Assessing preschoolers’ emergent literacy skills in
English and Spanish with the Get Ready to Read! Screening Tool
By JoAnn
M. Farver, Jonathan, Nakamoto and Christopher J. Lonigan
Closing the Gap Early: Implementing a Literacy
Intervention for At-Risk Kindergartners in Urban Schools
By Colleen
MacDonald, Lauren Figueredo
Theme One: The
Importance of Early Literacy Skills
Both
articles focused on the importance of exposing children to different forms of activities
that will enhance their literacy skills; that will benefits students throughout
their early years. According to (Figueredo & MacDonald 2010), students who have
early difficulties in oral language are at risk for later reading problems. In the article, “Closing the Gap Early: Implementing a Literacy Intervention for
At-Risk Kindergartners in Urban Schools” it was mentioned that
kindergarten years are a critical period of growth for students’
emergent-literacy, and oral language. Both articles emphasize the importance of
having children emerge in lessons that will enhance children’s literacy skills.
Having children expose to literacy activities at an early age is correlated to
their level of literacy during their elementary school years.
Theme Two: Early
Intervention
Interventions
placed during the course of the kindergarten school year give students an
additional source of support at a critical time in their development; more
importantly, research showed that a tutoring program is a key component of
successful oral-language interventions (Figueredo & MacDonald 2010). There
is strong evidence to suggest that the problems children experience in learning
to read during the elementary school years and beyond are related to the
emergent literacy skills they bring with them from the preschool and
kindergarten period (Lonigan & Nakamoto 2007). Also, the article mentioned the
success of early intervention support the importance of early literacy skills
for helping struggling readers and preventing reading disabilities.
