Emergent Literacy

I really enjoyed Teale & Sulzby's article Emergent Literacy: New Perspectives.  Their findings that learning to read and write start when children are very young is something that I have seen in my own life.  I have two daughters and I'm watching them learn and progress through the different stages of reading and writing.  One of my daughters is nine, so she is at a point in her learning career where she is reading and comprehending long chapter books and writing her own stories. 

My other daughter is five and just started Kindergarten this year.  She is currently learning all of her letters, sounds, and how to correctly write them.  She also likes to create her own books, and since she has been a viewer of books since she was born, she knows the general layout of a book.  When creating her books she staples pages together on the left side, like the binding of a traditional book.  As she is not a fluent writer of conventional words, most of her stories are pages of illustrations accompanied by squiggly lines to represent writing.  Although they may just look like scribbles, in her mind they are representing the words of the story.  Her favorite choice time activity at school is the Writing Center.  The Writing Center is not a place where she has to practice forming letters and being corrected, but is instead a place where she can explore the world of writing on her own terms and enjoy herself. 

In my classroom I want to create a space where reading and writing is enjoyable for each student.  I plan to do this by giving the kids choices for what they want to read and write about.  I want them to read genres that they are interested in and try out others that they  find that they like.  When writing, I want them to use their own experiences to provide a basis for a story or that will give them a jumping off point to create a fictional story.