Excerpt
Excerpted from Chapter 4 of Seeing All Kids as Readers: A New Vision for Literacy in the Inclusive Early Childhood Classroom, by Christopher Kliewer, Ph,D.Copyright © Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
The interpretation of the signs of another's text (e.g., reading, being read to, looking at pictures) is also the construction of signs. Previously, I pointed out how the children's reactions (i.e., their construction of new signs) varied in response to the picture book. Children are not simply decoding some objective meaning when confronting an existing text, but are always in the process of translating and connecting the text to their own experiences as a way of making sense of the narrative and the world. In the example of the two girls participating in the group activity following a visit to a pizza restaurant, each took the original narrative and crafted new and very original signs with their own unique narratives.
Crafting new signs, whether through the direct construction of text or through the interpretation of another's text, provides children with a developing sophistication of written language. They are learning that the signs they create are not haphazard or random but hold a particular logic and that the motivated link between meaning and form is maintained as they move into alphabetic text. Meaning remains the integral element, and form is the means of expression. Marks that are closely connected contain meaning, and there is a formal organization (i.e., linkages and lines of text) that allows for the organization of meaning. Children experience written language as having particular spatial qualities, layout, and directionality. They also encounter it as linear, as elements in sequence, as sequenced elements that are connected, as elements made up of simple shapes, and as elements that are repeatable. There appears to be no rooted or native hierarchy here. Children in inclusive, literate communities are exposed to these complexities, actively engage in them, and begin to construct meaning from them in different patterns, at different rates, and according to individualized literate profiles. Although literacy may appear similar across children, no two children ever follow the same path or pattern.
Beginning with Words of Intense Meaning
Children's earliest efforts at making sense of the complexities of print tend to be around signs of particular significance and meaning. Children learn that meaning and form are maintained in alphabetic signs. Often the child's printed name is one word that is central to the child's identity and is made visually available in the early childhood environment with commentary from surrounding adults.
Early in the school year, just prior to his fourth birthday, I observed Sam, a typically developing child, sign his name. He made a line with several curves considered by his teachers to represent an S. He told an adult, "This is Sam. This is me! I drew my name." Sam had come at that moment to symbolically embody a sense of self in the beginning letter of his name. In addition, he had spent an extraordinary amount of time developing the curves of the S. If I had not been observing, I would have assumed he had made the line quickly and fairly randomly. However, I had been witness to the intellectual intensity that he poured into the effort. Clearly the shape was of central concern, even though it bore only minimal similarity to what I consider a normal S.
Some of Sam's peers were also demonstrating interest in letter formation to express narratives. Some focused their creative efforts on the linear quality of lines of text; others grouped markings together in a way that looked like single words but were at times read as sentences. Still others seemed to be, similar to Sa