Reading is for Everyone!
Trudi Norman-March, Director of Speech and Special Education, Southwest Human Development, Region JX Resource Access Project, Phoenix Arizona
Head Start has an explicit commitment to promote literacy for children and families, as described throughout this issue of the Head Start Bulletin. This same commitment can be made regardless of the individual's developmental level.
We know that literacy skills are critical for success in school and, later, in the workplace. Some children in Head Start may have some degree of delay or deficit in the area of understanding or using language. Children with identified delayed language development go on to have difficulty in school and trouble learning to read. This is due, in part, to the fact that children with disabilities often are not exposed to the same early literacy experiences as other children, since their parents and teachers do not always know what their capacities are to participate and team from them.
Parents, teachers, and the therapy team can collaborate to formulate appropriate reading and comprehension goals, objectives, and strategies for each child. Children who may be having difficulty under standing a story will benefit from having it repeated or simplified. Questions can be addressed to individual children which are appropriate to their level of comprehension, and props can be used to supplement the spoken language.
Some children may dictate elaborate stories to go along with their drawings. Others may provide single word labels by way of description. In both cases, the child has the pleasure of having communicated success fully and of seeing his or her words written down, thereby giving them value and importance.
Most children, regardless of their developmental level, benefit from a symbol-rich environment They will attend to labels consisting of the printed word or a simple pictograph when used to indicate where things belong in the classroom. Symbols can be incorporated into pretend play, for example traffic signs in the cars and trucks area or "signs" (with animal pictures) for the different animal cages when playing zoo. All children enjoy using choice boards, which consist of photographs or simple drawings, for choosing activities such as a story or deciding what center to go to at option time. For the child who has difficulty with verbal expression, these symbol displays offer a way to express choices or interests.
As with all other aspects of the child's program, the parents' role in supporting and nurturing emergent literacy skills is critical. Parents are able to give suggestions about favorite books to read and keep in the classroom. They know which environmental logos and signs their child understands (such as signs for fast food chains). Attention should be drawn to the progress the child is making, such as starting to turn the pages one-by-one, or starting to join in with a repeated line ("Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?"). In this way, parents can come to appreciate their child's development and begin to imagine the possibility of more success.
Finally, our goals are for Head Start to be a place where all children and their families have the opportunity to talk and to listen, and to nurture the emerging literacy skills that will sustain children across their lifetimes.
!ATTENTION ATTENTION ATTENTION ATTENTION!
The theme of an upcoming Head Start Bulletin, No. 52, will be "Meeting the full-time child care needs of families in a Head Start setting." If your Head Start program has valuable experience to share with other programs in any of the following areas, please submit a one-page summary to the address at the end of this announcement:
How to retain a quality program when moving from part-to full-day services;
How to partner with JOBS, JTPA, Job Corps, or other employability efforts;
How to link with other State and federal initiatives, like Even Start, CCDBG, Start kpre-K, or Chapter 1;
How to apply for non-federal funds;
How to maintain successful parent participation;
How to meet the full-day needs of families with infants, children with disabilities, school-age children, ect.;
How to handle illness and emergencies in full-day settings;
Other relevant topics.To be considered for the Bulletin, send your correspondence as soon as possible to:
Madeline Dowling
Head Start Bureau
PO Box 1182
Washington, DC 20013
Fax: (202)401-5916