Language Development, Emergent Literacy, & Reading in Young Children

I Already Know How to Read: A Childs View of Literacy

Prisca Martens

CHAPTER ONE

COLLECT & CONNECT

Collect
Quotations from the reading:
What resonates for you?
What portions of the chapter do you find
interesting and/or important?

Connect
My thoughts about the quotations:
What is familiar?
What is new?
What questions are raised for you?
What do you agree or disagree with?

From her perspectiveSarah was literate:
every day she used reading and writing to make
sense of and organize her life in natural and
authentic ways and to situate herself as a unique
participant in her family and social
community.(1)
I think its interesting how I never thought of
what is considered literate from a childs
perspective. It makes me wonder about what
other aspects this idea applies to. While Sarahs
way of reading and writing is different, she is still
learning through her own exploration.
Jean Piaget believed that we dont Know what
we see; we see what we knowHe
understood that our belief systems are the lens
through which we interpret the world(3)

I liked this quote because it supports Sarahs idea
that she is literate, because through her own eyes
she is.
I began to see with new eyes. Instead of
assuming my students didnt know anything and
needed to teach them everything, I decided to
restructure my classroom so I could examine
their reading and writing in school more closely
and let them teach me what they knew ( 4)
I think this is interesting, because most teachers
probably have a certain expectation for what
their children already know, but the fact is the
student may know more or even less. I also think
its important to understand what the children
already know in order to teach them more
effectively.
Teach me, Sarah did. She forced me to revalue
literacy, what it means to read and write, what it
means to be a reader and a writer, what it means
to be a literate member of a literate society. She
forced me to reexamine the conventional
school notions of learning to read and write
that I had lived with, advocated, and taught by
for years. She forced me to see what I hadnt
seen before, to define literacy and literacy
learning in new ways. ( 7)
This book presents a new idea to me which is that
the children can teach the teacher about literacy
and different ways to learn it. Every child has a
different relationship with literacy and its
important to take that into account. The typical
way that a school presents literacy learning to us
is not the only way.