ERDG655:Early Literacy Development, B-2

Program Requirements and Prerequisites: This is a required course for students in the Literacy B-6 and B-12 programs. It is also a required course for the Early Childhood Education program, and an elective for students in the Childhood Education program.

Practicum: 5 Hours.

Course Description: This class examines literacy development in very young children in school, preschool and home. Literacy development is addressed as acquiring situated, changing, social practices. Topics include: conditions and materials for literacy learning, developing responsive literate relationships with and among young children, observing and documenting growth in early literacy, the reciprocal relationships among early writing, reading and speaking, the relational and emotional dimensions of early literacy, intentionality, play, drama, identity, and picture books and their use. The course addresses effective teaching practices for both preschool and kindergarten classrooms. This course has a 5-hour required practicum component.Students in the literacy programs must receive a B or better in practicum courses before being allowed to take the capstone class.

Attributes
  • Literacy as Social Practice**
  • Equity
  • Generate Productive Learning Communities*
  • Engagement*
  • Reciprocal Relationships Across Modes of Communication**
  • Strategic Teaching to Promote Self-Extending Learning*
  • Assessment of Literacies and Their Development**
  • Research Based Professional Learning*
/ Attributes(continued)
  • Respectful Representation of Students, Families and Communities*
  • Critical Literacies*
  • Disciplinary Literacy/Knowledge Building*
  • Data Based Decision Making**
  • Technologies and Digital Media**
  • Materials and Resources*
  • Prevention and Intervention**
  • Standards*

Core Content / Possible Assignments / Possible Readings
Understanding the Nature of Early Literacy Development
  • Literacy as a local social practice
  • Literacy development as increasing participation in social practice vs. readiness
  • Positioning children as authors/readers
  • Intentionality
  • Relations among reading, writing, listeningand speaking acquisition
  • Concepts about print
  • Word knowledge in reading, writing and speaking (including vocabulary, phonological and phonemic awareness, knowledge of graphemes, morphemes, alphabetic principle)
  • Composition and comprehension development
  • Critical and new literacies in the early years
Noticing, Documenting, and Assessing Early Literacy Development
  • Arranging for children to reveal their thinking and theorizing
  • Noticing and documenting literate processes
  • Noticing and documenting word knowledge (including vocabulary, phonological and phonemic awareness, knowledge of graphemes, morphemes, alphabetic principle)
  • Noticing and documenting composition and comprehension development
  • Systematically recording children’s literate development
  • Assessing and testing children’s literate development
  • Representing early literacy learning and the partially correct
Socio-emotional and Literacy Development
  • The relationship among literate, social and emotional development
  • Social imagination, self-regulation and literate interactions
  • Identities, social practice, and literate development
Supporting Early Literacy Development
  • Conversational interactions around texts
  • Making books and other texts
  • Teaching readers and authors vs. teaching reading and writing
  • Praise and children’s development - talk that builds resilience and inquiry
  • Meaningful teaching of print details
  • Creating and expanding points of engagement
  • Analyzing and enacting literacy interactions.
  • Supporting independence and intentionality
  • Building oral language
  • Supporting English Language Learners
Constructing Contexts for Learning
  • Literate learning spaces
  • Books and songs that support early learning
  • Forms of play and playfulness and literacy development
  • Literacy across home and school
  • Contexts that embrace diversity
Early Literacy Policies and Research
  • National Early Literacy Panel and research
  • Evaluating research – esp. the case vs. the average
/ The following are examples of assignments that are used in this class.
Practicum Case Study
Students will conduct and write up a case study of a young child (from age 3 kindergarten) who is emerging into the world of language and print. The case study report requires conducting and analyzing (a) a set of informal observations of the child engaged in literacy activities at home and/or at school, and (b) a variety of assessments designed to assist in understanding how literacy emerges in general, and the literate development or a particular student. The report will provide relevant background information, documentation, and justification for the assessment activities. (A minimum of 5 hours contact time is required). The report requires:
• Context information about the child.
• A description of activities engaged in with the child with justification of decisions and what was learned about the child’s literacy development from the engagement. The goal is to show what the child knows and can do independently and with support.
• A summary of what was learned from the experience of doing the case study – about emergent literacy, and about teaching and assessment – relating it to class readings and discussions.
Emergent Literacy Interactions
Learning as much as possible about a child’s emergent literacy requires sensitive participation with the child. In groups, students will view and analyze a video of a teacher working with a child reading books together. The analysis requires documenting what the child’s behavior means in terms of the child’s emergent literacy development, and the instructional moves the teacher makes and their significance.
Philosophy of Emergent Literacy
A statement of the major principles and theories used to guide instructional decision-making.
Digital Literacies
In this assignment you will choose one of the critical/new literacy tools presented in the readings or that has been presented in class. Based on what you select, you will try out the tool, submit your product, and write a reflection on what it taught you about early literacy instruction. . / Pianta, R.C. (2006). Teacher-child relationships and early literacy. In D.K. Dickinson & S.B. Neuman (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research, volume 2. New York, NY: Guilford.
Clay, M.M. (1998). Conversation as one model of teaching interactions. In A. Watson & A. Badenhop (Eds.), Accepting the literacy challenge. Auckland, New Zealand: Ashton Scholastic.
Wright, T.S. (2012). The research-reality divide in early vocabulary instruction. In A.M. Pinkham, T. Kaefer, & S.B. Neuman (Eds.), Knowledge development in early childhood. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Goodson, R., Layzer, C., Simon, P., & Dwyer, C. (2009). Early beginnings: Early literacy knowledge and instruction. Washington DC: National Institute for Literacy.
Dickinson, D.K., Golinkoff, R.M., Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2010). Speaking out for language. Educational Researcher, 39(4), 305-310.
Teale, W.H., Hoffman, J.L., & Paciga, K.A. (2010). Where is NELP leading preschool literacy instruction? Educational Researcher, 39(4), 311-315.
Neuman, S.B. (2010). Lessons from my mother. Educational Researcher, 39(4), 301-304.
Shanahan, T. & Lonigan, C.J. (2010). The National Early Literacy Panel. Educational Researcher, 39(4), 279-285.
Leland, C. H.,& Harste, J. C . (2000). Critical literacy. Enlarging the space of the possible. Primary Voices, K-6, 9(12), 3-7.
Leland, C., Harste, J.C., & Smith, K. (2005). Out of the box: Critical literacy in a first-grade classroom. Language Arts, 82(4), 257-268.
Dweck, C. S. (2007). The perils and promises of praise. Educational Leadership, 65(2), 34-39.
Harste, J.C. (2003). What do we mean by literacy now? Voices from the Middle 10(3), 8-12.
McGee, L. M., & Schickedanz, J. A. (2007). Repeated interactive read-alouds in preschool and kindergarten. Reading Teacher, 60(8), 742-751.
Beauchat, K. A., Blamey, K. L., & Walpole, S. (2009). Building preschool children's language and literacy one storybook at a time. Reading Teacher, 63(1), 26-39.
Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G., (2001). Text Talk: Capturing the benefits of read-aloud experiences for young children. The Reading Teacher, 55, (1), 10-20.
Doyle, B. G., & Bramwell, W. (2006). Promoting emergent literacy and social-emotional learning through dialogic reading. Reading Teacher, 59(6), 554-564.
Neuman, S.B. (2006). N is for nonsensical. Educational Leadership, 64(2), 28-31.
International Reading Association (2009). New literacies and 21st-century technologies: A position statement of the International Reading Association. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Dalton, B. & Grisham, D.L. (2011). eVoc strategies: 10 ways to use technology to build vocabulary. The Reading Teacher, 64(5), 306-317.
Cambourne, B. (1995). Toward an educationally relevant theory of literacy learning: Twenty years of inquiry. The Reading Teacher 49(3), 182-190.
Bennett-Armistead, V.S., Duke, N.K., & Moses, A.M. (2005). Literacy and the youngest learner: Best practices for educators of children birth to 5. New York: Scholastic.
Schickedanz, J.A., & Collins, M.F. (2013). So much more than the ABC’s: The early phases of reading and writing. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Scanlon, D. M., Anderson, K. L., & Sweeney, J. M. (2010). Early intervention for reading difficulties: The Interactive Strategies Approach. New York: Guilford Press.