Reflection on Chapter 8 & 9

Reflection of Chapter 8 &9 for blog .

Reading chapter 8 made me realize the importance and understanding of language development in children. As researchers have been working from the 1960’s through the 21^st century on the language development of children as a language socialization perspective, we see that children learn from active participation in a variety of language communities. For the past 10 years, researchers have begun thinking more about how social interaction and socio-cultural contexts affect the use and development of language among children. I strongly agree with this concept of children learning language and develop language skills through social interaction with children, teachers, and other children as well as from parents.

It is interesting to learn how family effects the child’s language development. Through language, children reveal what kind of circumstances and experiences they go through and activities they participate in at home. This reminds me of a child in my care who is exposed to superhero video games and movies, superhero toys and clothes with such prints. His father is fond of superheroes as well and plays with his son super hero games most of the time. I notice this young child acts and talks in super hero language and actions. children in class get exposed to such language and adopts certain words and actions that appeals to them. But then I noticed teachers and parent’s interaction can have some positive influence on children’s language development. It is also mentioned in this chapter about the importance of family mealtime talks. A child gets benefit from just being exposed to meal time discussions and need not actually be engaged in it. Beals (2001) found that the amount of narratives and exploratory talk children were exposed to at mealtime was positively related to later achievement in language and literacy.

I grew up in a family where meal times were always special and every one discussed all that is happening around in life and around as well as of everyone’s today’s events.. Every one at the table participated in the discussions .I myself, now do the same with my own children, and all of us look forward for the mealtimes together so we can discuss and share our thoughts and happenings of the day.

Since last decade emphasis on research on storybook reading and phonemics as well as of bilingual and multilingual education and family literacy program has been of interest among researchers. It is very true that children from different cultures bring along their language and literacy values with them that differ from other children. As our society is becoming more diverse we need to have more research done to support early childhood language education. My day care children learn many words and phrases in my language from me hearing me. Children learn other languages quickly and with interest and inquisitively, and it increases their vocabulary as well.

CHAPTER 9:

Chapter 9 explains about the emergent learning in children. Although the concept of emergent learning is very broad, and there are many factors that effect emergent learning . In emergent perspective, it is not seen that literacy learning is a series of reading skills, but rather as dynamic, ongoing process that begins before children even start their formal school education. It starts through the exposure of print related literacy material. Children learn and develop as readers and writers when they are exposed to print rich environment and from experiences with print that encourage engagement, experimentation, and risk-taking. Technology plays an important part in emergent learning as well. A study shows that children with mild to moderate disabilities working with graphics and story making software showed prominent results in communication and other emergent learning.

As children are exposed to much more technical tools of writing , drawing ,& talking . also gesturing, now a days. Which are all interrelated to support in the process of emergent learning.Children in my day care are exposed to different aspects of emergent learning spectrum, from very young age. Children have accessibility to book shelves and are read aloud as well. They tell stories and make their own books in which they try to write words in the form of lines and circles etc. make pictures of their stories. They make me write their stories which they dictate me. I encouraged children to read the already read stories to their friends and me. Some times some of my students enjoy to read their favorite books to their dolls and through the pictures in the book make their own story. I enjoy the way they read stories to their dolls and friends. We also cut out the alphabets on large construction paper and children color them, later we make words out of those letters. Children absorb semiotics of signs , symbols, prints, number, illustrations , and diagrams around them. It is interesting to watch children learning by being exposed to sounds, visual exposure to literary medium. Electronic emergent literacy is becoming very important in our lives now as well as children learn from other aspects of learning such as book reading,writing, phonological awareness, literate language they all enhance the growth of each other.