Emergent Literacy

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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