A Sociocultural Approach to Literacy

This week I read Razfar and Yang's article Digital, Hybrid, and Multilingual Literacies in Early Childhood. In it they discuss research pertaining to changes in early childhood literacy due to information technology and increased diversity in many schools. The point that "No ten-year period in human history has seen such rapid growth and change in information technology, digital media, online gaming, and children's access to them" is, I think, a valid one. As teachers, we have no choice but to acknowledge the growing place technology has in our students' lives. This article focused on three aspects of modern early childhood literacy: electronic and digital media as mediational tools, hybrid languages as mediational tools, and the use of multiple languages, literacies, and discourses in school communities.

The authors discuss the principle of semiotic mediation that is, the way children learn about and interpret signs and symbols in order to make meaning. The authors explain that "though semiotic mediation, children participate, negotiate, and interact in cultural and social practices." It is important then, for teachers not to limit children to one kind of interaction or to devalue certain types of social practices unless they are harmful to the children. We may have students from varied backgrounds in our classrooms and it is not our place as teachers to place value judgement on the types of semiotic experiences students have. During early childhood, the important part is to let the children discover as much as possible for themselves. The authors cite Vygotsky's idea that "During early childhood, children and adults develop multiple literacy practices through participation in socially organized activities, such as play, oral storytelling, and painting. These activities are often fluid in terms of roles taken up by young children, and dynamic in terms of the cultural tools they use to achieve concrete ends."

Furthermore, this article provides several examples of children demonstrating awareness of how technology is used in everyday life through their play. One example is of a 2 or 3 year old boy who has been using CD-ROM storybooks and one day asks his father to 'click' on him. His father points at the child and makes a clicking noise at which point the child starts singing and dancing. He is demonstrating his understanding of the links and buttons in his computer storybook. When the reader wants an action to happen, they click on a character. Another example comes from Karen Wohlwend and involves kindergarten and first-grade children using classroom supplies and found objects as placeholders for items like cell phones and iPods in their play. The authors explain that "These examples demonstrate how the technology itself has become an object of activity during pretend play and an intimate part of children's lives. So, just as we must reserve judgement about cultural and social interactions during play, we must allow children to use technology or representations of technology in their play. Because technology is part of the average adult's everyday life in this country, we must allow children to develop their own understanding of how and why these things are used.

These play situations are forms of early childhood literacy. They are examples of children demonstrating how they understand social situations and the use of technology in their lives. For children who are not yet writing, play is their primary form of literacy. We can learn about what types of things are important to children by observing their play. For instance, many children will reference characters from pop culture. This shows us as teachers what our students are experiencing outside the classroom. It is important for teachers to not only accept the type of play our students want to partake in, but to encourage diverse play. This means presenting a variety of cultural and social situations and different kinds of technology. Allowing students to explore these elements during play will prepare them for interactions as adults.


Razfar, A., Yang, E. (2010). Digitial, Hybrid, and Multilingual Literacies in Early Childhood. Language Arts. Vol. 88 (No. 2). pp. 114-124. Retrieved from http://jstor.org/stable/41804239

A Story for Story's Sake

This week I read Children's Literature for Reading Strategy Instruction: Innovation or Interference? by Patricia M. Cooper from Language Arts. Cooper argues that teaching reading comprehension strategies in kindergarten and first grade may not be the useful practice we think it is. She explains that "readers operate from self-interest" and so the most important thing to get young children to engage with a book is that it is one in which they are genuinely interested. At this point, I don't think Cooper ruffles many feathers. Personally, I remember falling in love with A Wrinkle in Time because I loved the idea of time-traveling, not because it's a great example of a character's conflict with their surroundings or because I could make a text-to-self connection about having a strange family.

Where I think Cooper might cause eyebrows to raise is when she says "The use of imaginative children's literature for overt reading strategy instruction is counterproductive in the pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grades." Cooper explains that she believes "the untaught story-or a story for story's sake" is not used in today's classrooms because there is not research documenting the benefits of such an activity. Schools, she says, have become so focused on teaching strategies and being able to measure student progress that things like imagination are being overlooked. Our current reading-strategy-focused system is flawed for two main reasons according to Cooper. First, young children need the opportunity to read and be read to just to use their imaginations. By being exposed to new ideas, characters, and places, students learn how the world might work outside their limited experiences so far. Second, Cooper does not believe that kindergartners and first graders are developmentally ready to get much out of the reading strategies they are being taught, particularly meta-cognitive reflections. So, is the untaught story a better model for literacy in K and 1 classrooms?

Cooper explains that "The untaught story plays a distinct and essential role in fostering young children's psychological relationship to and need for story-based children's literature, an essential first step in early of emerging literacy development." Using children's literature to teach reading comprehension strategies, Cooper argues, teaches children that there are right answers to enjoying a story. She uses the common classroom activity of predicting a story based on the book's cover. Because a teacher is usually hoping students will notice certain elements, children might get the idea that there are correct and incorrect connections to make to a story. Cooper puts it this way, "Innocuous as the prediction strategy seems, in reality it reflects a problem common to many reading strategies for young children: it engenders an uncertain sense of success." In my limited classroom experience, I think a good teacher can introduce or model reading strategies without taking away from a child's enjoyment of the story, but I think that depends on the teacher remembering that each student comes to a story with different background and developmental abilities.

Beyond potentially inhibiting imaginative development, Cooper worries that students are simply not developmentally ready to think about what they are thinking. She says about young children "How their thought processes work requires a level of cognitive sophistication that is only beginning to emerge by the end of first grade or so, and is so inexact as to be of very litter practical use to young children." I agree with Cooper that certain activities designed to strengthen reading comprehension are not appropriate for young students. For instance, it is unrealistic to expect a kindergartner to fit their feelings about a story onto a Post-it note. They probably haven't had enough experience writing to ensure that they will have enough space on that small square to express themselves fully. I think the answer here, though, is not to not teach reading comprehension strategies, but to modify them to fit the needs of the students.

Cooper believe that "The true contribution of story to the early childhood classroom is its power to teach young children, not to comprehend or even decode, but to imagine alternatives to the way things are." I do not disagree with her. I think the ultimate purpose of using great children's literature in the classroom is to show students all the wonderful stories in which they can lose themselves. I don't think, though, that reading comprehension as it currently being taught has no place in K and 1 classrooms. In many ways, learning to be aware of the connections they make as they read, can encourage students to read more. It is always vital, in reading comprehension or any other classroom activity, to think about what the students are getting out of it. No one benefits from just teaching a lesson because it is on a list somewhere.


Cooper, P. (2009). Children's Literature for Reading Strategy Instruction: Innovation or Interference? Language Arts, Vol. 86 (No. 3), pp.178-187. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41483524

The Evolving Literacy of Kindergarteners

I recently read Literacy in Motion: A Case Study of a Shape-shifting Kindergartner by Siegel, Kontovouri, Schmier, and Enriquez from the National Council of Teachers of English. In this article, a case study, the authors discuss a kindergarten student named Jewel. Jewel moves between languages (Bengali and English), cultures (home and school), and literacies (writing and drawing). This issue raised by this article is one of perception. Jewel does not, the authors observe, cause a commotion in making all these changes. Jewel is an example of a multi-literate student. Multiliteracy is a relatively new idea, one that needs to gain footing in order to prepare students for the modern world.

This article argues that systems like balanced literacy, as it was practiced at the observed school, created a culture discourse which valued certain types of reading and writing over others. I think this is something that can be very hard to identify in your own school and even if it is identified, making changes also proves challenging. Even in my limited experience in classrooms, I have heard teachers and administrators say things like "Well, it's always been done that way." In the article, students in Jewel's classroom were praised for sitting correctly during mini-lessons, using the mini-lesson strategies while reading, and completing writing exercises in the correct order. If Jewel did something out of order she was reminded by her teacher or fellow students what the correct procedure was. Repeatedly, Jewel was reminded to add words to her drawings, that they were not done without the addition of words. I found myself asking what I might be able to do if I find myself teaching in a school that does not value cultural diversity in it's curriculum.

This article proposes looking at young students' work through a lens of multimodality, that is assigning value to all aspects of symbolic representation. I could transfer this viewpoint to the classroom by asking students about their drawings instead of just reminding them to add words. As we've learned in Catching Readers Before They Fall, every student has their own developmental timelines. Not all kindergartners are ready to write sentences at the same time and that's okay.

The students I teach will need to be prepared to use their literacy skills everywhere in an ever-expanding variety of forms. They will not only need to be able to identify narrative elements in stories, but know how to use all of the features on a standard website, smartphone app, or grocery store self-checkout station. This article emphasized that it is important to think about who a literacy program benefits. Is it designed for ease of measurement or to value students' developing skills and build on them in a variety of ways?


Siegel, M., Kontovourki, S., Schmier, S., Enriquez, G. (2008). Literacy in Motion: A Case Study of a Shape-shifting Kindergartner.Language Arts, Vol.86 (No.2), pp.89-98. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41962327

Learning to See Progress

We need to have more confidence in our kids.

"Just as children move from babbling and incorrect pronunciation when learning to talk, children move rapidly from the invented spelling to correct or conventional spelling." Rasinski and Padak explain this process in their article, Teaching Phonemic Awareness. As I read this, I was surprised that what seems obvious now seems so profound. Children's development will progress. It's what children do. In Raskinski and Padak's article, as well as in Every Mark on the Page by Cusumano, it becomes clear that if we give students the opportunity to explore their developing skills and experiment with techniques they will show great progress. No need to freak out.

I understand though, why parents or in my case, novice teacher might be nervous about a student's writing and speaking skills developing properly. Those are critical life skills. Cusumano does a wonderful job explaining how to find the progress in young students' writing. The first thing I found important to keep in mind was that children are not born knowing that spaces go between words and that the same letters can be combined in different ways to make different words. Those are huge milestones that we often overlook because we're too busy correcting spelling or worrying that the student's d's are still backwards. Cusumano explains that recognizing a child's independent willingness to attempt spelling the words they want to use is a skill that will serve them well throughout their early writing process, that even if most of the words are spelled incorrectly, the real success is in the student's desire to try, to experiment. Cusumano explains "The learning can progress rapidly if the child discovers and tests out the rules themselves instead of having them imposed without."

This philosophy is echoed in Rasinski and Padak's Teaching Phonemic Awareness. They say "Most children develop phonemic awareness naturally through everyday play with language sounds..." By giving children the opportunity to play with language, they can develop the skills we want them to independently. Both articles make the point that this type of development leads to stronger mastery of the skills. Children are not just told what to do, but discover that by using correct pronunciation or spelling their messages are conveyed more effectively to others. In fact, the two are connected. Rasinski and Padak say "Literacy scholars argue that writing in which students use their knowledge of sound-symbol correspondence, also known as invented or phonemic spelling, is a powerful way to help students develop their phonemic awareness as well as their basic phonics knowledge." So, in fact, the two skills are linked and can be practiced simultaneously by children.

I am sympathetic to parents who worry about their children's speaking and writing development, as a new teacher I know I will want my students to be hitting their benchmarks right on schedule. These articles remind us though, that more important than the schedule we've made for the students is the students' ability to explore their developing skills themselves.

Learning About Struggling Readers

In Catching Readers Before They Fall, Johnson and Keier explain that regardless of how reading is taught, some students still struggle. This, they reason, means that the basal readers, phonics software, or textbooks are not always to blame. The problem is that struggling readers have not been given the mental tools they need to succeed. Struggling readers do not think the way successful readers do. They lack a reading process system. I will admit that until now I thought it was completely understandable that teacher's blame their materials or their curriculum for lack of success with students.

A personal reading process system though, is necessary for anyone to make meaning from a text. Johnson and Keier explain that the process is the same for first graders as it is for college students. I agree, having fundamental skills to make meaning of any text is a vital tool in all stages of life. Inside the classroom, students must decode not only the literacy reader but science and math textbooks. These texts only get more complicated as school goes continues. Everyone needs to know how to use the same strategies; catching mistakes, knowing when what you've read doesn't sound right, thinking about the author's message, and reasoning through difficult or unknown words for example. I thought about the reading I do everyday, the reading required at our literacy dig and the strategies presented in these chapters fit those purposes. Reading signs and mail, understanding what your boss is implying in an email, or decoding new technical terms in an instruction manual are things just about anyone will need to do often.

Struggling readers either have not been exposed to these reading process ideas or have not learned to implement them in a helpful way. Johnson and Keier cite P. David Pearson who explains that is does not matter who is at fault for not preparing the struggling student with adequate reading tools. Blaming parents or previous teachers won't make reading easier for the student. Pearson says "Take the students in your class from where they are and move them forward from there." This point of view is a refreshing one. I understand now how many educators might fall into a problematic habit of assuming that the materials are what needs changing, not their perspectives.

Johnson and Keier tell us that it is ideal to start teaching students to use decoding strategies as they read as early as possible, but not every student gets the attention they need in those early years. So, what's to become of the fourth grader who can barely make it through Henry and Mudge? Johnson and Keier tell readers to maintain a safe environment where students know they can make mistakes, work with reading materials from real texts, and keep the student working at the edge of their abilities, later referred to as ZPD or zone of Zone of Proximal Development, coined by Leo Vygotsky. The ZDP is the level at which the student can work successfully with a teacher's help. Any lower and the student gets bored, higher and frustration can take over. I know I've experienced this in various aspects of life. The hardest part of striving to keep students in their ZPD must be knowing where it lies not only for reading, but for all classroom challenges. Again, paying close attention to students, not flaws in materials, is key.

It seems that using the comprehensive literacy framework described in Chapter Five of Catching Readers Before They Fall might be very helpful in this process. A comprehensive literacy framework has several components, each with less teacher support. It starts with reading aloud which allows the teacher to model genuine interest in books and stories. Next is shared reading. This is still a read-aloud but one in which the teacher models comprehension strategies for students. Guided reading is the next component. This allows a teacher to see exactly what a student is doing when presented with a certain text. Teachers can encourage and model specific strategies depending on what types of challenges the student faces while reading. Finally, students read independently. Of course, this allows students to use the strategies they have seen modeled with the fewest supports. By slowly eliminating supports, it can become clear where the student becomes overwhelmed. Furthermore, this is a great system for building confidence in struggling readers.

I see something similar in all of these strategies for helping struggling readers; struggling readers are all similar and different. While this may not initially seem like a helpful connection, stay with me. As a teacher, I believe it is my responsibility to know about how children develop and learn. Because of this, it is useful to know about common struggles for most readers and strategies that have been proven to help make meaning. However, it is also a teacher's responsibility to pay attention to each student as an individual. So, just because standards or past experience say that all first graders will be able to master a certain text the student who doesn't is not flawed, the materials might be fine, and the curriculum could be great. There will always be students who don't fit the mold. I am anxious to become a teacher to get to know which molds each of my students don't fit! Isn't that what keeps the job interesting?

Engaging Early Readers and a Literacy Dig

We recently read an article about a literacy project called the Donut House. A classroom teacher in Kentucky found a way to engage her diverse group of students in an impressive range of literacy experiences through creating and operating a donut shop in their classroom. The students actively participated in every step from hiring a contractor to "build" their shop to finding shareholders to creating operating instructions for making donuts. The students wrote thank you letters, loan applications, lists, invitations, and interviews all to create their donut shop. Hall makes the point in this article that the literacy valued in classrooms (novels, plays, poems, etc.) is not the literacy valued in life. This donut shop brought the literacy of daily life into the classroom.

In this way, students got to develop various literacy skills using real life applications. I assume this teacher did not have to answer "When am I going to use this?" very often during the donut shop activity. In fact, in Chapter 1 of Catching Readers Before They Fall Johnson and Keier emphasize how important it is to know how to engage your students in the material. Furthermore, the authors of this article say that students are able to develop self-worth by practicing these types of real-life applications. I can see how this is possible, especially as the article says, with at-risk students who perhaps do not see themselves as skilled readers or writers.

For class, we went on a "literacy dig" in which we evaluated a local business for it's literacy practices. We were instructed to choose somewhere children might go frequently. Our group chose a local, co-op grocery store. We looked at concrete examples of literacy such as written signs and price tags, advertisements for community events, coupons, and receipts. We also observed that in order to most effectively navigate this place, one would need the social and cultural literacy of a grocery store. For instance, a customer must know to get a basket or cart and begin selecting products off the shelves themselves. A customer must also know though, that for certain items like fresh meat or fish, a store employee must get those items for you. Spoken literacy is prevalent in this store as well. There is a somewhat scripted interaction between the check-out clerk and the customer. The employee will ask if the customer found everything they were looking for and ask if they have a member number. The customer will most likely say that they found everything and tell the cashier their member number if they have one. This conversation is usually casual and polite. We also found that there is a great deal of vocabulary specific to shopping for food, especially at this grocery store which specializes in natural foods. Understanding terms like organic, gluten-free, non-GMO, BPA free, and eco allow better understanding of the products for sale. Further, because this is a co-op business words and phrases like cooperative, stronger together and member-owner are seen in various places throughout the store. So, how does all of this help us teach elementary school literacy better? Like the students did in the Donut House, we had to think about all the different types of literacy we would need to use in order to shop in or work at a business like this.

Our group discussed what running an in-the-classroom grocery store would look like. Students would need to create many of the same types of documents as in the donut shop article such as permits, letters to investors and design plans for the shop. For a grocery store, students would learn to design a logo and slogan, create signage for each department and price tags for the products. They could create a checklist of responsibilities for employees, receipts, and a newsletter for the community. The students would need to think about how best to inform the community of their business which might involve sending letters encouraging certain people to get involved in the planning and investment of the store. Students could also design advertisements and plan a grand opening event. There would be many opportunities to practice written, spoken, and visual literacy based on a necessary real-life task.

We also discussed the cross-curricular opportunities for a project like this. Running a class grocery store could be the basis for various math lessons like using money, creating a budget, addition, subtraction and multiplication in order to plan an inventory, or learning to use a scale in the produce department. Designing a logo, signs and advertisements would be great, practical art lessons. Science lessons could focus on why certain foods expire before others and the importance of keeping foods like dairy and meat in refrigerators.

However, there are literacy skills that are not as well served using real-life applications like the donut shop or a grocery store. Students are not able to create a character, setting or plot from their imaginations in this type of project. Exercises in writing short stories or poems, while not based as much in daily life, give students an opportunity to think outside the structures of a form, list or procedure. If we are going to encourage students to flex their creative muscles we must give a variety of opportunities to do so. I believe a project like the donut shop would be incredibly beneficial to any classroom. Exposing students to the many ways they will need strong literacy skills in their everyday life is very valuable. We must not though, become so focused on literacy skills based in the real, adult world that we skip giving our students the opportunity to create worlds, adventures and heroes of their own devise.

The donut shop project looks like a great way to get kids interested in literacy without dropping a giant reading textbook in front of them. Using a project like that in the classroom would be a wonderful way to practice a wide variety of skills at once. I'm sure planning and working in the donut shop was more engaging for many students than interpreting poems. I hope though that every student also has the opportunity to explore rich literature and the fun of writing their own stories.

Learning to Teach Literacy

As a soon-to-be teacher, I am taking a class about literacy in K-3 classrooms. This is the place where I will be sharing ideas, questions, and observations about what I am learning. I am particularly interested in how to encourage struggling readers, ways to incorporate writing across the curriculum, and reading great children's literature.