Chapter 6

I wonder...

• Kadin knows that reading is a meaningful process. He constantly refers to the picture to make sense of what he is trying to read. He knows that when he gets stuck, his mom is a good resource to help him get unstuck. 
• Some of the textual features that contribute to Kadin's reading process are predictability of texts, repetition, use of rhythm and rhyme.
• It is evident in this vignette that Kadin knows that stories have a beginning, middle, and an end, especially he knows when to say, "The end." He also knows that the stories that he read used repetitive phrases that helped him read the books better and faster.

Further Reflections...

• If I were to create my own preschool, I have to make sure that the environment is print-rich. It has centers that promote literacy. This preschool will also utilize technology as one of its teaching tool as well as a resource for both the teacher and the students. The environment must also be reflective of the different cultures represented in my school. The decorations and materials I will use will be "authentic" and as much as possible, not commercially produced. 
• The underlying theories of emergent literacy, which states that literacy emerges before children are formally taught to read and that the social setting for literacy instruction is not ignored, matches guiding principle #1 which states that literacy practices are socially and culturally constructed. A student who comes in the classroom brings in his/her culture, ways of life, and different literacy practices in the home. Students, even before you teach them how to read, has a whole lifetime of experience that he/she brings along as he/she enters the classroom. Principle #6 says, literacy practices expand to include everyday texts and multimodal texts also aligns with emergent literacy theory that literacy encompasses the whole act of reading, not merely decoding. When a student reads, the student creates meaning or sense with what he/she is reading. Reading is not merely a book and reader activity, reading is involved in all the aspects of a students life.