California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
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is based on the fact that vocabulary
development facilitates children’s ability
to focus their attention on parts of
words, rather than on their whole, as
children learn more words (see Metsala
and Walley 1998), thus helping
them progress in their phonological
awareness from large to smaller units
of sound. From these findings, Lonigan
and others (Fowler 1991; Jusczyk
1995; Lonigan, Burgess, and Anthony
2000; Metsala and Walley 1998; Walley
1993) conclude that vocabulary development
may provide the basis for the
emergence of phonological awareness.
Therefore, the foundations focus on
this key precursor for three-year-olds
and include phonological awareness
foundations for children at around
60 months of age, because mastery of
phonological awareness is more appropriate
for older preschool children.
Alphabetics and Word/Print
Recognition. The ability to recognize
letters is a basic step in the process of
learning to read and write. Knowledge
of the alphabet letters is a strong predictor
of short- and long-term reading
success. Children who have a welldeveloped
knowledge of the letters
before engaging in reading instruction
make better progress than those who
do not (Adams 1990; Badian 1982;
Bond and Dykstra 1967; Chall 1967;
Evans, Shaw, and Bell 2000; Scanlon
and Vellutino 1996; Share and others
1984; Stevenson and Newman 1986;
Stuart 1995; Tunmer, Herriman, and
Nesdale 1988; Walsh, Price, and Gillingham,
1988). Knowing the names of
letters facilitates children’s ability to
decode text and to apply the alphabetic
principle to word recognition. For most
children the name of the letters helps
them connect the sounds in words and
letters in print (Durrell 1980). Know-
ledge of letter names, then, can be
conceived as a mediator in the reading
process that provides children with the
ability to remember the sounds associated
with letters (Ehri 1979, 1998).
The order of learning the alphabet
letters seems facilitated by environmental
and developmental influences.
An important environmental influence
is exposure to the individual letters
of the alphabet. Children learn first
the letters that are the most familiar
to them, such as the letters in their
own names and the letters that occur
earlier in the alphabet string (Treiman
and Broderick 1998). The features of
certain letters make them more amenable
to learning. For instance, letters
that contain their sound in a child’s
name, like b and f, are learned earlier
than are those letters that do not,
like q and w (Treiman and Broderick
1998). A developmental influence on
children’s learning of alphabet letters
relates to the relationship between
phonological development and alphabet
knowledge. Children learn earlier
those letters that map onto earlieracquired
phonemes, such as the “b”
letter sound and the “d” letter sound,
instead of letters that map onto phonemes
that tend to be acquired later,
such as the “r” letter sound and the
“l” letter sound. (Justice and others
2006). Consequently, the focus of the
foundations is on children’s ability to
recognize or identify familiar letters
and words, such as the first letter of
their name and, later, their whole first
name.
As children become aware of the
names of letters, they also begin to
identify printed words. Ehri (1995) has
defined children’s development in word
recognition as a series of transitions
as children move from “prealphabetic
Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1 • California Department of Education