What: Reading about language and literacy in the school years.
Language Development in the School Years: Often when a child reaches his or her school aged years they know how to talk about the past, present, and future. Also they usually have a large vocabulary and varied. Morphology and Syntax: They learn to used derivational suffixes correctly and add to their vocabulary. They start to use reflexives where they talk about myself or himself. They older a child gets he or she may start to use adverbial connectors like although and finally. Semantics: Children start to use and understand figurative language, they can do this by writing poems and stories in class. Research has be found that children can start to do this around age 5. Between age 9 and 12 children start to understand humor and how to use it. Pragmatics: Through story telling children can develop conversational competence and increase their language sophistication. Even if a student may have the ability to use their language skills there might be other reasons like lack of competence that holds them back. During school children learn indirect requests usually from teachers. (ex. teacher says its getting noisy in here- children quiet down.) In schools teachers tend to focus on narrative skills as in journaling about their weekends etc. Metalinguistic Ability: This is the ability to think about language itself. Many students know the rules of language but are not aware of all of the rules they know. They can show their knowledge of language through spelling, reading, and writing.
Implications for Instruction: When you are teaching it is important to remember that not all students may join in on the class conversation but that doesn't mean that they aren't conversational. Observing students in an informal setting will give a more accurate description if a student can engage in conversation. Knowing what age children learn language such as humor and indirect requests, will help you when talking to your students.
Language and Literacy: Even though there are regulations that all students no matter what their socioeconomic status is, that they are all on the same level. As a teacher we must realize that not everyone is on the same level and learn what we can do to best help them reach these regulations. Researchers have focused on phonological awareness, meaning that they focus on studying children understand, using, and recalling the phonological sequence used in an alphabetic orthography.
Phonological Abilities and Reading: Phonemic awareness is the ability to focus on and manipulate phonemes in spoken words. This is important when trying to learn to read and write English, because each sound may represent a different sound or meaning. By the time they enter they can recognize English phonemes but when they are in school they learn to become aware of phonemes. Phonological ability is directly related to a students success in reading. Syntactic Skills and Reading: Syntactical knowledge is important in developing reading comprehension and phonological knowledge.
Semantic Skills and Reading: Receptive and expressive vocabulary is also important in being successful in school. Have a higher vocabulary knowledge helps students comprehend while reading in content areas. Narrative Skills: Good readers and writers supposably have better narrative skills. These skills help them understand and compose stories. Children that have been exposed to extended discourse have been found to be better prepared for beginning of reading.
Implications for Instruction: It is important that teachers understand the language basis of literacy. Knowing about language development and the relationship between knowledge and literacy is very important so that you can help your students succeed. Having knowledge about reading-langugae connection can help you identify students that may be at risk. Also it is important that teachers understand the relationship between language and literacy to help students improve in reading and writing.
Why: I read this chapter because I wanted to learn more about language and literacy and how they relate to one another. I also was interested in this because from learning about literacy in my C & I class I have realized how important literacy and language development are to students who are learning reading and writing.
Reaction: I was very intrigued by the different studies that have been done about language development in the classroom and what teachers should do and what they need to understand before going into the classroom. Another reaction I had to this chapter is that I didn't really like the lay out of the chapter. There were so many sub titles underneath the main title that I felt I was reading very repetitive information.
Learned: While reading this section I have learned about the major connection between literacy and language development in children. I also have learned that children become better communicators when they use a wider range of communicative partners and topics. It is crucial that teachers understand language development and how it relates to academic success to identify at risk children.
Goal Setting: My goal after reading this chapter is to learn more about language development so that as a Special education teacher I can easily and accurately find children that are at risk and help those students that are. I will also do this by being actively engaged in SED 377 this semester!
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