California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
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ers to model key components of the
reading task and enable children to
begin discovering the components of
reading themselves. Interaction during
shared reading creates opportunities
for cognitive processing and problem
solving.
Literacy Interest and Response.
Interest in books and a positive regard
for reading are important developmental
accomplishments for preschool-age
children. Participation in such literacy
activities as handling books and
listening to stories leads to continuing
engagement with text and to motivation
and persistence in challenging
reading tasks. These experiences
are necessary for children to become
able readers and lifelong literacy
learners. An emerging body of research
shows that motivation is an important
factor in the development of early
literacy in preschool and later reading
achievement. Increasing engagement
in literacy and expanding reading
activities are tied to increases in
motivation, which, in turn, facilitates
comprehension and recall of information.
Children’s active engagement in
text-related activities, such as turning
pages in a book, is related to knowledge
of print concepts at around four
years of age. Opportunities for reading
are related to children’s interest
in reading at home and at school.
Children who are read to more frequently
and from an earlier age tend
to have greater interest in literacy,
exhibit superior literacy skills during
the preschool and school years, choose
reading more frequently, initiate reading
sessions on their own, and show
greater engagement during reading
sessions. Adult-child storybook reading
promotes children’s interest in
reading and leads to increased
exposure and engagement with text.
Writing—Writing Strategies
Writing Strategies. Learning to
write involves cognitive, social, and
physical development. Children from a
very young age notice writing in their
surroundings. They begin to understand
that signs in the environment
represent words for ideas or concepts.
By age three they begin to differentiate
between writing and other kinds of
visual representation, such as drawing.
With this realization comes differentiation
between tools for writing
and tools for drawing (“I need to get a
pencil to write my name”). Their writing
starts to look different from their
drawing—more linear than circular.
Young children become involved with
written text by being read to, examining
books, and observing others writing.
Preschoolers begin to experiment
with writing by pretending to write
and by learning to write their names.
Initially, children demonstrate a global
form of writing. They tend to use drawings
as writing or use idiosyncratic
scribbles (i.e., markings that have only
personal meaning). Later, children use
letter-like forms that resemble some
of the characteristics of real writing
(e.g., longer words are represented by
longer strings of letter-like symbols).
Children in the next phase start using
actual letters to write, but with little
or no connection to the actual spelling
of what they want to write (i.e., nonphonetic
strings of letters). This phase
is followed by attempts at phonetic
spelling, also called “invented spelling.”
In this phase, children use letters to
match letter sounds to parts of words
they hear, but from a phonological
Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1 • California Department of Education