Overall Thoughts

Before submitting this, I thought I would do an overview of my thoughts.

Much of my focus for this assignment is on literacy in early childhood. I have had the most experience with this age group, especially this semester with student teaching in a preschool. After researching online, it has become even clearer that environmental factors greatly contribute to a child's literacy development. From my child development classes, I have learned that early childhood is the most crucial time in a persons development. This correlates with Erik Erickson's theory about stages of social-emotional development. It is critical for children to develop a sense of trust at a young age (which is formed in their environment) in order to succeed in life in all developmental areas.

Thanks for reading my blog. I had fun making it and there will be more to come in the future :)

Reading is Fundamental

I found another website that has a program for helping parents. This program is called Reading is Fundamental (RIF). It is similar to the Parents as Teachers program in that it has educational programs for parents on how to read to their children. According to the website, on 1999 only 53% of children were read to by their parents. No wonder so many children hate reading! If a child's first experience with text is in a classroom where the text is chosen by the teacher for a specific purpose, it may be difficult for the child to experience joy from reading. However, if reading is experienced at a young age as a pleasurable experience, the child may be more inclined to read and further develop their literacy skills.

At this point, I am glad that I have found all of these resources on environmental literacy. I was concerned that I would find tons of websites that said literacy is a problem because of environmental factors. Although I have found those sites, I have also discovered websites that are working to change the situation. And essentially, as a teacher, those are the websites and resources I want to access so I can pass it on to parents.

PS. On the Parents as Teachers site, there is a map of the US. If you click on a state, it will list all of the programs where Parents as Teachers is facilitated. Helpful :)

NAEYC

While it was on my mind... I put up a link to the NAEYC website. Since my focus is Child Development and early childhood, this website is something I reference a lot. It has a lot of good info on it. And, it has the whole NAEYC position statement on literacy (see link below):

http://www.naeyc.org/about/positions/psread0.asp

Check it out if you have time :)

Parents as Teachers

I was on the NAEYC website (National Association for the Education of Young Children) and came across a list of resources for parents to use.

The first one I have looked at is "Parents as Teachers". The program was developed in Missouri as teachers noticed that children were coming into school with varying skill levels (influenced by their environment). This program provides a variety of resources: personal visits (with people who are familiar with child development), parent group meetings, screenings (to assess children's growth and development), and a resource network.

I like this website because it has a lot of information about the importance of parents being teachers; children mimic people they look up to and it is important that the mimicking children do is appropriate.

It is an interesting website to browse. For more info, check the link on the left that says Parents as Teachers.

Thanks ;)

Family Literacy

After searching on the Internet for a while I came across another website. It is called the "National Council for Family Literacy." I came across two jaw-dropping statistics:


1) By age four, children who live in poor families will have heard 32 million fewer words than children living in professional families.
2) One in five, or 20%, of America's children five years old and under live in poverty.

It is frustrating that there is such a gap between children at such a young age; in addition, it seems as though education is moving at the pace of the children with the most skills and assuming that all children should be able to catch up to those skills in school. However, not all children have access to the library that Azalea went to in the video. Not all children have parents who can take time to read or teach them their letters and numbers. All this is making me think of how important it is to meet every child at their level and appreciate them for who they are as individuals and support them as individuals.

Thanks for reading my rant :)

PS. Explore the website labeled NCFL for more info!

Video: Azalea Goes to the Library

I stumbled upon this video on the Teacher Tube website (but it can still be found on you tube). In the video, three year old Azalea goes to the local library and experiences a variety of engaging activities. I chose to put the video on my blog because it shows who the environment of the library enhances literacy.

Also, I have never seen a library like the one in video. It was full of incredible resources. Furthermore, the encouraging thing about libraries is that they are accessible to everyone. Even if one does not have a membership, one can still visit and browse the books or provide children with the opportunity to browse books.

Hope you enjoy the video... it is kind of lengthy but Azalea is fun to watch!

:)

If the link to the left is not working, go to the website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Hl62ChuKo

Mother's Influence on Literacy

While searching the web I came across an article on the importance of a child's mothers education. Here is the quote:

“A salient finding from traditional research on both adult education and early childhood intervention programs is that the mother’s level of education is one of the most important factors influencing children’s reading levels and other school achievements. Generally, traditional research has revealed that more highly educated mothers have greater success in providing their children with the cognitive and language skills that contribute to early success in school… Also, children of mothers with higher levels of education say in school longer than children of mothers with low levels of education,” (Education Research Report).

I agree with this quote as mothers are typically a child's primary care giver. Thus, the child will be influenced by the environment that their mother provides; and, a more educated mother will be able to provide an environment more conducive to school and literacy.

*For more info, see the link to the side labeled, "Parents Literacy and Children's Success"

Thanks :)

Still Searching

Hello Friends!

I am still researching information on environmental literacy. I had an ipifany that maybe I am using the wrong words to search. I am going to try some different searches as I am not having the greatest luck.

However, I did find some interesting quotes from one source on the how important enviornment is to a child's developing literacy.

1) “Environmental events occurring during the young childhood years and the abilities of the preschool child are key determinants of later development,” (p. 816).

I agree with this statement. For support, I turn to Erik Erickson who outlined the stages of Social-Emotional Development. The first stage is trust versus mistrust, which is probably the most important thing a child can learn: Am I in a safe enviornment or am I unsafe? This stages takes place during the child's first two years of life. The second stage is autonomy versus guilt (2-4 years old). This stage is built off of the prior stage and if children feel trust then then will most likely have autonomy. For more info on this see the link to the side on Social-Emotional Development.

2) “Family environmental factors contribute to preschool cognitive and behavioral functioning…which in turn contribute to subsequent school achievement and literacy. Hence, family environmental factors may be regarded as indirect determinants of literacy, while cognitive-behavioral and educational factors may be regarded as its proximate determinants,” (p. 817).

This quote takes a simliar spin on environmental literacy but adds a new idea. It basically says that yes, environment does influence literacy indirectly. However, it is not the be all and end all because there are many students who rise above their environment to succeed.

Wow! This post ended up being a lot longer than I thought.

The quotes were cited from: Early Warning Signs of Functional Illiteracy: Predictors in Childhood and Adolescence Nazli Baydar; Jeanne Brooks-Gunn; Frank F. Furstenberg Child Development > Vol. 64, No. 3 (Jun., 1993), pp. 815-829

*See link list to the side for the URL

Thanks for reading :)

My First Search

I just began searching for information on new literacy's on the Internet. I am a little discouraged because when I typed in environmental literacy, the websites spoke of environment in terms of nature, rather than in terms of one's living environment (home, community, state, country, etc.) which is what I want to focus on.

However, I did find a notable website. It is called "The Literacy Web". Teachers can select classroom resources based on a few choices (grade level, the literacy topic, what is new on the site, or research related to literacy.

It is a fun website to explore and will be helpful as a future teacher :)