Pictures!! You have to love pictures. As a child that's how I would rate a book. If it had lots of pictures then I wanted to read it. As much as I hate to admit it today, I haven't really changed. Don't get me wrong here, I read WAY to much for my own good nowadays, but if I were offered a book with pictures to read I would easily choose it instead. So I was intrigued when reading chapter three of Word Identification Strategies by Barbara Fox, when she discussed the "environmental cue strategy". This is when kids associate meaning with the signs, package labels, and logos in their everyday surroundings. In other words, PICTURES!!! My daughter is 4 years old and every time a Costco truck drives by us she says "There goes a Costco truck!!" But when we write out Costco on a piece of paper she had no idea what it means. IT is easy to see she recognizes the logo. When we read books she is the same way. She knows the title of every book by the picture on the front cover. The weird thing is EVERY child I know at this age seems to use the environmental cue strategy to learn language. So my question would be how does a child learn language when confronted with books and stories with no pictures? Would it take longer to learn? Would the child pick it up quicker because the focus is not on the pictures and surrounding visuals?
An example was given of a child holding up a picture of a race car given to him by his father that had the phrase "Gentleman, Start Your Engines" across the top. The child would yell the phrase even though he couldn't read the words. He associated that phrase with the picture. I wonder how long it takes a 4 - 5 year old who is associated words/phrases with pictures to move onto actually understanding the letters on a page? When do they start "self-monitoring" and "self correcting"? Or as I like to ask my daughter..."When are you going to grow up?" I think it is absolutely amazing a 4 year old can hold so much information, but yet can't pick up Lincoln Logs when she is done playing with them:(
Cheerio
Oh but Lincoln Logs feel so pleasant when they are under your bare feet in the middle of the night...
ReplyDeleteWell Sir, I too wonder when children transform from words and pictures to understanding the words themselves. However, I also wonder if it's them that makes the transition, or do us teachers force such a thing upon them, even if they aren't ready?
Well I'd like to think we don't force anything...but perhaps that's the transition. OR perhaps it truly is just a stepping stone that children naturally make to understanding words. The process of learning is an unpredictable thing. I'm wondering if the stepping blocks for some people, are jumped over by others...or do some altogether miss them and get their feet wet? Blah....what am I even saying? I've gone crossed eyed in all this talk!