During the past 2 weeks I have observed children and families in a Head Start Program. I observed parents dropping off thier children and talking with the teachers about thier concerns and thier childs morning. There was parent that was volunteering in the center and she read some books to the children. They were 3-5 year old children and they were very interested in the new book. The parent interacted with the children very well and animated the words in the book to keep the children's attention.
I asked the parent if thier child enjyed being read to at home and what her thinking was about teaching literacy from a young age. She said that her little girl loves books and that she reads to her everynight possible. I asked her how important she thought that providing opportunites for reading and writing was? She said that she thinks it is very important and she wished all children had these materials and opportunites avaliable to them. I interacted with the children by helping them during journal time. I could tell the children that had crayons and utensils avalible to them and were being worked with at home. I knew this because thier drawings were way more detailed and advance than the children less fortunate. I also saw parents that dropped their children off that needed flyers read to them by the teacher because they lacked much literacy skills such as reading and understanding the print.
One insight that I learned was that famlies are all differnt and have different priortites. Some are very involved in thier child's education and others are more work oriented and they seem to use school as a daycare. I think for this reason is is most important to advocate for early literacy and let the parents know how important it its to read to thier children and expose them to print and writing utensils. Another insight that I gained was that children love to learn. When the new book was read to the children they were so excited and attentive. It is up to us as parents and professionals to give the children opportunites to read, write, and learn by providing a print rich environment.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI think that all parents want their children to succeed but depending on their employer, they may not be able to be so involved as other parents. I know in our Head Start program, we have seen a decrease in the number of parent volunteers because of the welfare to work reform that began years ago.
Wendy
Reading to children is so important. We need to model this.
ReplyDeleteMary,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post about literacy. Schools are focusing more and more on literacy. When I was taking a methods class the first grad room spent most of their morning learning about literacy. This was done by both direct and indirect instruction. Our early childhood classrooms must make sure we are preparing out children for this and it’s great that there is a speech teacher that can help those that need it early. Involving parents is awesome; parents need to know how important it is for children to start learning about letters and words early. I support your topic on literacy. Its receiving so much attention and because it such a vital part of all other learning it needs to be a top priority in schools. I would hope that all early childhood programs value the importance of teaching children these skills and giving then the necessary learning opportunities to allow them to. Thanks for your blogs on this topic!!
Carla