Cálculo de la temperatura del globo negro

Some researchers have believed that children had to be a certain age before they could learn to read, known as “reading readiness” (Neuman & Dickson, 2003; Young, 2004), for which they were tested, but Clay (1966) opposed this idea and proposed that children develop an understanding of literacy prior to school. Emergent literacy is a relatively new term introduced by Teale and Sulzby (1986), based on an assumption that children should acquire elementary knowledge about language, reading and writing before they enter school. Emergent literacy has also shifted the research focus from “reading only to the broad concept of literacy” because theories and findings highlight that reading, writing and oral language “develop concurrently and interrelatedly in literate communities” (Teal & Sulzeby, 1996, p.728). The broad concept of literacy includes all aspects of communication within everyday life situations, and reading cannot be separated from this broad concept (Zygouris-Coe, 2001). Reading is viewed as a complex activity that involves a few critical components, as illustrated in Figure 2.1 (below). Literature by various authors will be used to elaborate on these critical components in the next section.

Figure 2.1: Critical components of reading adapted from (NRC, 1998)

Oral language skills mostly develop between parents and their young children, so young children should be encouraged to share their personal experiences, such as a trip to the zoo or how they built a house with blocks. In addition, storybook reading enhances oral language development and parents should not just read all the words on the page from start to finish, but rather question, comment or respond to the words and pictures in the books (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2003). However, the type of oral language skills that helps with reasoning includes questions that do not elicit yes or no answers (Nelson, 1996). Finally, in order for young children to discover the meanings of words, parents should use the pictures to allow their children to make predictions (Salmon, 2010). For example, when reading a book about The three little bears, the children can be asked “How are these bears feeling? or the children can be asked “What do you think the bears will do when they catch Goldilocks?

Phonological awareness: According to Torgeson and Mathes (1998, p.2) “phonological awareness is most commonly defined as one’s sensitivity to, or explicit awareness of the phonological structures of words in one’s language. In short it involves the ability to

notice, think about it, or manipulate the individual sounds in words.” Lundberg, Frost, and Peterson (1988) mentioned that phonological awareness consists of four developmental progression skills: a) rhyming, by naming words or phrases that rhyme with the previous ones; b) hearing individual syllables in words, by clapping or counting the syllables; c)

hearing initial sounds in sounds in words, by looking at an object or given picture and

saying the word it represents before identifying the initial sound/s; d) hearing sounds

within words, by studying a few objects or pictures and saying the words before

identifying which objects or words have the same initial sound.

Phonological awareness can also be placed on a developmental continuum, as illustrated in Figure 2.1 (below). This continuum begins with basic listening skills and progresses through to the ability of identifying and creating rhyme and alliteration, distinguishing words within sentences, to syllables within words, and onset-rime within words until a child is finally able to manipulate phonemes within words (“ Phonological awareness continuum, n.d.).

Figure 2.2: Phonological awareness (see above reference)

Likewise, Rachmani (2011) lists four levels of developmental steps, as depicted in Figure 2.3 (below) that includes the phoneme, onset-rime, syllables and word level.

Figure 2.3: Four developmental steps of phonological awareness (Rachmani, 2001) What is more, Griffith (1991) points out that phonemic awareness is a vital component of phonological awareness for successful reading and spelling acquisition. A hierarchy of phonemic awareness skills is provided by Daly, Chafoulias and Skinner (2005) that involves the manipulation of individual sounds in words. The first skill is called

alliteration, which requires the child to say and identify the first sound in a given word, for

example, saying c for cat. The next skill is blending, when the individual sounds in a word must be blended to make a whole word, for example, c-a-t to form the word cat or when two or more letters appear together and one hears each sound, the combination is called a ‘blend’, such as bl for blue. Although phonemic awareness is complicated, research has shown that it can be taught effectively and these skills can improve reading performance (NRP, 2000; Ehri et al., 2001).

Bearing in mind the preceding discussion about phonological awareness the impression is given that researchers use different terminologies for the stages of phonological awareness, such as developmental progression skills, developmental stages and a continuum. The researchers also describe these stages differently. For example, Lundberg, Frost and Peterson (1988) refer to the developmental progression skills as rhyming, learning

individual sounds in words, hearing sounds within words and learning sounds in words. On the other hand, Rachmani (2011) describes the developmental stages as word awareness, syllable awareness, onset/rime awareness and phonemic awareness. It is recommended that researchers use similar definitions for these developmental stages, since these different terminologies may confuse readers.

Likewise, Walsh (2009) pointed out that phonological awareness and phonemic awareness is used interchangeably. In the previous section phonemic awareness has been identified as one of the most important components of phonological awareness and research has established that phonemic awareness is a critical precursor skill to successful reading and spelling performance. It is therefore important to distinguish between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. Phonological awareness is a broad term that encapsulates a continuum of aspects of a spoken word, such as syllables, onset-rime awareness and phonemic awareness (Figure 2.3). In comparison, phonemic awareness is more specific and refers to a conscious understanding that spoken words are made up of different speech sounds. When people speak they do not pronounce phonemes individually but fuse them into a string of sounds. This process is called articulation and in order for learners to “hear” these phonemes, they need to separate the speech sounds (Adams, 1990).

As a final point on this area, Zygouris-Coe (2001) regards phonological awareness as a crucial element of emergent literacy, and numerous studies have affirmed that it is the best predictor of reading performance for children in the early primary grades (Share, McGee & Silva, 1989; Vellutino, Scanlon, & Lyon, 2000). Similarly, phonemic awareness is one of the most important components of phonological awareness because it is a precursor skill to successful reading and spelling performance (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991; Griffith, 1991; Hatcher, Hulme, & Ellis, 1994).

Motivation to learn and appreciation for literate forms: Hess and Holloway (1984) point out that parents can influence their young children’s literacy development firstly by reading to and with them; secondly by encouraging them to read and by modelling the value of reading; thirdly by providing reading support; fourthly by providing interesting or relevant resources and material; and lastly by providing language-rich experiences at home during book-reading sessions or dinner table conversations.

Print and letter awareness: Morrow and Young (1997) argue that children often develop an awareness of print before they enter school. For example, it is better acquired during storybook reading time with their parents since this time can be used to demonstrate that print is read from left to right by running the index finger across the pages. This is also the time to demonstrate how books should be held and how pages should be turned (Neuman & Roskos, 1992). The recognition of letters is also important since young children must learn to recognise the letters and discriminate the visual shapes of letters before they can learn to read (Adams, 1990). Although these children should interact with the letters in different forms, such as using blocks or magnetic letters, it is imperative that they are also made aware of letters in books (Lesiak, 1997).

Alphabetical principle refers to the knowledge that there is an association between letters and sounds. One way of learning letter-sound associations is when young children read alphabet books, pictures or charts. For example, they must understand that the first sound in the word bear is the alphabet letter b before they can understand that b is the first sound in the word bear. A few experts believe that lower case letters should be taught first since the majority of words in books contain lower case letters (Carnine, Silbert, Kame’enui, & Tarver, 2004). In contrast, Casey and Howe (2002) feel that this only applies to children with limited early literacy skills as they may be able to engage quicker with written texts if they learn the lower case letters first. In addition, other ways of learning the letters of the alphabet is through activities using the names of learners, such as identifying the first letter of their names; using alphabet tiles or modelling clay to build their names; or by matching their names letter-by-letter with a second set of alphabet tiles. Learning the names of alphabet letters should be regarded as the first crucial step when learning the sounds associated with alphabet letters (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnson, 2004).

Word recognition: McCormick (2003) defines word recognition as the instant recognition of a word when it is seen. It happens in different stages, firstly when children recognise a word by its length or shape, or by reading words that they have been exposed to on a regular basis. In the next stage they might recognise the word, for example, hike, because they already know the words like or bike. During the final stage, most of the words can be easily identified as children use a variety of strategies to recognise them automatically. According to Pikulski and Chard (2005) it is important that children reach the automatic

stage so that it becomes less of a cognitive effort to work out how these words should be read. More effort could then be devoted to understanding words and texts.

Finally, teaching sight words (‘look and say words’) have been emphasised by Delaney (2006) as an important aspect of children’s reading success and therefore have to be taught until learners are able to identify them accurately and quickly.

Fluency is acquired by looking at each word more quickly and efficiently (National Reading Panel, 2000), or when reading with expression, that is using variations in pitch, pausing between sentences, and the stressing syllables (Hudson, Lane & Pullen, 2005). Conversely, readers who do not read fluently will read written texts slowly and read words one by one. It is important to note that reading fluency is a good predictor of reading comprehension achievement and words must be decoded and associated with their meanings in a reader’s memory for comprehension to occur (NRP, 2000; Rasinki, 1990).

Reading vocabulary and comprehension: Understanding the meanings of words and concepts, as well as comprehending texts, are as important as word recognition and fluency (McCormick, 2003). Fluent readers recall many decoding and word-attack strategies whilst they are reading and do not think about the process. Consequently, fluent readers rapidly process print and use their cognitive resources to connect words to meanings; and to understand the intended meanings of words (Delaney, 2006; Pressley, 2002). Conversely, struggling learners often get stuck on individual words, are unable to recognise or decode them, or fail to process texts adequately to understand the story or passage that they are reading (Block & Pressley, 2002).

On the whole, emergent literacy skills are critical for the acquisition of reading (National Early Literacy Panel [NELP], 2008) and, as mentioned above, phonological awareness is a crucial element of emergent literacy with numerous studies having affirmed it as the best predictor of reading performance for children in early primary grades. Moreover, phonemic awareness is one of the most important components of phonological awareness, a critical precursor skill to successful reading and spelling performance. Finally, reading fluency is a good predictor of reading comprehension achievement and understanding the meanings of words and concepts; and comprehending texts is as important as word recognition and fluency.

According to Richeck, Caldwell, Jennings and Lerner (2002, p.3):

Society suffers when citizens cannot read adequately. People with low reading levels comprise mainly of the unemployed, high school dropouts, the poor, and those convicted of crimes. The problems of our schools, the growth of poverty, and the loss of family values all show some association with poor reading.

This points out the consequences of reading problems or barriers to reading, and hence the following section will be devoted to a discussion about this topic.