Learning to Read: The greatest adventure yet!

"Precise observation of literacy behaviors is at the heart of effective teaching."

Irene Fountas & Gay Su Pinnell, 2016

The term ‘literacy’ is truly a loaded word – it can refer to any number of domains but essentially means to be able to comfortably navigate, create and communicate within a set of particular parameters.  As educators we often speak of ‘language literacy’, ‘math literacy’, ‘digital literacy’, ‘environmental literacy’ or ‘citizenship literacy’ - and there are many other 'literacies' across disciplines we all are likely to encounter in our educational experiences.  When I first began teaching, I recall that the word  'literacy' only referred to language literacy - an indication, I think, of the tremendous influences our experiences with language have on all other aspects of life!

This week I had the immensely pleasurable experience of spending a half hour with a Gr. 1/2 classroom during their 'Roots of Empathy' baby visit (it is always my personal goal to do this every month when baby visits happen - I haven't managed to accomplish this goal in 11 years of ROE school experiences but it is still an excellent goal I hope to accomplish this year!!). As the children talked about baby Parker, they made note of his vocalizations - his baby way of 'talking' - and that got me thinking about how this beautiful baby will navigate the world of language literacy - and how I hope he will be given the opportunities to experience language literacy in his own particular ways to support the amazing language adventures he is just beginning to nudge towards.

From the early weeks of conception, babies begin to hear language spoken all around them - unaware of the words, nuances or linguistic phrasing that will one day govern most of their personal experiences. At birth, the pulses of language that have swaddled the background of their existence become associated with faces - expressive eyes, smiles and a wide variety of coos, clicks and tones focused on each infant alone - a beautiful introduction to living is this immediate connection of sounds to loved ones, human faces and communication through expressions. We are tuned, so to speak, from birth to associate language with human connection in order to express the needs upon which our existences completely depend. 

And so begins the development of language literacy. 

Parker is just about 5 months old and he already knows to make eye contact, cooing sounds, cries and yells to connect with his family, others in life such as our Grade 1/2 students and anyone who might attend to his egocentric needs! He has already been issued invitations to written language through spoken language, having clearly been read to frequently - he knows to look at the pictures when Mom picks up a book and he will try to reach for the pages - Parker is, indeed, already well launched on the path of successful language literacy development.

So, what happens next? How do babies, who so successfully learn the power of oral communication with seemingly relative ease, move into the world of 'successful reader' as they become school aged?

The first thing is to recognize is that none of Parker's successes with vocalizing or interacting with books on the most basic level happened by accident - all that vocal interaction, sharing of toys and books, story telling and babbling with babies is done very intentionally by humans who have an innate need to communicate and interact to survive. Becoming a successful reader is a highly similar process - intentionally developing opportunities for every human to experience multiple interactions with words of all dimensions to expand and refine understanding of language.  Repeated and diverse experiences with language will lead as 'effortlessly' to successful reading as learning to vocalize 'effortlessly' does for infants.

It was pretty clear to the children and adults welcoming Parker to our school that he was greatly excited by every interaction - his enthusiasm showed in his waving arms, big smiles and pretty much constant cooing! He was like a little sponge, wanting to be part of every experience that was happening - very much the way we would describe most 5-month-old infants.  He is innately driven to learn and that is a quality of humanity that does not dissipate with age - it's just that sometimes we curb the enthusiasm for learning with our adult rules, guidelines, expectations and measurements. 

This is what I hope never happens to Parker - or to any of my children, grandchildren or the students I teach today and have taught over 28 years as an educator. And yet I know, all too well, it has already happened to most of them and it could happen to Parker as well. It is these adult perspectives that exert the most power to interrupt the innate learning of language literacy into successful reading. Sometimes, with the very best of intentions, we move learning to read from the world of human growth through interaction to the realm of rules, 'dos', 'don'ts' and 'musts'. What was once engaging and pleasurable now presents opportunities to 'fail' and 'suck' and say "I can't".

It is my opinion that learning to read IS the greatest adventure possible for children to learn - it is the entry point for so many further experiences in life! 

It is also my opinion we - educators, parents, grandparents and all other connected adults alike - must stop trying to fit children into prescriptive patterns of learning to read that often cancel out this most pleasurable experience and inhibit the Parkers of the world from seeing reading as a gateway to grand adventures. We need to stop placing our faith in 'systems', 'generalizations' and 'tests' - and we need to recognize reading comes to children in much the same ways oral language does - through iterative, two-way, positive interactions, many repeated small challenges to stretch thinking just a little further and through the sheer joy of experiencing things in connection with others. 

At Eric Harvie School, I believe our number one job is to make sure all our children become strong readers and writers - flexible, capable and creative in their experiences and use of language literacy. Nothing can be more important than this - we are the entry-point facilitators of our students' future learning experiences. 

And we can't do this alone - we need to be in concert with our families, our community and our world - for language literacy knowledge is not resident in classrooms, libraries, textbooks, worksheets or digital reading programs. It is just as much an immersion experience as teaching babies to speak and interact in the world.  And sometimes we are already working hard to overcome attitudes and beliefs children have acquired about how 'hard' it is to learn to read, how 'boring' it is, what 'level' they are reading at, who is the 'best' and 'worst' reader in their classroom, etc., etc., etc. 

The learning-to-read adventure is a path determined in direction only by the individual attributes of each child. Just as we are all born babies with life paths that converge and diverge repeatedly through life, our experiences with becoming successful readers do the same - sometimes we can be learning the same thing as the child next to us on the bus or at skating lessons, while other times we need to go off and learn something quite different in order to navigate the learning to read adventure successfully. The artistry in learning to read is led by caring, attuned adults who are not waiting to correct but rather to nudge a child gently towards an experience that is 'just in time' - to not interfere with but rather support positively learning to read successfully.

Where do we start? With read alouds from infancy. With conversations around the kitchen table, on walks through the community and the coulee. With visits to the library and the bookstores. With words - Nursery rhymes, chants, songs, tongue twisters and silly stories, with fairytales and mixed up fairytales and simple, interesting stories that have a clear structure. We gently move oral language into written with rebus stories or one word tags or colour words written in their own colours hanging around our kitchens and classrooms. With our names written in upper and lower case letters - on wooden blocks, or scratched into sand on the beach or made from playdoh or lego. With hand-written invitations - full of mis-spellings - to our birthday parties or our sleepovers or an afternoon skating - or thank you notes for Christmas presents or birthday gifts. 

We start with demonstrating gently and by example that the written word is as important as the spoken word, for that is where successful reading really begins - with the desire to be a participant in the experience - just like Parker vocalizing to be part of the oral language experience at 5 months old, our readers - regardless of their age, stage or development - need to want to be part of the successful reading experience. And that is accomplished by sharing, issuing invitations and valuing reading together in human connection.

This is the first of a 3-part series on learning to read. 

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal

Eric Harvie School