By CATHERINE PAGLIN

Eyes shut, fists tight, arms and legs folded—two-week-old Baby Allison sleeps closed up like a rosebud. Awake, however, she works to make sense of her world—strains to focus her gaze, makes noises, uncurls her fingers into space. She, like all babies, is still a mystery: eight pounds of perfection and potential.

If Baby Allison is to reach her potential in a society which demands ever higher levels of literacy, she’ll need to get off to a good start. What would give her the best chance to become a good reader? Should her mother—a Portland writer—recite the alphabet song every night? Should her father—a psychologist —buy a set of flash cards? Should the three older siblings in this blended family correct her pronunciation when she begins to talk baby talk? Or should they all wait and do nothing until she reaches first grade?

The answer is none of the above. Give-and-take with loving parents, along with activities that stimulate her mental and physical development—not gimmicks, special training, or off-the-shelf products —will best help Allison get ready to read. If her family responds when she cries; if they talk and sing to her as they hold, change, feed, rock, and dress her; if they read to her; if they play games with her; if they provide age-appropriate toys and materials; if they answer and encourage her speech when she begins to talk, she’ll not only feel loved and valued, but absorb valuable knowledge about language, books, print, reading, and writing.

Learning to read is usually associated with first grade; that’s when most children "crack the code" that allows them to decipher new words. But steps toward that milestone of literacy begin at the beginning.

"They’re not going to learn to read until they get that background," says Debra Lande, who has taught preschool, kindergarten, and first grade, and is a member of the Portland Public Schools reading advisory committee. "There has to be that foundation that is supplied from birth. It’s being read to even in infancy, it’s the rhymes, it’s the songs, it’s the spoken word, the language-rich environment."

The early-literacy field has not been as overshadowed by the whole-language versus phonics debate as discussions of reading in the primary grades. It has, however, been caught between two extremes of interpretation regarding what is developmentally appropriate, says Sue Bredekamp, Director of Professional Development for the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

At one extreme, recognition of early literacy sometimes leads to inappropriate responses. Lande deplores what happens when, for instance, parents try to "shove a first-grade curriculum into a four-year-old."

"The children don’t have that love, that excitement you have when you get something," she says, "because it’s been told; it’s been delivered, not experienced."

Equally misguided is "the maturationist notion that you don’t do anything . . . (that) visual and physical development will just reach ‘reading readiness,’" says Bredekamp. "Now we know that two- and three-year-olds can recognize letters, can be helped to see their name, can understand that print is where stories come from. Obviously, there are some really important things parents and teachers do."

Probably the most important thing they can do is read aloud daily. "The single variable that’s been found in repeated studies as having an impact on children’s school success—not just learning to read—is the number of stories they have had read to them before they come to school," says Dr. Jane Braunger, Senior Associate at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory and coauthor of Building a Knowledge Base in Reading.

Reading one-on-one or in small groups allows small children to sit on a lap or nearby, to see small pictures and print up close, to ask questions like "Why is she sad?" and to respond to adult questions like "What’s the rabbit doing?" or "What do you think happens next?"

Children can be read to by parents, older siblings, and other caregivers at home—and by child-care workers, teachers, librarians, parent helpers, or older "reading buddies" in day care, preschool, and kindergarten.

At the Portland home of five-year-old Penda and three-year-old Amina, the reading routine is firmly entrenched. The coffee table in the living room is covered with picture books, and many more line the bookshelf. Midafternoon is one of their story times. Amina chooses a cloth book of the song Old MacDonald Had a Farm. As they sing, her mother, artist Ronna Neuenschwander, points to the brightly colored print that highlights the names of the animals and the noises they make.

Penda, who has almost completed kindergarten, rushes impatiently through the song, anxious to show off her abilities.

"I want to read," she says, launching into a "Bob Book" about a dog.

"I can’t see, I can’t see," her sister protests.

"Oh, I forgot to show the picture," says Penda, holding the book up to her audience as she has seen her teacher do.

In their bedroom Penda and Amina have a box of books specifically for bedtime. If their mother puts them to bed, she reads one of these. If it’s their father, artist Baba Wague Diakite—a native of Mali in West Africa—he usually tells them a traditional tale. In fact, he has written down and illustrated one West African tale, The Hunterman and the Crocodile, which was published by Scholastic in 1997 and received the Coretta Scott King award.

"They can’t go to sleep without a story. It’s a nice way to get them calmed and listening," says Neuenschwander. "After the story, Penda will take a book to bed to read. Even Amina will take one to look through."

A PIG! A PIG!

The 18 two-year-olds at University Ravenna Pre-Threes Cooperative Preschool, a laboratory preschool of North Seattle Community College, get reading on demand, thanks to an army of parent helpers. "We always have a parent stationed in the library, reading to anyone who wants to come in," says teacher Marta Franzen. "Usually the children are the ones to pull the book off the shelf." Often they indicate their choice of topic by saying, for example, "trains" or "baby," she reports.

Franzen has the books organized by subject category so it’s easy for any of her parent helpers (called "assistant teachers") to respond to requests. An informal check-out system allows children to take books home. A rack in the carpeted reading area displays "big books" and seasonal books. At the beginning of the year, for instance, this is where Franzen puts books about school and making new friends.

Similarly, at Helen Gordon Child Development Center, Portland State University’s laboratory preschool and extended-day program, a low teacher-to-child ratio makes story reading available almost any time. On a typical day, a handful of three- to five-year-olds clusters around a teacher sitting on the floor with a book.

"Yay! Pig one!" shouts one of the children.

"This is called The Pigsty," says the teacher. Before she begins, she points out how the illustrator used a pair of socks to form the letter M in the word Monday. Then she reads from the book by Mark Teague:

Monday afternoon Wendell Fultz’s mother told him to clean his room. "It’s turning into a pigsty," she said. Wendell went upstairs.

The teacher pauses, draws in her breath, and turns the page.

"A pig, a pig!" the children squeal with delight.

Much to his surprise a large pig was sitting on his bed, she continues. "Pardon me," said Wendell. He shoved some toys into his closet. But the pig didn’t seem to mind the mess and Wendell found that he didn’t mind the pig either. He decided to take a break.

"What’s a break?" a little boy asks.

"A break means, I’m not cleaning anymore. I’m sitting down, doing nothing," says the teacher.

From being read to repeatedly, these children have learned that reading is enjoyable, that pictures provide clues to the story, that books and print go from left to right, that print represents words and meaning, that stories have a beginning and an end. By listening, watching, and asking questions, they add to their vocabulary and increase their comprehension. They are beginning to make associations between letters and letter sounds. And by learning to love stories, they are becoming motivated to read on their own.

The Helen Gordon and University Ravenna preschools are well-stocked with books and adults to read them. It’s a different story at many child-care centers in poor areas. In a recent study, researchers visited 350 child-care centers serving 18,000 children in such areas as greater Philadelphia to find out how many books they had, relates Susan Neuman, Associate Professor of language arts at Temple University and head of the Early Childhood Committee of the International Reading Association.

"There wasn’t much to count," she says sadly.

Compounding the problem were child-care workers who, though loving and concerned for the children’s welfare, did not believe listening to stories to be a cognitively challenging activity deserving time in the daily schedule.

The importance of access to books was vividly illustrated when the Free Library of Philadelphia and six other county library systems, sponsored by a grant from the William Penn Foundation of Philadelphia, flooded the centers with books and trained child-care workers how to read in an interactive way. Six months later, 400 children in the intervention group showed dramatic differences from 100 children in a control group. Those in the intervention group scored higher in letter knowledge, concepts of print, concepts of narrative, concepts of writing, verbal knowledge, and ability to recognize environmental print. Not only did these differences hold when the children were tested again in kindergarten, but the children in the intervention group also scored higher on phonemic awareness—the critical understanding that words are made up of separate sounds.

PEN AND LINK

Learning to write is the other half of early literacy, linked inextricably with learning to read.

"Many children come to reading through writing," says Braunger. "Many children are eager to write, and their reading of their own ‘texts’ is one of their first reading experiences. For many children, it is through their writing that their phonics knowledge develops. When a child uses invented or temporary spelling, we can see that they have phonemic awareness. They couldn’t attempt to represent a sound with a letter unless they had the concept that letters represent sounds."

At Helen Gordon the opportunity to write occurs every morning, even before the child steps into the classroom. While the parent records the child’s arrival time and initials the sign-in sheet in a loose-leaf binder, the child may open a companion binder, find the page with his or her name printed at the top, and make her mark, whether with a picture, writing-like scribble, or actual letters.

The desire to imitate adults is a powerful motivator for writing. Children are also motivated to write when they have a real-world task to accomplish, as Neuenschwander found the last time she and her family visited Africa.

"Penda had just turned four, and she wanted to start writing letters to people," she remembers. Penda knew the alphabet and asked her mother which letters spelled the words she wanted to say. "She got into doing really extensive letters, and part of it was because she really wanted to keep in touch with people and needed to, being in Africa. Ever since then, she’s loved, loved, loved writing letters and stories," says Neuenschwander.

From the repeated letter-writing experience, Penda learned to read and spell certain commonly occurring words by heart, such as "dear," "love," and "the." At five, she is beginning to use invented spelling and sound out unknown words on her own.

"I think that’s one of the things kids miss if you just sit down at a table and say, ‘We’re all making Bs,’" says Ellie Nolan, Director at Helen Gordon. "They’re not seeing that a B is part of this word, and that this word you can use to tell somebody something. This S you can use to make a sign that says, ‘Stop, don’t touch my building that I just made.’ This S can be for Ste- phanie whose toothbrush this is or whose cubby this is."

"If you can find anything that’s intrinsic and self-motivating, you’ve got it made," says John Meskimen, now finishing his first year as a Portland Public Schools kindergarten teacher.

"When it’s also student-generated, it becomes more like play than work," he adds. He recalls an incident from his student teaching in which the simple act of one child giving another her phone number led to an entire group of students making their own phone directories. After the students had gathered multiple pieces of paper with numbers on them, they realized they needed to attach names to the numbers. "It was completely spontaneous," marvels Meskimen. "It really was amazing. It spread like wildfire."

Before children begin attempting to write and spell, they can experience the power of writing through dictation, a technique that remains useful on into kindergarten and, for some students, first grade. For instance, when her two-year-olds finish a painting at the easel, Franzen will ask them, "Are there any words you’d like me to put on the paper?"

"I say each word aloud as I’m writing it, and then I read it back to them," she says.

At Helen Gordon, children are encouraged to write or dictate letters and stories. The children’s writing reflects their wants, needs, fantasies, and fears. "Once upon a time there was a little girl named Emily," reads Thea’s dictation, "and it was a sad time for her because she fell down at school and her mother and father were not at home and they never came to pick her up."

RICHES OF PRINT

Both reading and writing are supported by a print-rich environment in the classroom. At Helen Gordon, teachers give each child a symbol, such as a sun. The symbol and the child’s name are on the child’s cubby, art file, and toothbrush. Toys and materials bear word and picture labels. Common objects and areas in the classroom are also identified with print. Reflecting the culturally diverse make-up of the student body, Russian script, Chinese characters, and words in other languages are used in addition to English. Children’s writing, drawing, and dictation cover the walls.

Dramatic play centers, used in preschools and kindergartens, offer endless possibilities for print enrichment. If children are playing in the "fire station," they can use a pad and pencil to take down an address when they answer a 911 call. At the "doctor’s office" they can use an appointment book and a medical chart, or read magazines in the waiting room. If they are playing at the "grocery store," they can look at labels, make a shopping list, and write checks.

At the "restaurant" they can read menus, write down orders, and pay with money.

At home, a print-rich environment might include children’s own books, library books, letter blocks, magnet letters, bathtub letters, letter stamps and stamp pad, paper, writing and drawing implements, chalk and chalkboard. A parent can also alert a child to letters and words on everyday objects around the house and in the neighborhood, such as cereal boxes, cans, newspapers, clothes, signs, and posters.

"Every time we go places now, we’re always calling out words," says Neuenschwander. "It was really exciting for Penda to realize there were people writing big messages to you everywhere. There are these big messages popping out—OPEN, CLOSED, STOP! It’s not only in your house in a book, but it’s everywhere out there ."

1. Select books with your audience in mind. Rhyming and predictable books are especially good for young pre- schoolers. "The books I’ve had the most success with are ones where they can all make a sound," says Marta Franzen who teaches two-year-olds at University Ravenna Pre-Threes Cooperative Preschool in Seattle. (Her students like The Noisy Counting Book by Susan Schade and Jon Buller.) "If they can anticipate being able to participate, it really rivets them."
2. Give an artful performance of your text. "I really have to play it by ear and ad-lib and shorten the story sometimes," says Franzen. If I start to lose them, I modulate my voice. I try to vary my voice—the pitch and volume and the speed. Sometimes I have them guess—(dramatic gasp)—what is going to happen on the next page."
3. Accommodate interruptions. "If they start to interrupt and say, ‘I have a cat,’ I might say, ‘It looks like a lot of people have cats; if you have a cat, put your hand up,’" says Franzen. "It’s important to have a pause sometimes."
4. Gauge the mood of the group before making the decision to read.
5. Use "big books" or books with bright, easy-to-see illustrations.
6. Don’t force children, particularly younger ones, to sit with the group.

Board Books
Clap Hands, Helen Oxenbury, Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Have You Seen My Duckling, Nancy Tafuri, Greenwillow Books, 1984.
Max’s Breakfast, Rosemary Wells, Dial Books, 1985.
Old MacDonald Board Book, Rosemary Wells, Scholastic, 1998.
Where’s Spot? Eric Hill, Putnam, 1980.

Rhyming and Pattern Books
Baby Rock, Baby Roll, Stella Blackstone, Holiday House, 1997.
Eentsy, Weentsy Spider, Joanna Cole, Morrow, 1991.
The Fat Cat, Jack Kent, Parents Magazine Press, 1971.
Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss, Beginner Books (Random House), 1960.
Jan Ormerod’s To Baby With Love, Jan Ormerod, Lothrop, Lee, & Shepard, 1994.
My Little Sister Ate One Hare, Bill Grossman, Crown, 1996.
Over in the Meadow, Louise Voce, Candlewick Press, 1994.
There Was an Old Lady that Swallowed a Fly, Simms Taback, Viking Press, 1997.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle, Collins, 1979

Intermediate Picture Books
Crow Boy, Taro Yashima, Viking Press, 1955.
Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, Kevin Henkes, Greenwillow Books, 1996.
Ma Dear’s Aprons, Patricia McKissack, Atheneum, 1997.
Mama, Do You Love Me, Barbara Jossee, Chronicle Books, 1991.
Mushroom in the Rain, Mirra Ginsburg, Macmillan, 1974.
Officer Buckle and Gloria, Peggy Rathman, Putnam, 1995.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter, Frederick Warne, 1902.
Tikki, Tikki Tembo, Arlene Mosel, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1968.
The Vingananee and the Tree Toad, Verna Aardema, Frederick Warne, 1983.
Whistle for Willy, Ezra Jack Keats, Viking Press, 1955.

Chapter Books
Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White, Harper & Row, 1952.
Mr. Putter and Tabby, Cynthia Rylant, Harcourt Brace, 1994.
The Mouse and His Child, Russell Hoban, Harper & Row, 1987.
My Father’s Dragon, Ruth Gannett, Random House, 1948.
Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, Dutton, 1926.

Sources: Susannah Price, Youth Services Supervisor, Boise Public Library; Chrystal Carr Jeter, Youth Services Coordinator, Anchorage Municipal Library; Cecilia McGowan, Youth Services Coordinator, Spokane Public Library.

In Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children, two respected organizations, the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), combine their respective expertise in the areas of reading and child development. This recently released joint position statement makes recommendations for practices and policies that support the goal of helping all children to read competently by third grade.

Several issues prompted the joint statement:

• The urgent need for high levels of literacy
• The increasing diversity of school children and the challenge of teaching them
• Misunderstandings about early literacy development and what constitutes appropriate teaching practice
• Inadequate preparation of child-care and preschool personnel; lack of specialized early-childhood training for primary-grade teachers

The complete statement can be found in the July 1998 issue of NAEYC’s journal, Young Children.

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