Childhood Literacy Learning

Being able to provide young children with rich writing experiences can lay a foundation for literacy learning. Preschool teachers receive limited educational instruction on how to teach children writing skills and individualize it to each child based on their needs. It is important to foster early writing skills and actively support young children during their handwriting development. Cabell, Gerde, and Tortorelli state that, “Children notice print in their environment and use their experiences to invent and revise ideas about the rules that govern writing, “cracking the code” of literacy once piece at a time” (2013, p.651). Often children do this through scribbling, if it is a big word the scribble might be very wide and big, while a smaller
Jackson’s classroom, preschool children vary widely in their ability to write, and individual instruction is key to scaffolding each child’s development” (Cabell, Gerde, Tortorelli, 2013, p.657). Teacher’s can help support children all levels of their writing development through different activities and intervening when necessary. When teachers show children new ways of writing, they often are more intrigued and continue with them. A way teachers could do engage children in the process of writing is through morning messages. Here the teacher is engaging students and taking their ideas and putting it into sentences. Children see that what they say, can be written, and what is written has
Children can move back and forth and master different levels at different times. I believe that Caroline is in-between the two stages mentioned above because she does still scribble, but she has a full recognition of letters in her name. When asked to write a description of her drawings that I had her do, it was full of scribbles. But she was able to tell me exactly what her sentence about her rainbow meant. Although, she is only three-and-a-half-years-old, I think by assisting her and pointing out what the sounds of the letters mean, she was able to connect it to other words that had similar letters in it. Teachers who are able to individualize instruction for students writing, greatly impact students and will show positive results in the future for their students. When the students move onto reading and writing fully, they will have a better understanding of the concepts that they previously