List strategies for supporting emergent literacy in early childhood, and explain why each strategy is useful

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: The following strategies are useful for supporting emergent literacy:
• Provide literacy-rich home and preschool environments. Homes and preschools with abundant reading and writing materials—including a wide variety of children's storybooks, some relevant to children's ethnic backgrounds—open the door to a wealth of language and literacy experiences. Make-believe play in which children have many opportunities to use newly acquired literacy skills in meaningful ways spurs literacy development.
• Engage in interactive book reading. When adults discuss story content, ask open-ended questions about story events, explain the meaning of words, and point out features of print, they promote language development, comprehension of story content, knowledge of story structure, and awareness of units of written language.
• Provide outings to libraries, museums, parks, zoos, and other community settings. Visits to child-oriented community settings enhance children's general knowledge and offer many opportunities to see how written language is used in everyday life. They also provide personally meaningful topics for narrative conversation, which promote many language skills essential for literacy development.
• Point out letter–sound correspondences, play rhyming and other language–sound games, and read rhyming poems and stories. Experiences that help children isolate the sounds in words foster phonological awareness—a powerful predictor of early childhood literacy knowledge and later reading and spelling achievement.
• Support children's efforts at writing, especially narrative products. Assisting children in their efforts to write—especially letters, stories, and other narratives—fosters many language and literacy skills.
• Model literacy activities. When children see adults engaged in reading and writing activities, they better understand the diverse everyday functions of literacy skills and the knowledge and pleasure that literacy brings. As a result, children's motivation to become literate is strengthened.