Teaching Literacy in Early Childhood

Catalog description

Principles, problems, materials, and techniques involved in the development of speaking, listening, writing, and reading in early childhood in homes, schools, and communities. This course is intended to help teacher candidates become knowledgeable users of theory and language about language, literacy and culture as related to young children and to think through instructional possibilities thoroughly, using multiple sources of information to experiment with and provide justification for chosen decisions. Focusing specifically on young learners' (PK - 1) literacy development, we center a culturally responsive understanding of literacy curriculum that recognizes and supports the interconnectedness of home, community and school environments in early literacy development. We understand young children engage texts that go beyond print texts to include multimodal visual, auditory, digital, movement, and artifactual texts. In LLED 400 , candidates learn to understand how young children develop as readers,writers, users, and generators of literacies in and out of school. Literacy teaching is both an intellectual and practical matter in which teachers work with students in ways that recognize the complexities of language and its social uses, the role of play, learning and its cultural contexts, and schooling as organizational phenomena. Young children enter schools with multiple types of literacy knowledge and cultural experiences. Coming to understand these complexities requires the coordination of both theoretical awareness and applied knowledge. Developing practical strategies to teach literacy requires a dedication of head, hand, and heart to treat all people with dignity, acknowledging the contributions of all cultural groups and respecting diversity as it honors ideals of social justice. In LLED 400 , teacher candidates develop a repertoire of organizational, instructional, and evaluative strategies for understanding and supporting individual young children's literacy development that are both research- and practice-based. Candidates work on projects independently and in collaborative groups. Content is presented by the instructor through a combination of lectures, weekly readings and reflections on readings, class discussion, activities and demonstrations, and viewing and analyzing video. Projects include an analysis of young children's literacy development and curriculum planning for early learners. A field experience connected to the coursework taken in conjunction with LLED 400 affords teacher candidates the opportunity to inquire about children's literacy encounters. LLED 400 is part of a block of courses in a PSU teacher education program that is unified by the basic set of principles supporting the development of a broader and more inclusive and anti-racist driven understanding of texts, children, and communities.