Beginning and Early Literacy Education

After reading selected chapters from Sound Systems by Anna Lyon and Paula Moore along with an article entitled Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing by Kate Foley Cusumano, I was reminded of my first teacher's aid position which took place in four different kindergarten classrooms.  When I began working in the classrooms it was the beginning of the spring semester for the students and they had already learned the letter sounds and many could read simple books aloud without any assistance.  I was amazed at the reading and writing ability I was observing 5 and 6 year olds present to me. 
The type of phonic and literacy instruction the school was using was a program called DIBELS and the children were taught letter and chunk sounds through Tucker Signing.  I was completely amazed with these programs! The DIBELS program, which stands for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, is used to help children become phonically aware.  Most of the children I worked with loved the program.  The children would gather on the rug and the teachers would run through short lessons to assess student knowledge. Tucker Signing which was used in the classrooms was very bizarre to observe for the first time!   It is designed to teach children their letters and chuck sounds by designating hand motions for each sound letters or chunks make.  It was interesting to see the children use these hand motions to remember the sounds of letters and chunks to help them figure out how to pronounce words.  The teachers would even sign words to the children without saying anything and the students were able to figure out the words.  It was very interesting and I enjoyed learning it with the children!
In the article by Cusumano, I had to laugh to myself when I read about parents wanting to change words students had misspelled on their homework because it reminded me of when I first began working with the kindergarteners.  I was walking around the classroom and helping children with sentences they were assigned to write when I started to tell them how to spell words I had noticed were incorrectly spelled.  The teacher, of the classroom I was in, noticed me doing this and explained to me how important it is for children to try and sound out words.  I completely understand why, but at the time I had not even thought about how important this was for a developing writer and reader.  If we are constantly hovering over students and telling them how to spell words, we are removing the fun from writing.
I greatly enjoyed both of these readings and plan on keeping them for future resources.  It is important to be able to assess a child's writing and reading ability and be able to help them grow into stronger students.