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Rousseau
In 1762, Rousseau explored the idea that children's early education should be very natural. He believed that children learn through curiosity and have individual ways of learning. According to his findings, the formal instruction could possibly keep a child from learning and interfere with their development. Through his philosophy, teachers should strategies that help focus the child's readiness to learn and require little adult intervention. -
Pestalozzi
Pestalozzi found it unrealistic that people expected children to learn on their own. He felt that parents and teachers needed to create conditions, especially in reading, for the child's progress to grow. He designed lesson known as "gifts" that helped teach children about different things through touch, smell, language, size and shape. -
Froebel
Froebel followed Pestalozzi's way of thinking, since he was one of his students, but he is best known for emphasizing the importance of play in learning. Although using play with learning can take a little extra work, Froebel saw that the children used psychomotor skills while learning about shape, color, size, measurements, and comparison. His ideas such as circle time are seen in many classrooms today. -
Reading Readiness
Reading readiness is a way for teachers to be more focused on nurturing the maturation of a child through instructional skills to prepare them for reading. Many different skills come with reading readiness such as auditory discrimination, visual discrimination, visual motor skills and large motor skills. Combined, these skills will help prepare a child for many different types of literacy. -
Skinner
B.F. Skinner discovered that people operate in their own world and way of thinking to produce learning. During his research he found that if you use positive reinforcement for a desired behavior then that behavior would be increased. Based on his findings, the behaviorist learning perspective has an organized program that is presented in a systematic and direct manner. When teaching literacy related content, a teacher would be able to use this perspective by using a script in the lesson. -
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The Research Era
During the 1960's and 1980's many changes happened in early childhood literacy development. Cognitive development was looked at more closely in children using research methodologies such as experimental studies, research, interviews and case studies. Instead of having children be placed in a lab, most research was conducted in classrooms or homes. Information gathered from the areas such as oral language development, and reading showed the teachers more about the development of the child. -
Montessori
Maria Montessori created her own method of instruction that was based on the use of the senses to promote learning. She decided to focus more on letting the children teach themselves and have the "teacher" be the helping hand. Using their five senses, children are supposed to learn about size, color, and shape. Subjects such as math and reading instruction are still taught, but in more hands on ways so the children can learn more independently. -
Emergent Literacy
Emergent Literacy, first used my Marie Clay, assumes that a child already has knowledge about language, reading, and writing. It is best if a child come into a school environment already knowing some information about literacy. This will make the transition easier for that child. While in a school setting, the child will be able to explore literacy through their own forms of reading, writing, and speaking. -
Dewey
John Dewey created the concept of child-centered curriculum, or progressive education. With this curriculum, he focused on building the interests around the children. Dewey heavily influenced the early childhood classrooms in the United States. His concept of "centers" can be seen in almost every classroom across the US. With his philosophy, more playful things were used such as blocks, paints, and dress up clothes. Math and writing were not taught formally, but involved with the centers. -
Piaget
Piaget is most known for his theory of cognitive development. He divides his theory into four different periods, which also have different ages groups. By using Piaget's theory in the world of literacy, you would be able to see how the child should be developing in relation to their cognitive development based on their age. This will help you see if they are doing well with different literacy activities or falling behind. -
Vygotsky
Vygotsky's theory of intellectual development explored the idea that learning happens when a child acquires a new concept. These concepts can also be called schemas, which is a mental structure where a person stores information they know. Children must be able to interact with others so they can build new concepts. Since children cannot learn everything on their own, teachers are there to scaffold their students to new ideas so they can learn what they need to know. -
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Explicit Instruction and Phonics
Beginning in the mid 1980's, whole-language instruction was fading out because children were doing as well on their tests as they should be, mainly in literacy. After looking at the problem, most educators decided to do away with explicit instruction and they started covering phonics. With a new understanding of phonics came new skills called phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. With these new skills children are able to learn sound-symbol awareness and gain more alphabetic knowledge. -
Balanced Comprehensive Approach
The Balanced Comprehensive Approach was introduced to present the idea that no single method or combination of methods can successfully teach all children to read. For a child to read, their teacher must know the social, emotional, physical, and intellectual leaves of that child. By using the BCA the teacher is able to focus more on what is important to that individual child. -
National Reading Panel Report
The National Reading Panel Report of 2000 was a media-analysis that reveled key elements to literacy success. The report showcased the most effective strategies for teaching children how to read. More than 100,000 studies were able to come up with results. The results showed the needed elements that are crucial to early literacy success. These elements are phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. -
No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed in January 2001 under the Bush administration. This program was one of the first policies to involve the federal government with literacy instruction. The goal of NCLB is to have every child reading fluently by the third grade. This legislation also wanted to close the achievement gap in literacy development and stop literacy problems before they even happen. -
National Early Literacy Panel Report
The National Early Literacy Panel Report of 2008 looked at research that was used to identify the skills and abilities of young children from birth to the age of five. There are many different variables on the panel such as Alphabet Knowledge, Phonological Awareness, Rapid Automatic Naming of letters or digits and Oral Language. One big conclusion to all of this research is that involving children in appropriate activities will help them develop the different variables. -
Common Core State Standards
Standards first became apart of American schools in the 1990s. But in 2010 the Common Core State Standards were made to reduce down on the variability that was seen in many classrooms. The CCSS represent the latest, and most ambitious, version of what standards can do for schools, teachers and students. The CCSS highlights the need for developing different parts of literacy throughout grades K - 12. These standards also help provide guidance about the core content for schools and teachers. -
Citation
Morrow, L. M. (2015). Literacy development in the early years: Helping children read and write (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson.