LITERACY

Introduction

Literacy is the ability to read, write, speak and listen in a way that lets us communicate effectively and make
sense of the world.

Lacking vital literacy skills holds a person back at every stage of their life. As a child they won't be able to
succeed at school, as a young adult they will be locked out of the job market, and as a parent they won't be
able to support their own child's learning. This intergenerational cycle makes social mobility and a fairer
society more difficult. But beyond the functional level, literacy plays a vital role in transforming students into
socially engaged citizens. Being able to read and write means being able to keep up with current events,
communicate effectively, and understand the issues that are shaping our world. People with low literacy skills
may not be able to read a book or newspaper, understand road signs or price labels, make sense of a bus or
train timetable, fill out a form, read instructions on medicines or use the internet.

This module is about understanding how to teach English to Primary Grades through Literature and
everything that relates to it. The discussions in this module come from internet resources. As your facilitator
of learning, I will enrich our discussion by presenting information with citations.

COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the module, the students are expected to gain a clear understanding of literacy, the reading
process and its implications for teaching beginning and good school readers. They are also to understand and
explain the relationship between beginning and primary school readers and the goals and stages of literacy
learning. Moreover, they are to explain the learn teaching strategies to make the literature class productive,
meaningful, and engaging.

CONTENTS OF THE MODULE

This module contains the following lessons:

Lesson 1: Course Overview & What is Literacy?

Lesson 2: Content and Approaches: Developing Love for Reading

Lesson 1

Course Overview & What is Literacy?

Specific Learning Outcomes:

1. (K) Explain the importance of literacy and how it affects people.

2. (S) Differentiate emergent, beginning and good readers.

3. (S) Enumerate the ways on how to handle and develop emergent, beginning and good readers.

4. (A) Relate how important literacy is.

Motivation/Prompting Questions

What is literacy? How does it affect people?

Discussion

What is Literacy?

Literacy development is learning about sounds, words and language. Literacy is the basis for your child’s
ability to read, write, communicate and socialize.

Literacy is most commonly defined as the ability to read and write.

But it’s not as simple as it sounds. Reading and writing abilities vary across different cultures and contexts,
and these too are constantly shifting.

Nowadays, ‘reading’ encompasses complex visual and digital media as well as printed material. An elderly
person who can read the newspaper might struggle to get information from Google.

Similarly, different cultures will have different perceptions of literacy. The writing traditions of the English
language make reading comprehension an essential part of literacy, but this might not be as important in
cultures or groups that rarely read printed material.

Add to this the many people who move between cultures and languages and you have a world where
‘literacy’ is almost entirely relative.

These complex factors make it difficult to create a stable definition of literacy. But if asked ‘what is literacy’,
one could use UNESCO’s more complete definition:

Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and
written materials associated with varying contexts.

Why is Literacy Important?

Students need literacy in order to engage with the written word in everyday life.

Think of how often you use your own reading skills in everyday life. It’s not just articles like this one that
require literacy, but signs, labels, and the messages on your phone, too.

The same goes for writing. Nowadays, even phone calls have given way to instant messaging and text-based
communication, making the ability to read all the more important.

But beyond the functional level, literacy plays a vital role in transforming students into socially engaged
citizens. Being able to read and write means being able to keep up with current events, communicate
effectively, and understand the issues that are shaping our world (https://www.3plearning.com/literacy-
important/).

Elementary Literacy

Literacy is a key to lifelong learning and opportunities for success. Effective elementary literacy instruction
develops students' linguistic and cognitive abilities through the explicit integration of reading, writing,
speaking, and listening into instruction across all content areas and activities. Oral language, reading, writing,
and content instruction support and enrich each other. Students must be provided with experience in all
these areas if they are to achieve success.

The school curriculum poses many challenges to students for whom English is a second language (ESL).
Emergent Reading

 emphasizes the developmental continuum aspect of learning to read and advocates the importance
of reading-related behaviors occurring before school.

 the term “emergent reading” is derived from “emergent literacy” and is used to advocate that the
development of reading starts early in a child’s life instead of school years. The emergent literacy
includes both reading and writing components. The concept “emergent reading” emphasizes the
developmental continuum aspect in learning to read, rather than an all-or-none phenomenon that
begins only when a child starts school, suggesting there is a boundary between reading and pre-
reading.

 Emergent reading consists of the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are presumed to be
developmental precursors to conventional forms of reading [1, 3] and the environments supporting
these developments (e.g., home literacy environment, shared book reading, etc.).

Components of Emergent Reading

Based on the literature, the main components of emergent reading include vocabulary knowledge,
decontextualized language skills, conventions of print, knowledge of letters, linguistic awareness, and
phoneme-grapheme correspondence.

Vocabulary knowledge is important in emergent reading. Reading requires decoding of visual inputs into
meaning. In the earliest stages, a child decodes a word letter by letter, links each letter into its corresponding
sound, and combines all the letter-sounds to a single word. For example, in the beginning, a child decodes a
word “cat” by sounding out /k/ ... /æ/ ... /t/. The next stage is to extract the meaning of the word, which is
important since it motivates the child. If a child knows individual letters but does not know the meaning,
he/she is unlikely enjoying the reading process since the child has no semantic representation through which
a child decodes the phonological information.

Decontextualized language skills refer to the language used in story narratives and other written forms of
communications to convey novel information to readers.

Conventions of print in English include the left-to-right and top-to-bottom direction of print, the sequence in
which the print progresses from front to back across pages, the difference between pictures and print on a
page, and the meaning of elements of punctuation. Knowing these conventions helps a child learn to read.
Decontextualized language skills in children are related to conventional reading skills including decoding,
understanding story narratives, and print production.

Knowledge of letters is critical to learning the sounds associated with the letters. However, only teaching
letter names may only increase surface letter knowledge and may not improve the abilities to learn to read.

Linguistic awareness involves the ability to take language as a cognitive object and to understand how
language is constructed and to use language as a way of communication. Linguistic awareness develops over
time, and a child may be aware of some rules (e.g., that words are formed from phonemes) without being
aware of other rules (e.g., two words rhyme). Many studies have suggested that children good at detecting
syllables and rhymes are better readers.

Linguistic awareness involves the ability to take language as a cognitive object and to possess information
about the syntax. The relation appears to be reciprocal. Better phonological skills led to quicker learning to
read, while learning to read improves phonological skills.
Phoneme-grapheme correspondence represents the links between phonemes and alphabet letters. A child
requires to understand both how individual letter sounds and how combined letters sound. This ability has
been related to higher levels of reading achievement.

TOP TEN CHARACTERISTICS OF EMERGENT READERS

1. Emergent readers can be any age, but they are usually in preschool, kindergarten, or first grade.
2. Emergent readers have not yet begun to read books independently.
3. Emergent readers often make up stories to go with the pictures in books with no attention to print.
4. Emergent readers do not yet recognize many site words if any.
5. Emergent readers may not yet grasp concepts of print, including, but not limited to, concepts such as
understanding the difference between a letter and a word, knowing that reading proceeds from left
to right, and/or understanding word by word matching.
6. Emergent readers can come from extremely literate households or have a very limited exposure to
books.
7. Emergent readers are often very aware of more proficient readers around them.
8. Emergent readers may be willing to attempt to read simple texts or they may be unwilling to make
any attempts at all.
9. Emergent readers are usually also emergent writers.
10. Emergent readers want to be able to read books independently.

They are building their fluency. This means they're working to make several skills, like matching a letter to a
sound and decoding, more smooth, accurate and automatic. Without fluency, each word must be decoded,
and that takes time and energy. This means that other reading behaviors like reading with expression and
comprehension have less of a focus.

These aspiring readers are learning basic concepts about print and a book. For example, we read left to right,
top to bottom and print continues from the end of one line to the beginning of the next (return sweep). They
are also learning to identify the parts of a book (e.g. title, title page).

How to Read with a Beginning Reader

When reading with a beginning reader, it's important to do the following:

Give them time to read. Reading is a skill, and like many other skills, it takes time to develop. A beginning
reader should spend at least 20 minutes a day reading to or with someone. The books read during this time
should be relatively easy for your child.

Let them reread the same books. Rereading the same words over and over again helps build fluency. Over
time, you'll notice that your child will stop less often to decode words.

Encourage attention to the print. If your child is stuck on a word, help him look at the first letter(s) and
encourage him to sound it out. If it's a difficult word, or one that can't be sounded out, simply supply the
word and continue reading.

Take turns reading. By listening to your fluent reading, your child will hear what good readers sound like.
After you've read a short passage, ask your child to reread the same passage. This provides a chance for her
to practice reading with expression.

Have realistic expectations. For example, students should be reading approximately 60 words per minute
correctly by the end of first grade, and 90-100 words per minute correctly by the end of second grade. Your
child's teacher can help you learn your child's reading rate.
One way that researchers have studied what good readers do, has been to ask them to think aloud as they
read. From these studies, researchers have determined that the seemingly effortless activity described as
"good reading" is made up of a set of highly complex, well-developed, and well-practiced skills and abilities.
Particularly impressive is the way in which good readers actively and consciously coordinate these skills and
strategies before, during, and after reading a text.

Before reading, good readers tend to set goals for their reading. They note the structure, or organization of
the text, and often create a mental overview or outline of the text to help them decide whether it is relevant
to their goals.

During reading, good readers read words accurately and quickly, and simultaneously deal with the meanings
of those words — as well as the meanings of the phrases and sentences into which the words are grouped.
Good readers connect the meaning of one sentence to the meaning of another. If something is confusing to
them, they use their background knowledge to try to clarify the meanings of words and phrases. Sometimes
good readers interact with the text by asking themselves questions about its content and reflecting on its
ideas.

They are adept at using their background knowledge to make predictions about what might happen next and
to understand ideas as they encounter them. Good readers continuously evaluate their predictions and
revise them as needed.

Good readers are selective as they read. They are likely to focus more of their attention on the parts of the
text that are most closely tied to their reading goals. They may decide to skip some parts of a text because
they already understand the content or because they do not think the parts are important to what they need
(or want) to learn from the text. They may decide, after reading several pages, to skip the rest of a chapter
because they recently read something similar.

On the other hand, they may decide — either because they do not clearly understand the content or because
they find the topic interesting — to reread a passage or chapter before going on. They also may summarize
the content of a passage as they read it. In doing so, they may consciously determine what is important, what
is supportive, and what is less important.

As they read, good readers often make inferences. They may draw on their background knowledge or look for
clues in the text to supply information about characters or events that the author has not provided directly.
Some good readers may also create mental images, or visualize a setting, event, or character to help them
understand a passage in a text. Good readers monitor their comprehension as they read.9 When they realize
that they do not understand what they are reading, they apply procedures to "repair" or "fix-up" their lack of
understanding. For example, they may ask themselves questions about the meaning of what they are
reading, they may rephrase a passage in their own words, they may look up the meanings of difficult words,
or they may outline the content of the text.

After reading, good readers often think about, or reflect on what they read. They mentally summarize major
points or events in the text, or even go to other sources to find additional information about the topic of the
reading.

In short, good readers are most often strategic readers. They use a number of comprehension strategies to
get meaning from text. Comprehension strategies are conscious plans or procedures that are under the
control of a reader, who makes decisions about which strategies to use and when to use them. In addition,
good readers engage in metacognition as they read. Cognition refers to mental functions such as
remembering, focusing attention, and processing information. Metacognition refers to people's awareness of
their cognition; that is, their thoughts about their own thinking. From an array of possibilities, for example,
readers with metacognitive awareness are able consciously and automatically to select the appropriate
comprehension strategies for use with a particular text.
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-research-tells-us-about-reading-comprehension-and-
comprehension-instruction

Characteristics of Good Readers

 Interact with text
 Have goals for reading
 Evaluate text for important ideas
 Note structure of text before reading
 Make predictions
 Construct, revise, and question as they read
 Monitor their understanding as they read
 Read different kinds of text differently
 Process text during and after reading
 Find comprehension of text to be productive
 Create visual images based on text they have read
 Draw inferences
 Synthesize information
 Repair understanding
 Enjoy and appreciate literature
Block and Pressley (2001) Harvey and Goudvis (2000)

https://www.lcps.org/Page/50594

Learning Activities/Exercises: Write your answers on one whole-size yellow pad and limit your answers
between 5 and 8 sentences only.

Students: Handwritten, Ms.?

Ms. Lasquite: Yes
1. The Role of Literacy in Society: Discuss how literacy impacts an individual's ability to succeed at
various stages of life, from childhood education to adult employment, and its significance in breaking
the intergenerational cycle of poverty. How does literacy contribute to social mobility and a fairer
society?
2. Defining and Understanding Literacy: Analyze the evolving definition of literacy, including traditional
reading and writing skills and the ability to navigate digital media. How do cultural and contextual
differences influence our understanding of what it means to be literate in the 21st century?
3. Literacy's Impact on Social Engagement: Examine how literacy serves as a foundation for social
engagement and citizenship. Consider the role of literacy in enabling individuals to participate in
democratic processes, understand current events, and engage with societal issues.
4. Teaching Strategies for Diverse Literacy Levels: Discuss effective teaching strategies for addressing
the needs of emergent, beginning, and proficient readers in primary education. How can educators
tailor their approaches to support the literacy development of students with varied reading abilities
and backgrounds?
5. The Relationship Between Literacy and Cognitive Development: Explore the connection between
literacy and cognitive development in children. How do reading and writing enhance cognitive
abilities, and what role does literacy play in an individual's overall educational success and lifelong
learning?

PS: Please use our time to answer the activity. Deadline of submission will be on Monday February 12, 2024
at 12:00 noon.