them has an impacts on how children develop language (Landry et al., 2006). The ability for infants to process specific sounds begins early in their life as they become specific to listening language paying attention to sounds heard in the languages they get exposed to. As basic steps to acquiring literacy skills, infants starts relating oral sounds in the process of their literacy by imitating tones and rhythms of adult conversations. Infants usually read facial expression and gestures, and they start to associate words with meaning processing the speech stream around them with a purpose of determining sounds associated with language. Most significantly infants are able to crack the code between phonology and syntax, and this forms their basic preparation to word formation in preparation to produce their first spoken words. Most importantly the capacity of infants to develop in their oral language is related to their ability to learn how to write as writing builds on verbal ability. Infancy oral language competency is a significant predicament to their future ability on literacy relating to how they read and write. Ways in which diversity of children families and communities influence children pathway of reading development Early childhood anchor for literacy development depends on the family and community given that families are the basic and plays a critical role in early childhood learning and development. Besides, families belong to the community which plays a role in supporting and limiting their capacity to support children during their young childhood optimal development stage. The type of relationship that exist among families and communities benefit children mostly if they are respectful of family structure, cultural values, knowledge, and language. Infants reading and literacy begins as they try to seek patterns and begin to recognize sounds and faces of family members and the response infants get from family members set a dynamic learning motion. Different cultural with a diversity of children together with the impact of social, economic status as well as preferred patterns of interaction within communities has an influence in the development process of children potential in literacy (Greenspan and Shanker, 2004). It is evident that early brain development during infancy benefits from interaction with responsive parents and families members combined with infants’ exposure to those activities that challenge young children. Diverse in family social-economic status has an influence young children literacy development considering how accessibility to basic needs and developmental opportunities like quality early childhood programs such as libraries and parks enhances families' ability in being responsive and stimulating to young children. On the other hand, families with access to fewer resources find it more challenging to sustain basic conditions needed for development. In communities where there is high percentage of families facing societal barriers with high rates of poverty, employment demands, health problems, minority ethno cultural together with racial and resource discrimination find it hard when supporting children maximum early development. Besides families characterized by unhealthy lifestyle contributing to increased early childhood obesity and related unhealthy conditions has an influence to childhood pathway to development as it relates to reading and literacy. Impact of differences in socio-economic circumstances, language and culture When teaching children to learn standard Australian English, it is important to take care of specific requirement in supporting and building English skills needed by EAL/D students. Generally, EAL/D learners are those whose first language is a dialect other than English, and they require additional support for them to boost and develop their proficiency in English. Most precisely these group of students comes from diverse and multilingual backgrounds whose first language is other than English in addition to Aboriginals, Torres Strait Islanders learners whose first language is an Indigenous language involving traditional language, creoles, and Aboriginal English. Mostly these types of students have good academic language skills but they struggle with social registers of English and their cognitive development together with life experiences may not correlate with English language proficiency. The majority of these students lack sufficient English proficiency needed to understand their teacher's explanation as demonstrated by their inadequacy to acquire knowledge. In helping families understand emergency of their children literacy, parents and families should be engaged to make sure that learning that occurs in preschool is the same with the one that takes place at family levels even before children enter into preschool years. Through this teachers and parents can be able to extend the reading and writing activities occurring at classroom and reinforcing the same at home by connecting parents with programs that will be useful in improving their children literacy. Besides teachers should discuss with parents on the kind of books that children enjoy most. Another strategy teachers should use in supporting families to promoting understanding of children reading and writing is by encouraging parents and family members to involve children at home by discussing writing and reading in the context of art and housekeeping. Assessment strategies, different methods of observation and criteria used when observing and analyzing children's reading development It is important to assess and observe children, especially when determining their development in relation to reading and writing. Assessments are specifically significant as a tool for learning more about children interest and needs, determining their progress in regards to reading and writing and for the benefit of sharing information with parents concerning their children progress in their curriculum. Specifically, two methods of assessment are used in determining children literacy development, with formative assessment where a child's development in reading and writing is tracked on an ongoing basis (Johnston and Costello, 2005). In particular, this method supports short-term planning. On the other hand, summative assessment allows an overview of child progress in term of development in areas of curriculum taking the form of an overall report on interest, progress and development, and thus they become helpful in long term planning. When observing children, it is essential to gain permission from parents considering that observation is an integral part of working effectively with children settings considering the increased use of digital observations methods like photography and films which have increasingly become popular. In order to analyze the development stages of children in a more detailed format, it is necessary to apply various methods of observations like closed data which focus the attention of the observer to a more narrow and specific details about a child. Although the method is successful in assessing children skills and achievements, the method is a drawback as it focuses once attention to narrow information causing some data to be missed. Observation can take the form of open data method where the observer takes down those things which are interesting when watching a child. Time samples are an interesting and versatile method of observation development in children as they provide information concerning the child development in term of activities in a regular basis. Observation can take form of written narrative and this is the most straight forward method as it requires the observer to take down and record everything that the child does. The speed at which the observer takes down the information is fast, and this translates to the small amount of information to be recorded, and this makes the method to be more subjective. In focusing on child social and interactive language development, the observer can use target child observation method to note actions and response of a given child over a given period. Role of educator in supporting children's reading development Current research on literacy and language development together with learning provide strong evidence on the importance of educators to provide supportive adult interaction, inviting learning contexts involving literacy learning related to real life application. Siraj-Blatchford, (2009) explained the important role educator involvement with children in an active and strong relationship supported with educator knowledge on their role in relation to influencing children literacy development has. Also, educators play a critical function in establishing a relationship with parents with an aim to build their interaction with children built on knowledge of what parents expects, priorities they have for their children and children home experiences. Educators having knowledge concerning parents beliefs and the kind of activities they engage with their children at home is significant as it will facilitate the way in which educators can build a bridge between home and literacy delivered in school. Importantly educators have a crucial role in establishing supportive learning environment with positive young children centered approach to learning. Besides promotion of a challenging and relevant learning experience with significant teaching methods supportive of children engagement and still motivating those to learn can only be promoted by educators. In this context, teachers should critically examine their current practices involving planning and implementing literacy programs that will enhance real life engagements together with the routine transition of children with long-term focus on their literacy development. In preparing children with an aim to promote their development in literacy, parents should establish early literacy experiences at family level that will support social interaction between children and their world. In order to promote young childhood literacy, parents should utilize various resources to facilitate them into learning new words and even on how to use them. Parents and those close to children at family level should apply opportunities like literacy concept using print and pictures to enhance reading and writing development in young infants even before joining preschool. Besides, application of language to develop phonemic awareness, encourage children to listen and use sound and word pattern are available resources that can be helpful in supporting children develop their reading and writing skills. Introducing children early to concepts of rhythm and rhyme in language and different features of texts in diagrams and graphics will help children in their initial stage of literacy development by enhancing their familiarity to different styles of reading and writing. Providing children with opportunities at family level to explore and go through a range of texts ranging from recipes, illustrations, pictures, and websites offer them an opportunity to develop literacy skills in both short and long term. Furthermore, introducing children to phonological awareness as a prerequisite to learning alphabetic code early in life will enable them in relating the sounds to the letters of alphabets as young children find it easier to hear syllables in words before hearing sounds of individual letters. In school setups where EAL/D learners exist, teachers should come up with strategies which are inclusive in supporting their inclusiveness, relevance and flexible. Teachers should increase their personal knowledge on socio-culture with an objective to providing teaching and learning opportunities which should be culturally inclusive. More so teachers should establish strategies like use of first language aiming to support EAL/D learners to take part in all aspects of the school activities. Reference Benasich, A. A., & Tallal, P. (2002). Infant discrimination of rapid auditory cues predicts later language impairment. Behavioural brain research, 136(1), 31-49. Dutcher,D. (1991). Creative activities for teaching English as a foreign language. ERIC Digest ( ED333713). Office on Languages and Linguistics, Washington, D.C. Huttenlocher, P. R., & Dabholkar, A. S. (2002). Regional differences in synaptogenesis in human cerebral cortex. Journal of comparative Neurology, 387(2), 167-178. Johnston, P., & Costello, P. (2005). Principles for literacy assessment. Reading Research Quarterly, 40(2), 256-267. Landry, S. H., Swank, P. R., Smith, K. E., Assel, M. A., & Gunnewig, S. B. (2006). Enhancing early literacy skills for preschool children bringing a professional development model to scale. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 39(4), 306-324. Neuman, S. B. (2006). The knowledge gap: Implications for early education. Handbook of early literacy research, 2, 29-40. Powell, J.L. (1989). How well do tests measure read reading? ERIC Digest (ED306552). Office on Reading and Communication Skills, Bloomington, IN. Siraj-Blatchford, 2009, ‘Curriculum, pedagogy and progression’ in Early Education, Sustained Shared Thinking, Spring, p. 6. Read More