Q.   What is Emergent Literacy?

At a very young age, let's say two or so, literacy skills begin to emerge from children even though they have never had any formal instruction.

Awareness that print has meaning:
Children as young as 16 months may climb up on the easy chair with a magazine and pretend to read. The fact that they often hold the magazine upside down doesn't matter. What does matter is that they are imitating us. Listen to the way they make noises that copy our intonations and inflections. Children are great imitators, it's almost like they are preprogrammed to mimic things they see us do because it's such a powerful way to learn. They watch us as we read the mail. They see us read menus and watch the waiter write down the order. They witness the way we discuss things as we read the newspaper. All these types of experiences help them understand that print has meaning.

Recognizing common symbols in their environment:
Books for babies usually don't have words but the pictures are symbols just like words. Parents delight in watching their child make connections between the objects they identify in the book with the real objects in their world. This is the beginning of symbolic understanding. As children grow beyond babyhood we see them recognize the first letter of their name, they even mistakenly identify other words that start with that letter as their name. If they often eat Cheerios out of the box, they will know exactly which box to reach for on the grocery store shelf just by the way the words and the box look. If you frequent a particular grocery store, let's say Safeway, your child may become familiar with the way the word "Safeway" looks on the sign above the store. It's as if they recognize the shape or picture of the word. One day when you are driving up to a Safeway in another city, they may seem to be able to read the sign. They cannot truly read yet but they remember what the word looks like as a whole. Try this "environmental print" activity at home: put a big piece of paper on a wall, cut out pictures of common foods and glue them on the paper. Then type the names of the foods on your computer and print them out. Cut the words out and use them to label the food pictures. As you can imagine there are endless ways to bring novelty to this activity and the more you do it, the more your child will participate.

The importance of reading to children:
We all know how important it is to read to children. Every time you sit down together with a good picture book you give your child the opportunity to build on their naturally developing literacy skills. Have you noticed how much your child loves to have you read the same book over and over again? Their brains love repetition because it allows them to predict what is going to be said and when they are correct it re-enforces their love of using books. The repetition also helps them experience the technical aspects of reading such as moving from left to right with a sentence. And in an amazing way they begin to internalize the sounds of certain letters, especially the beginning letters of words.

The development of the prefrontal cortex and the implications for true reading ability:
The prefrontal cortex is the last part of the brain to become fully developed. Before it is fully developed a child has singular focus. He/she can only think of one big thing at a time. The ability to concentrate on and integrate several different focuses is difficult if not impossible. At about the age of 6-7 when the frontal lobes become much more fully developed, the child will be able to focus on several different things at once, multifocus. So a 6-7 year old child's brain will be able to focus on grammar, phonics, spelling, letter formation, syntax, putting letters to make words, and words together to make sentences simultaneously. Can you believe that your brain is doing just that as you read this piece?!?! So when you read to your young child remember that you are helping your child "build" literacy skills. But the task of true reading ability will "gel" together when your child's brain reaches a certain developmental stage. Most of the time young children are mimicking reading concepts, just keep in mind that mimicking is the beginning of developing the real thing.

Sylvia Ford, Early Childhood Consultant, © 2004

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