Our curriculum consultant Betsy Evans held a session for our families on what a print-rich environment means in our classrooms, and how our classrooms support our children’s learning and path to literacy.
Betsy described the function of some of our practices. For example, children are assigned a symbol that stands in for their name and that has a phonetic relationship with their name. During the year, the children learn each other’s symbols and their names. These are often written on their artwork with the symbol and then the name, as we read from left to right.
Another daily exposure to symbols and sequence are the message boards in the classrooms. These are divided into four sections and the children learn what each numbered section represents. It is a way to discuss the upcoming events of the day. The children participate in the process and in the 4s they often lead the discussion. The classrooms also have a visual schedule of the day in the meeting area.
Another topic Betsy covered is how children start to draw, write, and make sense of letters. At a very young age children become “picture readers”, decoding the colors and shape of an apple illustrated in a book, for example, and “reading” it as an apple. As children begin to draw with shapes and colors, they begin to represent objects themselves. This begins with simple experimentation. Betsy demonstrated how letter writing starts with scribbling as children learn how to control a marker. Early scribbling and drawing is essential to learning how to make curves and lines that lead to early letter writing. Parents can encourage this by imitating their child’s experiments with the marker and commenting on how their child is making drawings and letters, rather than “teaching” drawing or letter writing. For example, saying something like,”I see that you are making lines back and forth, and around and around, with many dots, I’m going to try that”, rather than showing the child how you might draw a house or a flower.
Betsy sent parents into a classroom on a scavenger hunt to find examples of the many ways children are introduced to written language in the classroom.
A lively discussion continued in the classroom with Betsy and the parents, some of whom had attended Bloomingdale and remembered some of the classroom practices. Betsy reassured parents “trust your child’s learning journey – children want to learn new skills.” If the child is having difficulty in a particular area, their classroom teacher will let parents know what extra support is needed.
Thank you, Betsy, for the windows you open up in our understanding of how children learn, and ways in which we can support them.
