Literacy is the result of a human’s adaptation to the social environment. There are different definitions of literacy, but one important is: “Literacy is a human invention” (Snow, 2017). Also, the common definition of literacy is “the knowledge and skills necessary to read and write” (Rudell, 2002). In this paper, I am going to discuss the different domains of literacy that authors combine to define literacy, early literacy instruction, and development.
So, what is literacy? According to Rudell (2002), literacy is “the knowledge and skills necessary to read and write”. Also, according to Montoya (2018), there are different definitions of literacy, one of them is that it is how a person can “identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute” printed materials from different sources. Another interesting definition is: “How an individual can participate within his environment through his knowledge, achieving objectives and participating always in his process of learning”. These definitions can give us a wide perspective of different definitions of literacy that authors coined through different periods. It is interesting to point out here that literacy is important for individuals interacting in society. As an individual, young children, or adults, we need to be always in a learning process in our whole life. This interaction with readings and writing exercises can give us the opportunity to participate in our community decisions during our lives.
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According to Vesay and Gischar (2013), the National Reading Panel divided literacy into five critical domains: phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. These domains are the roots of good literacy, and it is important to teach them to our young students in the early stages of their development. Phonological awareness is a broad definition of language in different parts, word by word, and also is about listening to the syllables of the words. Recognizing rhymes in the words, and the learning process when kids can practice alliteration (eg. the same sound in the words, six smiles softly spoken). According to the National Center on Improving Literacy (2018), the alphabetic principle is the knowledge that the letters have sounds and they are in the alphabet, for example, when a child can identify the letter 'm' and its sound 'mmm'. This is when a person can identify sounds and letters in a word, then can read and write, building words with the sounds of the spoken language. Also, the alphabetic principle has two components: alphabetic understanding is knowing that words are made up of letters that represent the sounds of speech, and phonological recoding is knowing how to translate the letters in printed words into the sounds they make to read and pronounce the words accurately. In Fluency Matters (2014), the author explained his own definition of fluency, and he says that reading fluency has two ends, the first one is about 'word recognition in a text' while the person can comprehend what he/she is reading is on the other end. This is when the person can identify automatically words, recognize and identify them in a written text, but with adequate speed. Stahl (2005) defines vocabulary as follows: “Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition but also implies how that word fits into the world”. This part is important within the process of literacy in children. At an early age, children should learn a complex vocabulary during their kinder grade since this practice will help them develop their language and to have success in their upper grades. In order to understand the meaning of comprehension, Pardo (2004) refers that “comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language”. It is imperative that we, as professionals working in educational settings, should help and revise our students when they are reading aloud their books making sure that they are understanding what they are reading.
In order to set up the knowledge of early literacy in children in their preschool years or their early stages of learning, the authors recommend some strategies and/or techniques to teach our kids to write and read in their infancy. In Roskos et al. (2003), we can find these teaching techniques, and the first one is 'rich teacher talk'; this technique says that teachers or adults should converse with the students in groups or one-to-one context using 'cognitively challenging content'. The second technique that the authors recommend is 'storybook reading'; this technique is interesting because we need to read aloud to our students once or twice times daily. Then, start to make activities before, during, or after the reading time of different books. The third technique is 'phonological awareness activities', using activities where we can help our students to identify the sounds of the letters. For example, use activities of rhyming, alliteration, and sound matching. Here, students can participate with their emergent knowledge to find rhymes, identify the same sound in different words, and recognize when words start with the same sound. The fourth technique is 'alphabet activities'. Personally, I use this technique with students who are struggling with their reading level. For example, I use magnetic letters and ask them to set them in a rainbow form, then they need to sound loud each letter one or two times every day. This technique helped my students to improve their reading skills. If we use these techniques, we can encourage our children to read and to write, but considering those techniques, they can show how they are improving on these skills.
In conclusion, early literacy skills are an important phase of child development. I consider that as professionals working in educational settings, we should set up the foundations of literacy in our young students. Different authors gave us such diverse educational resources to use in our preschool and kinder classrooms. We can use different teaching techniques and research-based strategies to use with our students to help them to develop their emerging literacy skills at younger ages.
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