Module 2, WEEK 2

This article is to bridge the gap between literacy and early childhood education. The problem being targeted is connecting literary skills and concepts and implementing them into a young’s child daily life and classroom setting. In order for this to be done there are steps and each step must be targeted individually. The main steps follow as language, vocabulary, comprehension, phonological awareness followed by print awareness and concepts. In order for this to be done teachers need to ask HOT* ( higher order thinking questions), expand descriptive language, set child prompting and continue positive praising. By using child friendly language and building upon that, I  think it can be effective learning and as long as each step is taught and modelled individually by both teachers and parents, weekly or monthly, I believe it can be effective and create a solid foundation in early childhood literacy.

Currently, i am teaching with a tools of the mind cirriculum.This cirriculum has stories labs that relate to the steps in building language. The obvious is making it child friendly and asking higher order thinking using prompting or visuals but the other aspect is connecting them and you expand not only their experiences to the books but their experiences to reading. Each story lab has a different focus of the day relating to either voabulary, character empathy, visualization, connections, predictions, inferences and higher order thinking. After reading the story, a visual is used to either ask the child how the characters felt, how they relate or what can happen next. This process creates a link in connecting children to reading without actually being told this is reading or this is literacy. My part as an educator is to keep the engagement alive - interest and involvement and surprisingly, the steps the article states is the process my program enables and this makes me proud. My goal is to bring life back into reading and educate our children in the process.