I. Background/Context

After teaching children ages four-eight for about nine years, I became very interested in early literacy development. These years are foundational in terms of language and cognitive development. Children are not only learning to decode and encode words; they are learning to interpret, “decode” and make sense of the world around them (Cohen, 2004). The classroom is a multi-faceted framework in which to explore these issues. However, I often found that the school playground provided a more natural environment in which to observe the communicative and social tendencies among my students.

While I was a teacher, I observed play activities; during these observations, I saw more varied dimensions to each child than I had in the classroom. For my students and others, the playground was a social gathering place of varied discourse. It was during recess that I was able to record these authentic, relatively unstructured literacy activities and discourse. Many of these observed “playground literacies” served to inform many of my instructional decisions. Some of these “playground literacies” were: letter writing between students, designing of playground maps or using new vocabulary and/or syntactic structures when calling to each other from the slide. These events contributed to the literacy profiles I created for each student in my class. It made me realize that, when viewing students as readers and writers, it is critical to understand the ways in which they weave language into their worlds of play. Social and recreational activities give a very different (and perhaps more authentic) view of a child’s communicative skills. They reveal the ways in which children, through comfortable interaction, learn about and use language. I would like to turn these casual observations into a more systematized investigation. I would like my research to contribute to the field of early literacy.

II. Problem Area: Play in the Context of Literacy Standards

Specifically, I want to focus on play. I think this is a critical area of study and timely. Over the last several years, there has been increased federal pressure on early childhood programs, emphasizing academic performance and early literacy. While early literacy is critical, it does not seem that the federal legislation supporting “standards-based universal pre-k” is grounded in developmental theory or has been informed by child psychologists or educators. I think this research area needs to be elevated from being secondary or tertiary in schools (and in academia) to being essential. I think this research area is particularly relevant in light of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001). This act established the Early Reading First program which funds programs to support the school readiness of preschool-aged children, particularly those from low-income families. Roskos and Christie remind us that, “This program lays out a well-defined early literacy program that for the most part emphasizes direct instruction in essential early literacy skills and deemphasizes play-based approaches” (viii). However, a large body of research supports the notion that play is critical to cognitive development in the early years. I am interested in exploring this contradiction. I think this is a particularly urgent issue because well-designed early childhood programs (particularly in low SES areas) can have a significant impact on a child’s future learning (need citation—there are so many). If we are going to take care of our nation’s children, our children, we need to provide them with early school environments that don’t simply force state-mandated standards but use developmentally appropriate methods to instruct our children. By preserving play in schools and training teachers on how to value the literacy observations they make during play, we will encourage our students to own their language and literacy skills and not just adopt the “teacher’s language” while in a classroom.

According to Macoby and Jacklin (1974), oral language “scripts” are co-constructed and tell observers a great deal about a child’s world. To this effect, they write that, “Children use their personal and cultural knowledge of events (shopping, cooking, weddings, street scenes, and television settings) to build scripts together. Using the outline of their daily life experiences, children create new scripts through shared predictability and collaborative novelty” (116). This notion inspired me to further research the ways in which these “scripts” can be studied during play, to further understand language development as it relates to a child’s background and SES status. Children write their own oral “scripts” when given the time, space and freedom to do so. My contention is that this is critical to their literacy and cognitive development. Children need to engage in play activities in order to develop these skills. Removing play from early childhood curriculum minimizes literacy opportunities.

III. Questions

Some questions I hope to answer are: What specific literacy activities are present during play? Why is play being discouraged in today’s preschools and kindergarten classrooms? What is the “research base” to support this? What is the nature of literacy activities during play? How are narratives different among students from different SES backgrounds? What do these narratives tell teachers about children’s literacy development? How do teachers privilege some children’s narratives over others? What is the impact of a child’s socioeconomic status on their literacy development, as evidenced by activities during play?

IV. Implications

I hope that one of the implications of this kind of study would be increased research and funding directed towards the field of play (specifically links between play and literacy). The oral language and linguistic patterns during play will provide greater information about a child’s background and what s/he is bringing culturally to the classroom; ultimately, these findings have a great potential to provide a more thorough literacy profile of children and thus inform instructional decisions made by teachers. Additionally, I hope that another implication of this kind of study would be increased attention to the seminal importance of a carefully organized and monitored play curriculum. I hope that this kind of investigation would encourage teachers and practitioners to realize the symbiotic relationship between literacy development and play. A major implication of this study could be the requirement of these kinds of programs in schools, as well as funding for the required teacher training.

III. Theoretical Framework and Skeletal Overview of Existing Research

Ø Theoretical Frame: Transactional Theory of Language Development (as developed by Whitmore)

“Shaping of language is accomplished through the myriad language transactions

that involve children with others. The language is generated by the child

but is changed in transactions with others by their comprehension or lack

of comprehension and by their responses” (Goodman et al., 1987:34)

• Incorporates Piaget (theory of constructivism, 1967) and Halliday (social-semiotic, 1975)
• Relates to restrictive vs. responsive teacher language
• Invention of children’s literacy knowledge vs. society’s construction (Whitmore et al 293)

§ Next steps: More research on transactional theory

§ Drawing on concepts in Vygotsky - Mind in Society (1978)

§ Interrelationship between learning and development

§ Researcher/Centers in this field (whose names keep popping up):

· Vygotsky, Piaget, Chrystie, Zigler, Halliday, Heath, Paley, Snow, Singer

· Yale Child Study Center is devoted to play and early learning

· Learning is not development but it engenders mental development that set in motion developmental processes (Vygotskyian idea)

· What children can do with assistance demonstrates their potential and their mental development more than what they can do alone, Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Whitmore et al, 295)

Need to do lots more research on Vygotsky, early childhood education, etc...

Ø Play as symbol system that is critically relevant to young children’s literacy and cognitive developmentàPolicy Implications

“In play, children behave above her average

age, free to invent and explore culturally patterned activities (language and literacy)

that they may not have confidence or authority to examine outside of

play. It is a kind of testing ground for language” (Vygotsky (1978: 102, as found in Whitmore):

§ Cognition and Language: Research based connections between cognitive competence and high quality pretend play (Bergen)

· Processes involved: receptive and expressive language, mental representation, transformation of objects and actions, dialogue, negotiation, problem solving and goal seeking, perspective taking

§ Access to oneself: Without given time, space to express selves, will children be able to maximize potential for language acquisition? Or, will young children be limited in terms of the ways that they can explore themselves and their being?

· Further research: Theory of Mind, Framing, language and cognition, current issues/policies in Early Childhood Ed., Head Start. Etc…

§ Literacy: Play encourages and supports literacy

· Again, Vygotsky and Piaget are critical here and I need to learn more about them.

§ Play as text, literacy oriented space for expressing and constructing knowledge

§ “Medium to test their hypotheses about written language and to expand their developing literacies” (Whitmore et al 309)

§ Express selves through language and text (literacy)-sense of control over their own expression

§ Teacher as mediator

§ Further research: play and social emotional learning, early language/cognition, class: Text, Tools and Culture(?), teacher as mediator (Montessori notions?)

Importance of the ‘Symbolic’ Words: Children construct and represent meaning through multiple symbol systems

§ Dyson (1989): child development as resolving tensions among symbol systems, social activity, talk, pictures, actions---modifying, shaping of stimulus

§ Early expression comes in many forms, not just the written (ELL, children with learning challenges)

§ Further research Semiotic research (emphasis on social) (Saussure, Derrida, Barthes, Baudrillard, Halliday) and cultural codes, Reggio Emilia (early childhood philosophy, ‘100 languages of children’) Gardner (1983) multiple intelligences, Malaguzzi (1998)

Ø Nature of My Potential Research: Classroom Process Studies

o Observation and research of classroom process, activities

§ Reading, writing, listening, speaking=organic, holistic, unified, codependent process, coexistence

§ Literacy is not “dumped” into children but they construct within a societal frame

§ Bring meaning and take meaning from text

§ Children’s composition of texts as composition of their existence in multiple social worlds (Dyson, 1993)

o Critical discourse analysis (Gee, 1999)

§ Classroom discourse (Cazden), cultural notions played out

§ Moving away from “centrality of print” (Gunther Kress, Multimodal Discourse)

· Early childhood: not print based yet, attuned to the “multimodal” first (physical, music, emotion, art, shapes=all different languages through which to express themselves)

Further research: Heath (Ways with Words: a seminal piece), other classroom process studies)

V. References

Bergen, D. (2002) ‘The Role of Pretend Play in Children’s Cognitive Development’,

Early Childhood Research and Practice (4)1, URL (consulted September 2007): http://ecrp.uiuc.edu

Cohen, Jonathan. (2001) Introduction. In Jonathan Cohen (Ed.), Caring

Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of

Young Children (3-29). New York: Teachers College Press.

Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York:

Basic Books.

Gee, J.P. (1999) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Mehod. London: Routledge.

Gentile, L. The Oral Language Acquisition Inventory (OLAI): Linking Research and

Theory to Assessment and Instruction, Goleta, CA: 1994.

Maccoby, E.E. and C.T. Jacklin. The Psychology of Sex Differences. Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press, 1974.

Mungo, D., and Rosenblitt, D. (2001) “Helping Emotionally Vulnerable Children:

Moving Toward and Empathetic Orientation in the Classroom.” In Jonathan

Cohen (Ed.), Caring Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of Young Children (59-76). New York: Teachers College Press.

Oliver, S. and Klugman, E. (2007) “Building a Play Research Agenda: What Do

We Know About Play? What New Questions Do We Need to Ask?” Exchange, 14-17.

Roskos, K., and Christie, J. (2004). “Examining the play-literacy interface: A critical

review and future directions” in Edward Zigler, Dorothy G. Singer, and

Sandra J. Bishop-Josef’s Children’s play: the roots of reading. Washington,

DC: Zero to Three Press. 116.

Schank, R. and R. Abelson. Scripts, plans, goals and understanding: An inquiry

into human knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1977.

Whitmore, K., Martens, P., Goodman, Y. and G. Owocki. (2004). ‘Critical Lessons from

the transactional perspective on early literacy research’, Journal of Early

Childhood Literacy,(4)291-325).

"Playground Literacies"

I believe there needs to be a bigger emphasis on "playground literacies;" the spoken and written expression in this "framed" space is often very authentic and reveals differentiated literacy skills of a child. However, these skills are less acknowledge than literacy skills from multiple choice tests given to 7 year olds? What is the role of authentic literacy, literacy that responds to one's environment, in this age of testing, "accountability," and one size fits all teaching?

Developing Research Narrative

Draft: Research Narrative

I. One( of many) crystallizing moments...or different one? How to pick?

Sean’s back is hunched tightly over his desk again. Face down. Fists clenched inside the It is late October and he has not communicated a word to me since school began. The psychologist calls it “selective mutism,” while the administration plays around with the idea of “autism.” Last year’s teacher rolls her eyes when discussing him as her “emotionally disturbed project” last year. His parents told me that he is “just stubborn” and rarely speaks at home. Therefore, I should not “expect him to communicate” at school. But, Sean is communicating. His seven year old body is bent in frustration, wound up with resistance and tells me so much. While other second graders fill the room with written and oral expression, it is Sean’s body language that keeps me ruminating over my teaching practice. It is his very clear message of resistance to my classroom literacy instruction that tells me about his internal space: he is not ready to communicate through typical classroom literacy practices. But, by slowly realizing that he is sending me (and his classmates) messages about himself through his body made me believe that he was ready to communicate. I would not pathologize his unique mode of expression so far. By the end of the school year, I knew he would be reading aloud and writing in a more “conventional” sense.

I have always felt blessed to be able to teach the earlier grades because it is my job to support children as they acquire the cultural tools of expression. Working with my 6 and 7 year olds and focusing on language, phonology, reading, writing and words became a sacred act. Teaching my students to find patterns and beauty within language was transformative for both them and for me. Aiding my student as they constructed language and became meaning makers on their own is the most fulfilling activity I have engaged in so far in my life.

---Other idea: I learned that attempting to have power over children is criminal and learning how to give children power to express themselves is critical. I felt privileged to enter this space each day and help give my students power to their own thoughts by being able to express them or read more about them. Enmeshed in reading, decoding, imaginary characters, nonfiction reports and writing, I felt deeply fulfilled and felt that, “Teacher and learners are correlates, one of which was never intended to be without the other.”(Author unknown)---

II. Outline of thoughts about Research: Language and Literacy as Social tool for Communication and Self-Knowledge, Play and Social/Emotional Learning as Critical Medium

Ø Theoretical Frame: Transactional Theory of Language Development (as developed by Whitmore)

o Goodman built on Piaget (theory of constructivism, 1967) and Halliday (social-semiotic, 1975)

o “Shaping of language us accomplished through the myriad language transactions that involve children with others. The language is generated by the child but is changed in transactions with others by their comprehension or lack of comprehension and by their responses (Goodman et al., 1987:34).

§ Relates to restrictive vs. responsive teacher language

§ Invention of children’s literacy knowledge vs. society’s construction (Whitmore et al 293)

· Ways in which children respond or shut down as a result of teacher’s language, choice of words, tone, conversation, worldview

· Invented language (twin language, in classroom, terrarium, world of languages, rules, etc..) within a social context, communal context of a classroom

§ More research on transactional theory

o Drawing on concepts in Vygotsky - Mind in Society (1978)

§ Interrelationship between learning and development

· Learning is not development but it engenders mental development that set in motion developmental processes

· What children can do with assistance demonstrates their potenv tial and their mental development more than what they can do alone (Whitmore et al, 295)

§ More research on Vygotsky and learning

Ø Play as symbol system that is critically relevant to young children’s literacy and cognitive developmentàPolicy Implications

o Cognition and Language: Research based connections between cognitive competence and high quality pretend play (Bergen)

§ Processes involved: receptive and expressive languae, mental representation, transformation of objects and actions, dialogue, negotiation, problem solving and goal seeking

§ Access to self: Without given time, space to express selves, SEL curriculum, kids are limited in the ways that they can explore themselves, their being

§ Further research: Theory of Mind

§ Further research: Framing

o Literacy: Play encourages and supports literacy

§ Play as text, literacy oriented space for expressing and constructing knowledge

§ “Medium to test their hypotheses about written language and to expand their developing literacies” (Whitmore et al 309)

§ Vygotsky (1978: 102, as found in Whitmore): in play, children behave above her average age, free to incent and explore culturally patterned activities (language and literacy) that they may not have confidence or authority to examine outside of play, testing ground

§ Express selves through language and text (literacy)-sense of control over their own expression

§ Teacher as mediator

§ Further research: Vygotsky, nuances within ZPD

o Importance of the ‘Symbolic’ Words: Children construct and represent meaning through multiple symbol systems

§ Dyson (1989): child development as resolving tensions amoung symbol systems, social activity, talk, pictures, actions---modifying, shaping of stimulus

§ Early expression comes in many forms, not just the written (ELL, children with learning challenges)

§ Further research

o Semiotic research (emphasis on social) (Saussure, Derrida, Barthes, Baudrillard, Halliday) and cultural codes

o Reggio Emilia (early childhood philosophy, ‘100 languages of children’)

o Gardner (1983) multiple intelligences

o Malaguzzi (1998)

Ø Nature of Potential Research: Classroom Process Studies

Ø Question: (that can be observed and researched empirically)

o Observation and research of classroom process, activities

§ Reading, writing, listening, speaking=organic, holistic, unified, codependent process, coexistence

§ Literacy is not “dumped” into children but they construct within a societal frame

§ Bring meaning and take meaning from text

§ Children’s composition of texts as composition of their existence in multiple social worlds (Dyson, 1993)

o Critical discourse analysis (Gee, 1999)

§ Classroom discourse (Cazden), cultural notions played out

§ Moving away from “centrality of print” (Gunther Kress, Multimodal Discourse)

· Early childhood: not print based yet, attuned to the “multimodal” first (physical, music, emotion, art, shapes=all different languages through which to express themselves)

III. Play and a Child’s Classroom “Literacy Profile” Questions and Hypothesis:

What is the impact of a child’s socioeconomic status on their literacy development, as evidenced by activities during play? How do children “script” their play according to personal events, school experiences and daily occurrences in their lives (Schank and Abelson, 1977). How do teachers acknowledge and develop childrens’ linguistic and conversational patterns? Studies based on the oral language and linguistic patterns during play will provide greater information about a child’s background and what s/he is bringing culturally to the classroom; ultimately, these findings have a great potential to provide a more thorough literacy profile of children and thus inform instructional decisions made by teachers.

These years are foundational in terms of language and cognitive development. Children are not only learning to decode and encode words; they are learning to interpret, “decode” and make sense of the world around them (Cohen, 2004). Although the classroom is a multi-faceted framework in which to explore these issues, the school playground provides a more natural environment in which to observe the communicative and social tendencies among students. While I was a teacher, I observed play activities; during these observations, I saw more varied dimensions to each child than I had in the classroom. For my students and others, the playground was a social gathering place of varied discourse. It was during recess that I was able to record these authentic, relatively unstructured literacy activities and discourse. Many of the observed “playground literacies” served to inform some of my instructional decisions. Some of these “playground literacies” were: letter writing between students, designing of playground maps or using new vocabulary and/or syntactic structures when calling to each other from the slide. These events contributed to the literacy profiles I created for each student in my class. It made me realize that, when viewing students as readers and writers, it is critical to understand the ways in which they weave language into their worlds of play. Social and recreational activities give a very different (and perhaps more authentic) view of a child’s communicative skills.

According to Macoby and Jacklin (1974), oral language “scripts” are co-constructed and tell observers a great deal about a child’s world. To this effect, they write that, “Children use their personal and cultural knowledge of events (shopping, cooking, weddings, street scenes, and television settings) to build scripts together. Using the outline of their daily life experiences, children create new scripts through shared predictability and collaborative novelty” (116). This notion inspired me to further research the ways in which these “scripts” can be studied during play, to further understand language development as it relates to a child’s background and SES status.

V. References

Bergen, D. (2002) ‘The Role of Pretend Play in Children’s Cognitive Development’,

Early Childhood Research and Practice (4)1, URL (consulted September 2007): http://ecrp.uiuc.edu

Cohen, Jonathan. (2001) Introduction. In Jonathan Cohen (Ed.), Caring

Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of

Young Children (3-29). New York: Teachers College Press.

Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York:

Basic Books.

Gee, J.P. (1999) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Mehod. London: Routledge.

Gentile, L. The Oral Language Acquisition Inventory (OLAI): Linking Research and

Theory to Assessment and Instruction, Goleta, CA: 1994.

Maccoby, E.E. and C.T. Jacklin. The Psychology of Sex Differences. Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press, 1974.

Mungo, D., and Rosenblitt, D. (2001) “Helping Emotionally Vulnerable Children:

Moving Toward and Empathetic Orientation in the Classroom.” In Jonathan

Cohen (Ed.), Caring Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of Young Children (59-76). New York: Teachers College Press.

Oliver, S. and Klugman, E. (2007) “Building a Play Research Agenda: What Do

We Know About Play? What New Questions Do We Need to Ask?” Exchange, 14-17.

Roskos, K., and Christie, J. (2004). “Examining the play-literacy interface: A critical

review and future directions” in Edward Zigler, Dorothy G. Singer, and

Sandra J. Bishop-Josef’s Children’s play: the roots of reading. Washington,

DC: Zero to Three Press. 116.

Schank, R. and R. Abelson. Scripts, plans, goals and understanding: An inquiry

into human knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1977.

Whitmore, K., Martens, P., Goodman, Y. and G. Owocki. (2004). ‘Critical Lessons from

the transactional perspective on early literacy research’, Journal of Early

Childhood Literacy,(4)291-325).

Scholarly Autobiography

Be as you are, search for your own way.
Know yourself before searching to know children…
Above all you are a child too,
and you must know and educate this child first.

Korchak, 1943

One empty, plastic soda bottle. Potting soil. Seeds. Water. As a four year old preschooler in New York City, I thought it was incredibly special to be able to create my own garden with just these four items. I remember very little from preschool or kindergarten except that word: “terrarium.” I couldn’t believe that I could design and create this system of growing, rooted, living things inside a discarded soda bottle. The best thing about the terrarium was that once the water accumulated or the temperature decreased, the condensation gathered on the plastic and moved down the sides, back into the soil, adding moisture and completing one cycle of many. Then, the process would begin over again. I was amazed. Looking back, I realize that this was my first experience with a very miniature ecosystem--albeit amateur. It was my first tangible experience of learning how to create a kind of sacred space that had growth and potential as its basis. This terrarium had roots and promise. As a four year old, I was in love with that concept and with the space of that plastic container.

It may be a stretch but….Looking back more than 25 years later, I realize that certain, framed spaces (often larger than the terrarium but sharing the same concept) have shaped my life. While I was growing up, my family had a large, corduroy couch in the living room that was placed a foot or two away from the wall. It created this narrow, alcove-like space that I named (and proceeded to label) the “krismidowee.” When I was 6 and my twin brothers were 4, my dad was diagnosed with a mental illness which served as the emotional background for a lot of fighting that would often wake us up late at night. It was then that I started holding “sibling meetings” in this space, the “krismidowee.” It became a sacred space where I taught Mike and Jon how we could write letters and notes to each other, explaining how we felt during nights like this. After these sibling meetings, we would sometimes leave them underneath the door of my parents’ bedroom so that my parents could read them in the morning and understand the nature of our “krismidowee” discussions and family concerns. For all of the screaming that occurred during those years, my brothers and I did collect some responses. More importantly, my love of literacy, language, words and communication, along with a belief in their power to make change, was born. In some ways, I think that the “krismidowee” was kind of like my first classroom in which I was the facilitator. It was certainly a special place, with a distinct purpose, its own culture, full of immediate and relevant objectives, rooted with meaning, potential and promise.

Throughout my life so far, I have grown attached to physical spaces and the unique parts of myself that these places demanded and exposed. Most of all, the relationships fostered within these spaces have changed me. My passion for and moral commitment to children feels just as visceral as it did when I woke up each day at Camp ABC. It is a camp in upstate New York for children from high poverty neighborhoods in New York City. Each summer, the Fresh Air Fund campers leave their homes in New York City and arrive in wood cabins in upstate New York. That summer, shivering in my sleeping bag in a wood cabin at 6:30 a.m., I had no idea that the next eight weeks were unfolding to be a life-defining experience. Although I began the job with what I thought were realistic expectations, I had not anticipated the high physical and emotional demands of 18 hour days, of the living conditions, my responsibilities, and, most of all, the campers’ needs. Many girls would scream all night because nature’s silence scared them. Most of them were terrified of the camp’s environment. For them, it was an unfamiliar space lacking promise. I spent the early part of the summer in shock at this problem, not understanding the terror and alienation they felt.

Clearly, this shock did not work for me as a leader or educator and I was frustrated. One night, when reading a bedtime story to some of my campers, I realized a well of patience and love I never knew I harbored. This allowed me to better connect and lead my campers. After finishing the story, I kissed each camper goodnight on the forehead. That night, instead of insisting that they find a way to calm down and get to sleep on their own, I sat in their beds with them until each of them fell asleep. I realized that I had been fighting my campers’ most basic needs: to be loved and understood in a new place, a space that was completely unfamiliar. I had been fighting these needs all summer because I was too busy trying to control their behavior. Following this realization, I tried to control their behavior less and respond to their needs more, I became a much better and, more responsive educator and facilitator. Through conversations, patience, humility and humor, I began to know these 9 year old girls. I became interested in the language they chose to name their experiences and themselves. I started to understand what it meant to be an active listener which seems to me to be the first step understanding that children have such interesting an important things to say. This space allowed me to realize the first critical skill of being a literacy teacher: inquiry. By the end of the summer, I realized the symbiotic relationship that that this camp, that space, had created. My campers taught me about the significance of love, patience and inquiry—they rightly refused to expect any less.

After graduating from college, I entered a new space: a first grade classroom in Compton, California. I chose to be a teacher in a low income community to be a part of the tide of change that needed (and still needs) to occur in our public education system. During the next seven years of teaching first and second graders in urban areas in Los Angeles, I began to get a glimpse of the “educational space” in which we place our country’s, our children. I felt blessed to be able to teach these early grades because I was again being demanded by my students to give them nothing less than the tools to read and write, to be literate. I began to view teaching as a socio-political act and the classroom as a transformative space. Working with my 6 and 7 year olds and focusing on language, phonology, reading, writing and words became a sacred space to me. Teaching my students to find patterns and beauty within language was transformative for both them and for me. My classroom was becoming a place of promise. We were developing roots and starting to actualize our potentials as literate meaning makers. In room 10, I felt like we were a symbol of the changing space of public education.

I spent the next couple of years teaching and in graduate school, learning as much as possible about the field of Literacy. I learned the difference between being a responsive reading teacher and being a restrictive one. I learned that attempting to have power over children is criminal and learning how to give children power to express themselves is critical. I felt privileged to enter this space each day and help give my students power to their own thoughts by being able to express them or read more about them. Enmeshed in reading, decoding, imaginary characters, nonfiction reports and writing, I felt deeply fulfilled and felt that, “Teacher and learners are correlates, one of which was never intended to be without the other.”(Author unknown)

After understanding more about how to effectively teach beginning readers and writers, I started to become more interested in how my students not only decoded words- but decoded and interpreted their own worlds. I was deeply inspired by Jonathan Cohen’s Caring Classroom/Intelligent Schools that emphasized the seminal importance of social emotional learning in the classroom. Social emotional literacy became as important to me as traditional literacy. Our classroom culture and the way in which my students constructed it with me was my pedagogical focus for my last 5 years of teaching. Just as the ability to break the code of phonemes is necessary for language learning, the capacity to “read” oneself and others is just as important (Cohen 3). Peter Senge’s concept of “dialogue” and “thinking together” about social problems within the space of our classroom and school became a hallmark of my classroom (Senge 19). (Need more here about how the kids felt empowered to own the classroom space as their own, everyone had a role, culture and community…ecosystem)

Last year, I moved back to my “roots” in New York. I started working as Reading Specialist with middle schoolers who were having difficulties in school, particularly in the area of writing and language. Many of my students had dyslexia or a mix of language learning challenges. Above all, they were frustrated with their language processing and their abilities to access language and call it their own. They had ideas, could visualize and feel them but could not express them. Above all, they could not express them in the kinds of ways they craved. Their minds were becoming a stifling space and I was hired to help them navigate this space. I spent they year developing academic “interventions” based on reading and writing skills and research-based strategies. However, in working with my students, I was simply amazed at their tenacity, their humor and their commitment to their own learning—despite the discouragement from schools that they had received. I recalled one of psychologist Carl Roger’s quote: “Doesn’t it sometimes amaze you the way weeds will grow through the sidewalk, or saplings crack boulders, or animals survive desert conditions or the frozen north?” The educational space of my students had failed them and they felt ashamed of their skills and competencies. However, during each session, they were engaged. The dialogic space of the two of us working together on fixing breakdown point in their skills was again, transformative for them and for me. It also reconfirmed for me that social emotional learning was intertwined with literacy learning.Need transition.

By starting this doctoral program, I want to further investigate the ways in which language, literacy and social emotional learning programs play out in urban schools and classrooms. With testing pressures and assessment emphasis, I think our educational space is losing its promise and its humanity. Our children are not dumping grounds for knowledge to be regurgitated. They are co-constructors, meaning makers…I would like my research to elevate this area from being secondary or tertiary in schools to being as basic as decoding…(improve this!)

Early Lexical Development

These chapters in Clark's book (Lexical Development, Sounds in Words, Words in Meaning) give a nuanced overview of language development in children ages 0-2 (neonates?). In general, I think language development follows a whole-part-whole trajectory. A baby needs to segment the overall speech stream, break into parts and store enough so that they can recreate the whole again (encode and production). The whole piece---comprehension and understanding communication--comes significantly before production. I think, in general, language development seems to go like this (again, following the WHOLE-PART-WHOLE idea...MOUTH PLAY, SOUNDS IN WORDS, PRODUCTION). In reading the trajectory, some key ideas to keep in mind (themes) are: whole/part/whole, comprehension before production, fine motor mouth development as factor in terms of articulation, symbolic realization as milestone, object words vs. action words depending on context and home language, overextensions based on shape and/or context, gestures as protospeech acts that typically are acts of requests or metonymic (parts for whole). social and contextual shapes language:

• Birth-6 weeks-6 months
  
• crying, cooing, non-linguistic
• babbling at 6 months - mouth play that is foundation of words even though non-existent english sounds
• babbling does mirror tones and rhythms of native language
  
• segmenting, attention, discrimination of sounds (high amplitude sucking experiments)
• prosody is key, as well as acoustic cues

• 8 months to 1 yr
• intonation and identification of parts, chunking, sound and syllables
• mental representations
• sounds in words
  
• Storage and memory leads to....

• 1 year
• 1 word utterances, articulation
• beginnning of symbolic realization?
• continuation of storage and memory
• simplified production
  
• substitutions at final positions (especially fricatives, etc...)
  

• 18 months (1 and half years)
• 2 word utterances
• Asymmetry of production and comprehension
• understand and hear contrast more than aquisition/production?
  
• vocabulary spurts
• continuation of articulation and symbolic realization

• 2 years
• word inflections, beginning of internalizing rules?

Children gain meaning from social factors and from contribution of own schema=CONVERSATION AND CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE. reactions of others, approval and correction is key. Also-pragmatics of what kids need.

My reflection/rxns...where is emotion in this? validation of speech and existence and communication?

First post!

As stated at the top of the page, this is an attempt for me to give "shape" to my learning. Currently, I am a doctoral student in Education at NYU. I taught K-3 for about 8 years in Compton and at a charter school in Los Angeles. I have also had a private practice as a Reading Specialist in Manhattan. These days, I am in and around the NYU campus near the Steinhardt School of Human Development, Education and Culture. I work as a research assistant at the Metro Center and also have kept my private practice going part time. I am hoping that this blog will be a way in which I can weave my new learning, coursework and readings into my experiences so that I can further my research and give back to the field of Literacy Education which has given me so much.

Some thoughts about my research...

General Topic: Literacy, Language,

Play and Social-Emotional Development in Early Childhood

I. Question and Hypothesis

Question #1: What is the impact of a child’s socioeconomic status on their literacy development, as evidenced by activities during play?

Hypothesis: I believe that this study will show a correlation between a child’s SES and their oral and linguistic patterns during play activities. It is my contention that children will “script” their play according to personal events, school experiences and daily occurrences in their lives (Schank and Abelson, 1977). Their linguistic and conversational patterns, along with their oral language, will reflect their backgrounds. There will also be a causal connection between the nature of a child’s environment and the characteristics of their language development. I hope that one of the implications of this kind of study would be increased research and funding directed towards the field of play (specifically links between play and literacy). The oral language and linguistic patterns during play will provide greater information about a child’s background and what s/he is bringing culturally to the classroom; ultimately, these findings have a great potential to provide a more thorough literacy profile of children and thus inform instructional decisions made by teachers.

II. Background

After teaching children ages four-eight for about nine years, I became very interested in literacy development. These years are foundational in terms of language and cognitive development. Children are not only learning to decode and encode words; they are learning to interpret, “decode” and make sense of the world around them (Cohen, 2004). Although the classroom is a multi-faceted framework in which to explore these issues, the school playground provides a more natural environment in which to observe the communicative and social tendencies among students. While I was a teacher, I observed play activities; during these observations, I saw more varied dimensions to each child than I had in the classroom. For my students and others, the playground was a social gathering place of varied discourse. It was during recess that I was able to record these authentic, relatively unstructured literacy activities and discourse. Many of the observed “playground literacies” served to inform some of my instructional decisions. Some of these “playground literacies” were: letter writing between students, designing of playground maps or using new vocabulary and/or syntactic structures when calling to each other from the slide. These events contributed to the literacy profiles I created for each student in my class. It made me realize that, when viewing students as readers and writers, it is critical to understand the ways in which they weave language into their worlds of play. Social and recreational activities give a very different (and perhaps more authentic) view of a child’s communicative skills.

According to Macoby and Jacklin (1974), oral language “scripts” are co-constructed and tell observers a great deal about a child’s world. To this effect, they write that, “Children use their personal and cultural knowledge of events (shopping, cooking, weddings, street scenes, and television settings) to build scripts together. Using the outline of their daily life experiences, children create new scripts through shared predictability and collaborative novelty” (116). This notion inspired me to further research the ways in which these “scripts” can be studied during play, to further understand language development as it relates to a child’s background and SES status.

III. Constructs and Variables

There are four essential constructs within this study: socioeconomic status (SES), literacy development, play and impact. SES is being defined as the interaction between social and economic factors in a child’s home environment. “Literacy development” is being defined as linguistic patterns, oral and written language as they relate to a student’s cognitive development. “Play” is being defined as a period of time during or after school in which children are engaged in unstructured activities (relative to classroom lessons). Play can be suggested by an adult or it can be completely child governed; it can be functional, real, game-related or imaginative in nature. “Impact” is being defined as the degree to which elements of a child’s SES influences their language and literacy during play. Specifically, this study will look at the ways in which these factors contribute to the vocabulary and background that a child brings to school. Within SES, the following are the variables: parent/guardian job(s) (or access to jobs), parent/guardian educational level, and income. Within the construct “literacy development,” the variables are: home language, any learning disabilities and classroom curriculum (in terms of the way it governs students’ academic language or subject matter).

Two constructs are critical in terms of specifically measurement. Socioeconomic status will be measured by school records and/or parent self-reports of income, education and job. Literacy development measurements will be discussed below.

IV. Design of Investigation

This investigation will study children’s “playground literacies” in 4 different schools. Two schools will be located in a low SES community and two will be from a high SES community. The study will encompass between 80-100 children. Teachers and researchers will have coding sheets to record the different kids “playground literacies.” Researchers will also use the Oral Language Acquisition Inventory: Linking Research and Theory to Assessment and Instruction. & The Oracy Instructional Guide, Pre-K - Grade 3. This is a research-based assessment, aimed specifically at gauging a child’s developing oral language. Oral language will also be measured through analysis and measurement of Mean Length Utterances.

V. References

Cohen, Jonathan. (2001) Introduction. In Jonathan Cohen (Ed.), Caring

Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of

Young Children (3-29). New York: Teachers College Press.

Gentile, L. The Oral Language Acquisition Inventory (OLAI): Linking Research and

Theory to Assessment and Instruction, Goleta, CA: 1994.

Maccoby, E.E. and C.T. Jacklin. The Psychology of Sex Differences. Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press, 1974.

Oliver, S. and Klugman, E. (2007) “Building a Play Research Agenda: What Do

We Know About Play? What New Questions Do We Need to Ask?” Exchange, 14-17.

Roskos, K., and Christie, J. (2004). “Examining the play-literacy interface: A critical

review and future directions” in Edward Zigler, Dorothy G. Singer, and

Sandra J. Bishop-Josef’s Children’s play: the roots of reading. Washington,

DC: Zero to Three Press. 116.

Schank, R. and R. Abelson. Scripts, plans, goals and understanding: An inquiry

into human knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1977.

I. Question and Hypothesis

Question #2: Is there a relationship between social-emotional learning (SEL) programs in schools and the literacy development of children that attend those schools?

Hypothesis: My hypothesis is that there will be a correlation between schools that are successfully implementing SEL curriculum and the literacy development of children who engage in this curriculum. I believe that the study will show that the use of SEL curriculum will strongly influence classroom and school culture, which will then impact literacy development. Many key ideas within SEL curriculum involve perspective taking, reflection and self-monitoring; these values/skills directly correlate with skills needed for many literacy tasks.

II. Background

As a teacher for almost nine years, I became highly attuned to the classroom culture—both with my students and in other classrooms. As a teacher, I worked hard to co-create a positive, safe and vibrant classroom culture where students felt comfortable taking academic and intellectual risks. This classroom culture was one of my strengths as a teacher. I think most teachers crave this kind of classroom culture. However, I also think that many teachers fall into power struggles with students. Sometimes, I think that teachers tend to alienate the “bad behaved kids,” instead of figuring out how to integrate them back into the classroom as leaders. This has a direct impact on the academic (specifically literacy) progress of students. At a number of schools, I saw a direct correlation between the kinds of social-emotional culture established in a classroom and the literacy achievement of those students. However, I would like to turn these casual observations into a more systematized investigation.

I hope that one of the implications of this kind of study would be increased attention to the seminal importance of SEL curriculum. I hope that this kind of investigation would encourage teachers and practitioners to realize the symbiotic relationship between literacy development and social-emotional development. A major implication of this study could be the requirement of these kinds of programs in schools, as well as funding for the required teacher training.

III. Constructs and Variables

The central constructs in this study are social emotional learning (SEL) educational programs, students’ SEL competence and literacy development. Jonathan Cohen (2001), director of The Center for Social and Emotional Education at Teachers College, believes that, “SEL refers to the process and methods with use to promote social and emotional competence” (4). This is measured by the ability to “understand process, manage, and express the social and emotional aspects of our lives” (Cohen, 2001, 5). This is the operational definition for the SEL construct. The “literacy development” construct will be measured by 3 research-based literacy assessments. This will vary depending on the ages of students and the developmental levels.

One of the key variables in this study will be teacher training and effectiveness (in terms of how well they are implementing SEL curriculum). Another variable will be kids who are non-verbal or who have just entered school. Often, these kids have a particularly hard time integrating rapidly into the classroom community. The last variable will be the school leadership since the administration often directs the overall implementation of programs, as well as the general culture of the school.

IV. Design of Investigation

This investigation will take place at five schools located in urban areas. Three schools will have an identified and “required” SEL curriculum. Two schools will not have these curriculums (although teachers may choose to create their own, which could be a variable). Ideally, this would be a two year study so that researchers could track the development of the students over more than one academic year. Ideally, this would be a longitudinal study over the course of ten years.

In conducting this study, parent, teacher, administrator and student interviews will be conducted in order to understand the adult concept of SEL at the school sites. These interviews will also ask the adults to reflect on the SEL of the school community. Researchers will have coding sheets to guide the observations at schools (especially in terms of looking for certain language or behavior characteristics. As stated in section III, the “literacy development” construct will be measured by 3 research-based assessments that will correspond to the academic level of the child (e.g.: an alphabet sound assessment for Kindergarteners but a comprehension assessment for 4^th graders).

V. References

Cohen, Jonathan. (2001) Introduction. In Jonathan Cohen (Ed.), Caring

Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of

Young Children (3-29). New York: Teachers College Press.

Mungo, D., and Rosenblitt, D. (2001) “Helping Emotionally Vulnerable Children:

Moving Toward and Empathetic Orientation in the Classroom.” In Jonathan

Cohen (Ed.), Caring Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of Young Children (59-76). New York: Teachers College Press.