Chapter+7+AT-Emergent+Literacy

= Chapter 7 - Assistive Technology and Emergent Literacy = Enter the important information from chapters here for a quick reference (use bullets)

Preliteracy and Emergent literacy are used to describe the same period of development including infant, toddler and preschool years. Preliteracy includes early developmental experiences such as early communication, play, and exposure to many froms of literacy inclding books. Emergent literacy includes specific skills including print and alphabet awareness, comprehension, phonolgoical awareness and early writing. (Figure 7.1 on page 125)
 * Preliteracy and Emergent Literacy:**

Experiences that support early literacy development occur in typical daily activites within the context of family life. Routine activites, such as groery shopping with a young child while the adult points tho the logo or label on favorite cerals, help promote recognition of symbols and print awarenes. Throughout the daily environments, young children frequently experience expose to print as they observe adults and family members making lists and reading menus, newspapers, magazines, and books. Simple adaptations to daily activites can enable children to participate, take turns, make choices, and build language skills to support emergent literacy skills (see table 7.1 on page 131).
 * Family Literacy and Assistive Technology:**

//Simplifying books is a critical element to meet the developmenal needs and language level of each individual child.// In order to simplify language to make it accessible to each child, adults needs to stress key words, shorten sentences, and abbreviate the text within books to maintain the child's attention and engagement while reading the book together. Other low-tech strategies include covering up excessive text so that only key words are visible and using transparent highlighter tape to emphasize key words in the text that relate to pictures or story elements in the book. Also, adults can editorialize the text to shorten phrases, simplify concepts and use vocabulary that is within the understanding level of the individual child. (Table 7.2 page 134)
 * Linguistice Access**


 * Cognitive Access**

The child's knowledge and understanding of the relationships between the objects, people, and event in his or her daiily environments enables further learning. Adults need to assist children to connect their experience with the contents of the books. Additional adaptions using low-tech AT include using props in the form of objects, photographs, icons, and other materials that extend the concepts and vocabulary in the book to the child's cognitive understanding. Examples of props include pictures mounted on thin sticky-back foam and laminated with velcro attachments to the pages of the book. Stuffed animal, puppets, or toys may also be used as props when related to the concepts in a particular book such as teddy bear for Brown Bear or battery-operated frog with Jump, Frog, Jump. The connections between actual objects, pictures, and vocabulary content in books assist young children to make the cognitive "leap" and gain meaning from participation in book reading.