Language Arts Overview
These language arts
lessons include activities which range from matching and labeling to the
processes essential to understanding letter-sound relationships. These lessons
include activities to sharpen visual perception and memory, and they include
activities to sharpen auditory perception and memory. Other activities join
these two processes. Those which join the two are either story dictation
activities (narrative) or letter sound games which introduce children to
symbols and to the symbolizing process (phonics).
In using these lessons, please:
-- Note that the order of lesson plans is not inviolate. Each lesson plan has
several objectives, so each should accommodate younger and older children.
-- Do not feel that by year’s end a child must attain most sophisticated
objectives on the most difficult lesson plans.
-- Remember that the purpose of language is communication: pace your activities
to allow for plenty of conversation about the activity itself and anything else
children may want to talk about.
Also, it is important to recognize that this set of lessons is dependent on
other sections of Circle’s curriculum. The Dramatic Arts unit, with its
attention to literature, enhances both the children’s appreciation for language
and their ability to compose and dictate their own stories. The Math unit
provides many sorting, classifying, and sequencing activities. Of major
importance is the Materials unit: it emphasizes kinesthetic exploration and
fine motor tasks, and it augments the visual and auditory processes emphasized
in this Language Arts unit. Both the Materials and the Cooking units offer many
activities paced in a way which allows extensive conversation among all the
participants.
One other essential component of the Language Arts curriculum must be stressed:
read, tell, and enact stories for children. Reading stories from books, however
valuable, is not sufficient. Relate stories to children using books, felt board
pieces, and puppets. See the Dramatic Arts unit for other ideas on making
literature come to life. Most stories which are successful as plays also lend
themselves to felt board or puppet show adaptations.
Last of all, we urge you to notice the interactions and mental processes that
these Language Arts lessons involve. Then, whenever possible, invent your own
lessons or variations to reverse these processes or to reverse the roles of the
participants. For example, if an activity has a child giving clues to the
group, make sure you later do an activity in which the group gives a clue to an
individual. If an activity has children talk about an experience and then draw
it, develop another activity in which children draw situations and then talk
about them. If an activity has children hearing sounds and then describing the
object which makes those sounds, reverse that process by having children
describe an object to a child who is then asked to produce the sound that
object makes. One more example of consciously reversing mental operations takes
us to the phonics activities: some activities have children hear a sound, then
they name the letter; some activities have children see the letter them make
the sound. Both processes are important.
Notes on Pre-Reading and Phonics Activities in Preschool
Spoken language is universal among all groups of people. Every normal human
being learns the language system of the group within the first few years of
life.
Reading is a visual representation of the sound-meaning system of oral
language. Both the auditory and visual symbols for language are arbitrary and
must be learned by the child. The language patterns—syntax, structure, and
rhythm—are represented in both auditory and visual language systems and provide
the basis for precise, subtle comprehension and expression.
For the young child, learning that a letter has a name and represents a sound
(or sounds) is not fundamentally different from learning that an animal has a
name (cat) and a sound (meow). We have no hesitations about teaching the
latter, but controversy ranges around the former.
Children learn readily by rote and imitation during their preschool years. The
decoding process in reading is a rote memory function. In our view, it is
desirable to take advantage of the child’s natural learning style and interest
to introduce the concept of decoding—representing sounds by visual symbols. It
is not important or desirable that every child learn the long and short sound
for every vowel, a given number of constant sounds, common diphthongs, or the
long vowel-silent e rule. To accomplish this kind of program would require an
unwarranted amount of time and drill. It is valuable, we feel, to teach letter
recognition and some examples of simple sound/letter connections to develop the
concept of symbols representing sounds.
Our approach is to teach only short vowel sounds and selected consonants.* We
introduce some sight words—the child’s own name, for example—but don’t stress
the “sounding out” process in these words. We recognize that most children will
not develop the skill of combining the individual letter sounds to identify
words until a year or two (or even three) after they leave our program. But
they will have a basis for acquiring the decoding system at the appropriate
time.
In addition to decoding, two other pre-reading skills are crucial to later
reading ability: familiarity with the sound and structure of written language
(as distinct from daily conversation), and sequential memory as exemplified by
the cause-effect relationships in literature. Becoming familiar with the sound
and structure of written language will enable the child to make accurate use of
context cues in reading. Developing expectations and anticipation of the
sequence of events will foster comprehension ability.
Initially these three strands of the reading process are essentially
independent functions. Later, these functions merge into a coordinated effort
which results in reading ability. With a solid foundation in these skill areas,
the child will be capable of learning to read, truly read, with comprehension.
The child will be able to use decoding and context cues not as major exercises,
but as tools to achieve understanding of the written message.
Current theories of reading assume, with strong supporting evidence that all
area’s of the child’s development bear on the learning process in reading. That
is, all preschool activities may be considered “pre-reading” activities.
Although it seems unnecessary to justify sensory, motor, social, or other
activities on the basis of their contribution to acquiring reading ability, the
interrelationships of all developmental areas should be borne in mind. It’s
worth reminding ourselves that the categories we use in describing development
are arbitrary and only for our convenience. The child is not an assemblage of
developmental areas, but a single functioning person.
*Phonics Handbook for the Primary Grades by Alta Mellin is a useful and
sensible guide to phonics. Fearson Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, 1962.