{"id":10647,"date":"2015-02-06T00:01:50","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T08:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=10647"},"modified":"2015-02-05T21:26:42","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T05:26:42","slug":"writing-key-to-kids-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/02\/06\/writing-key-to-kids-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing key to kids\u2019 literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prof. Dorit Aram noticed that young children, prior to going to school, long to write. (photo from Dorit Aram)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

According to a recent research from Israel, learning to recite the alef bet alone does little to help children advance their literacy \u2013 children should be learning to write, and before they even enter the school system.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s lead researcher, Prof. Dorit Aram, maintains that longstanding misconceptions are getting in the way of children\u2019s abilities.<\/p>\n

Aram teaches at Tel Aviv University\u2019s Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of Education specializing in adult\/child early interactions and their relationship to children\u2019s early literacy and social-emotional adjustment. The research was conducted in collaboration with colleagues at American universities and was published last year in Early Childhood Research Quarterly<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy research started with children that come from lower socio-economic backgrounds,\u201d said Aram. \u201cWhat we see is that there are gaps between children in terms of their reading and writing achievements.\u201d<\/p>\n

As reading and writing are key to children\u2019s academic success, Aram \u201cwas interested in how parents could promote their children\u2019s literacy, in particular those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.\u201d This particular study, however, looked at a group of ethnically diverse, middle-income preschoolers.<\/p>\n

Aram began studying literacy with one of the leading early literacy researchers in the world, the late Dr. Iris Levin, working with her, examining children\u2019s early writing development. Levin was a developmental psychologist at the School of Education at Tel Aviv University. She passed away in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are so busy with reading,\u201d said Aram, \u201cbut considering young children, in particular, I felt writing was even more fascinating than reading, because it\u2019s more active in its communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aram noticed that young children, prior to going to school, long to write. She recalled a child asking his father how to write a word, in one case. The child\u2019s father gave him the letters, and Aram was left to wonder, \u201cDid the father know he was really mediating, \u2018scaffolding,\u2019 his child\u2019s early literacy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Aram began studying such interactions to determine ways in which a parent can \u201cscaffold\u201d his\/her child\u2019s understanding of the writing system, help them segment a word into its sounds, connect the sounds with the letters, and understand how to build words.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw in my research that the more the parents help the child understand that written language is really symbolizing the spoken words, and that … when the parents really encourage the children to segment the word into its sounds and then retrieve the letters, the more the parents did it (this is what we call the graphophonemic mediation) … the children were doing better,\u201d said Aram.<\/p>\n

Working with children in preschools, Aram discovered that teachers were reluctant to work with kids on their writing literacy. \u201cIn the beginning, it was difficult for them because they connect writing to school and felt like they were taking away from the kids\u2019 childhood,\u201d she explained. \u201cThey\u2019d say, \u2018Well, these kids will have so much writing in school. Why do we have to bother them with writing now?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Aram, the teachers were not considering the possibility that the kids might want to be able to write out the names of their friends, their telephone number, or how they feel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen they saw it\u2019s not against the preschool spirit, that it can fit very well with it,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd because they were practising letters and phonological awareness, these things were part of their early literacy curriculum anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe teachers were unaware that you can combine it and have kids write. And, the writing makes the children happy, because they\u2019re doing something meaningful \u2013 allowing them to do more than just practise letters, allowing them to really communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aram and her team worked with children as young as 3.5-years-old on writing and letter knowledge, graphophonemic understanding, and early writing \u2013 not with a pencil, but with magnetic letters or stickers, for example.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw that it worked beautifully,\u201d said Aram. \u201cThese children did very well at the end of our intervention year, and it even predicted their achievements and the pace of their development the year after.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Aram, the key is helping the child segment the different letters and the sounds they make. In her research, Aram has found that kids who were taught to connect a letter with the sound the letter makes progressed more than the other groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat amazed us was that the children who received feedback \u2013 like so many children of American parents do \u2013 by just giving the children the names of the letters, it didn\u2019t help the kids. It was just as good as saying to the kids, \u2018Write this word again,\u2019 without any feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n

The technique is more challenging to teach in English than in Hebrew, said Aram. However, she added, \u201cFrom the studies done in English, we found it is still very useful to segment the word into sounds and connect sounds with their letters. Also, to motivate children to write and to respect their writing, even if it\u2019s not 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

About English, she explained, \u201cIf you think about Italian or other Romance languages, English took all the \u2018difficulties,\u2019 and it\u2019s so difficult to see the connection between sounds and letters.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that shouldn\u2019t stop parents and teachers from introducing writing into the kids\u2019 daily lives. \u201cFor example, if you want, you can send emails, you can [help them] send a \u2018Hi Daddy, I love you\u2019 note … or you can write what you want to eat tomorrow, just little things \u2013 a word here, a word there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aram noticed, on her visits to North America, that many homes in the United States and Canada have magnetic letters on their fridges. She suggested, \u201cInstead of just naming the letters, write [a] word and do things that are meaningful. Letters, by themselves, are less meaningful. But writing is for communication and writing is meaningful…. It doesn\u2019t have to mean you do a lot of writing, just two words here or there, a sentence here or there \u2013 that makes a huge difference, and children love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof. Dorit Aram noticed that young children, prior to going to school, long to write. (photo from Dorit Aram) According to a recent research from Israel, learning to recite the alef bet alone does little to help children advance their literacy \u2013 children should be learning to write, and before they even enter the school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[3075,3076,2663,3074],"class_list":["post-10647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-dorit-aram","tag-education","tag-literacy","tag-tel-aviv-university"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}