Emergent Literacy

Emergent Literacy by Erin Sheldon

instruction, literacy & inclusion

Emergent Literacy

We need to teach literacy to all of our students, including those with the most significant disabilities. We hear this mes- sage in professional learning and see it across our social media feeds. We overflow conference sessions describing the routines of emergent literacy instruction. Thousands of us have joined study groups for the new book from Karen Erickson and David Koppenhaver, Comprehensive Literacy for All. The book is a re- markably accessible description of the instructional routines necessary to meet the literacy learning needs of our students. It also describes the modifications, accommodations and explicit lessons that might be required to ensure this instruction is ac- cessible for the range of disabilities our students face. Our field has never known more about how to make our lit- eracy instruction effective, engaging and relevant than we do now. It feels like the launch of a literacy revolution for students with significant disabilities and complex communication needs. At the same time, however, many of us are attempting to share all this learning with educators who are new to the emer- gent literacy instructional framework. These instructional rou- tines are familiar to early childhood educators, but may be com- pletely novel to many special educators and secondary teachers. Our teams might struggle with new terms for tools like alternate pencils, or remembering which routines are emergent vs con- ventional. We might be stymied trying to integrate new routines with our old literacy programs and practices. Our colleagues may be wrestling with questions about whether all students can truly become literate. We might face headwinds in our schools where terms like ‘reading instruction’ can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. We might be working in a school that

mandates we use a specific literacy curriculum. We might miss the forest of comprehensive literacy for the trees of specific tools or interventions. What to do? This article describes a simple framework to understand emergent literacy instruction. It is intended to help you break down and share expert knowledge with the front-line staff in your buildings, districts or individual education plan (IEP) teams. It should help you demystify new terms and frame the work of literacy instruction for your colleagues. It is intended to make emergent literacy instruction feel less intimidating and more doable. I developed this simple big-picture frame to make the details of specific interventions more accessible to the teams I support. It is not meant to replace the evidence-based interven- tions of comprehensive instruction. But it might help you focus attention on the big picture of quality emergent literacy instruc- tion. EMERGENT LITERACY First, let’s clarify what is meant by emergent literacy instruc- tion. Emergent literacy instruction develops the understandings and behaviors that lay the foundation for conventional reading and writing. These are the understandings and behaviors that children without disabilities learn almost incidentally while growing up in households surrounded by models of speaking, reading and writing. Babies are exposed to the sounds of their language before birth. Infants engage in playful back-and-forth exchanges with caregivers long before they have language to express words. Small children witness speech directed at them and around them, while observing adults use tools like key-

ERIN SHELDON is the special education lead for AssistiveWare. She earned her M Ed studying the instruc- tional needs of students with significant disabilities. She has worked in the field of AAC implementation for ten years, coming to this field as the parent of a child with complex communication needs. Erin led the Angelman Syndrome Foundation’s year-long free webinar series, the Communication Training Series. She works with families, SLPs, special educators, and general educators to expand access to AAC and plan comprehen - sive literacy instruction for emergent AAC users. She has published journal articles, book chapters, internet modules, and instructional manuals. Erin has presented on AAC implementation in over a dozen countries and at a wide variety of regional, national, and international conferences. She serves on a variety of non-profit advisory councils, including CommunicationFIRST, InclusionOntario, and TASH.

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Figure 1: Language & literacy develops as a continuum

boards, books, smart phones, pen and paper. Adults engineer learning opportunities for young children by providing access to the tools of reading and writing with storybooks and crayons. Preschoolers learn the routines of listening to and responding to storybooks. They proudly contribute to the text around them, sharing their drawings and scribbles. By the time most children begin school, they know the letters of the alphabet and the role of books, writing tools, words and speech. They may not know how to spell legible text or decode words, but they are ready for conventional instruction that will allow them to communicate, read and write with anyone who knows their language. Emergent literacy development is the accumulation of all those rich experiences with words and texts, from infancy to school age. These emergent experiences prepare and motivate children for the rigours of conventional instruction. But many of our students with significant disabilities missed these rich experiences. If they could not speak, they may have

never engaged in joyful back-and-forth exchanges with a care- giver. They may have never seen others use language in a way the student could participate, such as by modelling an AAC sys- tem. Their attention to storybooks may have appeared fleeting, and their exploration of books may have seemed random or de- structive. They may have physically struggled to handle books or writing tools. If their vision or visual processing was impaired, they may have never witnessed the reading and writing occur- ring all around them. Our students with significant disabilities need the most explicit and intensive experiences with language and literacy, but they may arrive at school with the least. Our literacy and language instruction must build access to the foun- dational experiences and opportunities these students have missed. Comprehensive emergent literacy instruction fills in these gaps. How do you know if your students are still emergent in their understandings of literacy? Just watch them. What a student

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these students can be understood by complete strangers. Con- ventional students have learned the knowledge and skills of how we use words and text to communicate. But conventional instruction will only be inappropriate after a rich foundation of emergent literacy experiences has been laid. With conventional skills, our students can read to learn about any topic. They can be known and understood by anyone they choose. The goal of comprehensive emergent literacy instruc- tion is to move our students towards conventional literacy. COMPREHENSIVE EMERGENT LITERACY INSTRUCTION Erickson (2017) identified six instructional routines that en- compass comprehensive emergent literacy instruction. Com- prehensive instruction addresses all of the elements necessary for students to read with comprehension and write to convey thinking. These routines include: • Access to AAC, demonstrated and used by others, all day, every day. • Shared reading: a more skilled other scaffolds engagement with text. • Shared writing: co-construction of text, when a more skilled other scaffolds the process of developing an idea that is then represented in print. • Alphabet instruction and phonological awareness: learn- ing the name and forms of each letter and the most com- mon sounds they represent. • Independent reading: students apply their knowledge of books to independently handle and engage with texts. • Independent writing: students apply their knowledge of the alphabet to independently generate text. With the exception of AAC modelling, each of these instruc- tional routines is likely familiar to early childhood educators. De- tails on how to best implement each of these routines can be found in sources listed at the end of this article. The purpose of the remainder of this article is to reassure any educator who is overwhelmed by the idea of adding six new routines (and their accompanying new terms and tools) to their classroom reper- toire. While each of these routines has unique value as specific literacy interventions, they share much in common. Embedded in each of these routines is a common flow of interactions be- tween educators and our students. This flow helps structure a set of experiences that our students require to build a founda- tion of literacy. As we’re learning to implement the routines of comprehensive emergent literacy instruction, it may be helpful to focus on the big picture of this flow of interaction. Over time, we can refine our practice, adding more detail and precision to each individual routine. THE CYCLE OF EMERGENT LITERACY INSTRUCTION The cycle of emergent literacy instruction is an explicit ap- proach to literacy and language instruction. The cycle illus- trates the common flow of interaction between educators and

knows about language and literacy can usually be observed and described. The continuum of literacy understandings is illustrat- ed in Figure 1. Our early emergent students are still learning what language and the tools of literacy are all about. They may bang books together, chew the crayons, or ignore the symbol display. They may only engage with a page or two of a book, or a letter or two of a keyboard, before appearing to lose inter- est. They may have motor disabilities that have prevented them from physically exploring books or writing tools. Early emergent students communicate in ways that are idiosyncratic. As caring adults, we interpret their behavior to infer their feelings and pref- erences, then show them ways they could express their message with AAC. Early emergent students need frequent, predictable instruction that demonstrates the purpose of these tools, using formats that are accessible to them. Our job is to entice these students to observe us and interact with us as we use language and text. Daily emergent literacy routines allow them to make sense of these tools and experiences, and their role within them. We know our students are making progress when they engage with us with a favorite book, select a graphic symbol or a string of letters. These behaviors demonstrate their growing familiarity with literacy routines, tools and behaviors. Emergent students are learning to participate in common routines like reading a storybook with us. They can predict what is happening. They have an idea what is expected of them when we sit down to read a book, draw a picture or point to a symbol while we talk. They observe us select letters and symbols to ex- press ideas, but they are just learning to use symbols or letters or words themselves. Their early communication with symbols is inconsistent and often inaccurate or difficult to interpret. But we have piqued their curiosity and demonstrated these tools have meaning and relevance. Our emergent students are devel- oping preferences, such as favorite books, activities or reading partners. Our job is to expand on those preferences and support these emergent students to actively participate with language and literacy. We know they are making progress when we see them initiating communication, interacting with us with books and directing how we read with them and exploring the alpha- bet to generate text. Early conventional students are demonstrating consistency, such as readily participating and contributing in language and literacy routines. They might know the names of most letters but are still learning how they represent sounds in words. They are attending to a complete text and not just to page-by-page interactions. They are initiating communication around differ- ent activities. Familiar partners can interpret their messages, using context to fill in gaps in the student’s message. Slowly, they begin to use tools like AAC and the alphabet to demon- strate what they understand. Traditional, conventional literacy instruction will teach these students the conventions of spelling, reading comprehension, decoding, and syntax, like word order and grammar. It is only when their skills are conventional that

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Figure 2: The cycle of emergent literacy instruction

students that is embedded within the instructional routines of comprehensive emergent literacy instruction. Attending to this flow of interaction helps us focus on the ‘for- est’ of building a foundation of language and literacy. The cycle helps us extend our literacy instruction across the school day, and distribute that instruction even into non instructional time. Attending to the cycle maximizes our opportunities to develop language. Reading, writing and communication are not just for the literacy block! See Figure 2. TEACH Emergent literacy understandings are fostered during inter- actions about interesting topics. The literacy block is a natural opportunity to teach a range of topics, from curricular content to the things and activities our students most enjoy. Literacy is how we talk and share about what we are interested in. ‘Teach’ might sound self-evident, but it is a reminder not to provide our literacy instruction in isolation from all the things our students care about and are learning about. Literacy experiences are an important part of how we acquire the language that supports our thinking. When we read, write and talk about a topic, we form stronger mental representations of the topic or concept itself. Many of our students need explicit, intense support to build strong mental representations of ab- stract concepts. Literacy instruction is the vehicle to support our students’ conceptual understanding of any given topic. Our in- structional routines stay predictable and routine, but our differ-

ent topics provide constant variety and interest.

EXPERIENCE Our students need multi-sensory experiences to support their learning about any given topic. ‘Experience’ ensures that we are combining language with something tangible. Consider how to incorporate movement or sensation, including something to see, touch, hear or taste. The goal is that all students have oppor- tunities to perceive and experience what we are teaching. Literacy embeds language in experience. It transforms activ- ities into knowledge, by providing language that deepens and broadens how we think and remember. Experiences give us something worth the effort of talking, writing and reading. I visited a classroom last December that was deep into experiencing all the best of what the holidays had to offer. The students were cooking holiday feasts, taste-testing treats, attending special performances, listening to music, crafting gifts and watching holiday movies. The teacher apologized that they had put their literacy instruction on hold during that final busy week before winter break. This is a symptom of what I call the ‘kale theory’ of literacy. It’s when we know literacy is important, but we haven’t integrated it into our regular or special activities. This classroom reflected how easy it is to isolate literacy from experience. All those fabulous holiday activities were the perfect topics to read, write and talk about! The foods we like and do not like, the

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I visited a classroom last December that was deep into ex- periencing all the best of what the holidays had to offer. The students were cooking holiday feasts, taste-testing treats, at- tending special performances, listening to music, crafting gifts and watching holiday movies. The teacher apologized that they had put their literacy instruction on hold during that final busy week before winter break. This is a symptom of what I call the ‘kale theory’ of literacy. It’s when we know literacy is important, but we haven’t integrated it into our regular or special activities. This classroom reflected how easy it is to isolate literacy from experience. All those fabulous holiday activities were the per- fect topics to read, write and talk about! The foods we like and do not like, the movies we love, what we see and do: all of these experiences are what we share through language. A focus on lit- eracy as the vehicle to encode those fun experiences into mem- ory could have turned these activities into rich and meaning- ful instruction. This classroom missed the opportunity to make December the richest month for literacy, rather than the most impoverished.] SHOW As we plan rich experiences to teach important concepts, we show our students how they can talk and write about what we are doing. If our students have complex communication needs, then we show them how to do this using their AAC. We demon- strate the use of their AAC, such as how we decide which sym- bols to select to express different messages. AAC needs to be modelled all day, every day. When we want to use a word that is not available in their AAC, then we show our students how we can spell the word with the symbol set of the alphabet. We make AAC personal and meaningful by attributing mean- ing to what our students express. If they smiled and laughed during a performance, then we show them how we can use AAC to say we LIKED it. If they covered their ears and turned away, then we show them how they could complain we did NOT LIKE it. When in doubt, we use AAC to reflect what we see our stu- dents expressing. Students who cannot speak will never have an AAC system that contains every word they might want to use. There are sim- ply too many words in the English language to cram them all into a functional AAC system. This is where the symbol set of the alphabet is the most powerful. We can show our students how to spell the words they are missing. We can demonstrate this whenever we have a message to write. For our most emergent movies we love, what we see and do: all of these experiences are what we share through language. A focus on literacy as the vehicle to encode those fun experiences into memory could have turned these activities into rich and meaningful instruction. This classroom missed the opportunity to make December the richest month for literacy, rather than the most impoverished.

students, we might only show how we identified the first letter in the word we are seeking. We show our students as many let- ters as they will attend to us demonstrating. We make our think- ing visible by sounding out the words and thinking-aloud, such as “I LIKE that! It is FANTASTIC! I hear an F, fantastic!” INVITE We’ve shown our students how they can talk about what we are experiencing. Now we invite our students to respond. They may choose to respond with multi-modal methods such as ges- tures or facial expressions, vocalizations, symbol use or even not at all. We increase the likelihood of a response when we make our invitation as an open-ended comment, such as “I LIKED the performance. I wonder if YOU LIKED it, too.” Now we wait for a response. We look expectant and curious, and we’re prepared to wait as long as 30 seconds. Our emergent students need time to process what is expected, then consider and organize a response. If our students don’t respond, we invite them again, such as by demonstrating another possible comment. “I saw you smile, I think you might have LIKED it.” We wait expectantly again. If the student does not respond to this second invitation, then we move on. If they do respond, then we repeat their re- sponse and elaborate a bit more. For example, if, after our sec- ond invitation, the student smiles and laughs, then we might say “yeah, you LIKED it, too!” Emergent students are still making sense of language expe- riences and literacy tools. They are still learning what their AAC does. They are discovering the joy of engaging, reading and writing. Our goal is not to get a“correct”response, because these students are still learning what language and literacy are all about. Instead, we set goals that our students will accept more invitations to participate, from more people, during more con- texts. We prepare them for this success by showing them ways they can participate and maximizing the opportunities to do so. WRITE Writing is the process of encoding speech as written text. Our emergent students are learning that what we say can be written, and what is written can be read aloud. We make this process ex- plicit by maximizing opportunities for our students to observe us as we generate text. For example, after viewing a performance, we commented that we LIKED the performance and we showed our students they could comment as well. We might have reviewed photo- graphs or video of the performance so that our topic is even more concrete. We invited our student to respond and she smiled and laughed in affirmation. When an emergent student accepts this invitation to respond, it is a tree that fell in the forest and the whole world needs to hear! We now create the opportu- nity for the student to observe us as we write down our co-creat- ed message: “We saw a holiday performance. We liked it!”

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While we write down the message, we draw attention to whatever part of writing feels most relevant to our student’s cur- rent understandings. We might emphasize where we found spe- cific letters on the keyboard or other alternate pencil. We might sound out a key word, emphasizing the initial letter or any key letter-sound relationship. We might emphasize the act of choos- ing an audience, such as saying. “I think your Mom would like to hear about the performance. Should we write her a note that we LIKED it?”This gives us the opportunity to sound out and spell a personally-meaningful word, such as “Mom.” Written work is published when it becomes something we can share. We can publish our writing on everything from a sticky note, to the home-school communication log, to a notebook we keep just for this purpose. We can send the co-created message as a text, email or social media post. We will often pair the text with a photo or other visual cue to help our student retrieve the memory and engage again with the text. Reducing the message to print allows us to demonstrate the power of print: it can now be easily shared with others. This has particular value for stu- dents with complex communication needs. The more effortful it is to generate a message, the more efficient it is to create written records that can be easily shared with many audiences. READ Our last step is to ensure that the text we generated is read by someone who finds it interesting. This might be another adult in the room, such as the special or general educator, a favorite therapist or paraprofessional. We might share the printed mes- sage with classmates, friends or peer tutors. We might save the message for when we encounter people walking in the hallway or when we visit the school nurse or front office. We might send the message home, supporting the family to create a routine of reading the student’s messages aloud while sharing other family news. Families are often deeply interested in these communica- tions. It gives them a window into their student’s school expe- rience and provides more ways for their student to join family conversations. Some messages we write have only passing importance. Oth- ers can become stories that are read and shared with many peo- ple. Similarly, the messages we write with our students may be read only once, or may be worth “publishing” in a more durable format. We can turn these written messages into simple books by pairing the text with a photo or remnant. The most interest- ing messages we write together can become texts that will be popular in our classroom library. What matters is that our students have frequent opportuni- ties to observe that what we talk about can become print, and what we print can be read aloud and talked about some more. Emergent students are often more difficult to engage with com- mercial printed books. They are often most motivated by text

with strong personal relevance, such as stories of their own lives. Developing routines to reduce our conversations to written text creates daily opportunities for students to take a more active role in sharing their stories, setting the topic of conversation and engage with personally meaningful text. CONCLUSION There are six instructional routines that, together, provide a comprehensive approach to emergent literacy instruction (Erick- son, 2017). The cycle shared above highlights the flow of interac- tions that are common to all of these interventions. First, we en- sure we are teaching topics and ideas of interest to our students, developing their conceptual understandings and ensuring they have things worth talking, reading and writing about. Next, we ensure that our instructional activities are hands-on and partici- patory, supporting all students to perceive and experience what we are learning. We then demonstrate the use of our students’ AAC to talk about those experiences, so they can observe how their AAC system can share a range of messages and foster in- teraction. Next, we invite our students to respond and partici- pate by sharing their own ideas. We generate written text about those experiences and responses, maximizing opportunities for our students to observe the process of speech as it is encoded to text. Finally, we look for opportunities to share that personal- ly-meaningful text with new communication partners who read it with our student. Adopting this flow of interaction is not a substitute for pro- viding our students with the explicit, structured instruction they need to build their knowledge of language and literacy. But this cycle can help us remember the big picture. Language and lit- eracy is the vehicle through which our students with significant disabilities can learn about the world, organize their thinking, share their experiences and express their own ideas. The cycle described above helps us extend our literacy instruction across the school day, getting us closer to the two hours per day of lit- eracy instruction that Erickson and Koppenahver (2020) recom- mend. It helps distribute that instruction into non instructional time, giving us a framework to turn our experiences of school assemblies, special events, recess and the like into activities we can talk, write, and read about. In this way, we can all be part of the literacy revolution for students with significant disabilities.

ABBIE’S SECOND GRADE CLASS

Abbie sits in a small group with her second grade peers watching a video of the life cycle of a butterfly. Her AAC is in easy-reach. A duplicate of her AAC is available to her peers as well. The students are watching the video with the purpose of describing four vocabulary terms: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly. After the video, the students use a simple graphic organizer - a concept map - to brainstorm words related to each vocabu-

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Abbie’s teacher knows from experience that Abbie will read the book, independently with technology or paired with classmates, for weeks to come. See Sheldon & Erickson (2020) for more ideas about embed- ding comprehensive emergent literacy instruction in the regular classroom. SOURCES: Erickson, K. (2017). Comprehensive literacy instruction, in- terprofessional collaborative practice, and students with severe disabilities. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 26, 193–205. doi: 10.1044/2017_AJSLP-15-0067 Erickson, K., & Koppenhaver, D. (2020). Comprehensive liter- acy for all: Teaching children with significant disabilities to read and write. Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Sheldon, E. & Erickson, K. (2020). Emergent literacy instruc- tion for students with significant disabilities in the regular class- room. Assistive Technology Outcomes and Benefits (14), in press. FREE RESOURCES TO LEARN THE ROUTINES OF COMPREHENSIVE EMERGENT LITERACY INSTRUCTION: Project Core, from the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies, includes 12 free professional learning modules on the instructional routines associated comprehensive emergent liter- acy instruction. Literacy Instruction for Students with Significant Disabil- ities http://literacyforallinstruction.ca offers information, re- search-based instructional approaches, and effective instruc- tional and learning strategies to support school leaders, teachers, and other specialists working to better meet the literacy and communication needs of students with significant disabilities, including students with moderate to severe cognitive disabili- ties, complex communication needs, and multiple disabilities including deaf/blindness and/or physical access challenges. InclusionOntario, recorded webinars explaining the cycle of comprehensive emergent literacy instruction as it applied to each of the instructional routines. https://www.inclusionontario. ca/Emergent-Literacy.html.

lary term. They refer back to the video or to a classroom text on butterflies to help them generate ideas. Abbie reaches out and touches the butterfly images on the page. Her classmates attri- bute meaning to what Abbie brings attention to, then generate words in response, such as “I think you are noticing that the but- terfly is drinking. Let’s write that down.” As they collect words, they look through Abbie’s AAC system to ensure she has those words available. If she doesn’t, they try to re-state the word us- ing terms she has available in her system. Their goal is to create definitions for each vocabulary term using words Abbie can use, too. Once the students have finished brainstorming, they select the words they feel are the most descriptive. One of the stu- dents is learning to keyboard, and she types their sentences into a word processing document. The students use parter-assist- ed scanning to ask Abbie for her word selections. Abbie nods and vocalizes in response to “hungry,”“growing”, “changing,” and “beautiful.”Their completed sentences look like this:

Eggs are small. Eggs are round. Eggs are many! Eggs become caterpillars.

Caterpillars are hungry. Caterpillars are growing. Caterpillars are moving. Caterpillars become a chrysalis. The chrysalis does not eat. The chrysalis sleeps. The chrysalis changes. The chrysalis is growing wings. The butterfly is coming out! The butterfly is drinking. The butterfly is flying. The butterfly is beautiful. The butterfly is laying eggs.

The paraprofessional supervises as the children copy and paste each sentence on to its own page of a slide making soft- ware. The students also paste each sentence into an image search on the internet. Abbie watches with anticipation as a selection of images appears with each search. She reaches out and selects an image for each sentence. The students copy and paste her choice of photos into each slide, sometimes lobbying her to select a particular image. Their simple book is finished be- fore recess starts. The children proudly show off their book to their classroom teacher. Abbie tells her teacher “hungry beau- tiful” as she reviews their book. Her teacher grins and agrees, pointing to where those words appear in their new book. This classroom book is sure to be popular in the classroom library.

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