Nurturing Literacy

     Ah, phonemic awareness. I came to know this term, before I ever started a teacher education program, as a substitute teacher working in elementary classrooms. To me and my students, phonemic awareness was a time each day, working in yet another leveled group, that I got out a big, spiral-bound book and led the children through boring, scripted exercises. "I am going to say two sounds," I would read. "You say the sounds back to me, then put them together to make a word. Are you ready, Daniel? f - ish. Now you say it back to me." Despite the enthusiasm I attempted to bring to the exercises, the kids would look back at me, nonplussed. "I don't like this game," they would say.

     Honestly, at that time, I couldn't blame them. The activities were boring and repetitive. I hated reading the script. The kids hated parroting back to me, and hated even more when they struggled in front of their peers. I felt like phonemic awareness was another drill-and-kill system designed more with bubbles in mind than a child's brain--no imagination, no play, no humor.

      Imagine my happy surprise upon reading Chapter Four of Rasinski and Padak's From Phonics to Fluency. In this chapter on phonemic awareness, the authors assert that, "for most students, phonemic awareness is nurtured more than it is taught." Examples of activities to nurture phonemic awareness in students include rhymes, chants, songs, poetry, nursery rhymes, jump rope chants, tongue twisters, popular lyrics, and raps. How refreshing and reassuring to know that, for the general student body, scripted phonemic awareness exercises do not make the list.

     There is something this fabulous list reminds me of: Waldorf Education.

     Literacy instruction in Waldorf Education tends to get a bad rap from those who don't take the time to understand it, mainly because formalized instruction in reading and writing do not begin until first grade in a Waldorf School. However, this does not mean that kindergarten is an unproductive time for literacy learning! Like Rasinski and Padak say in Chapter Four, "kindergarten is a place for children to become ready for school and ready to learn to read." The Waldorf approach does just that.

Circle time in a kindergarten class at the Waldorf School of Louisville

     Waldorf kindergarteners have circle time each day, in which they learn seasonal songs, rhymes, verses, and chants. The children are playing with sounds and language, taking in rhyme, cadence, and emotion, stretching their understanding of phonemic awareness. Waldorf kindergarteners are also told stories from fairy tales and folk tales, like the Three Billy Goats Gruff. These stories have simple plots and repeated elements that the children can grasp onto. It is common for a Waldorf kindergarten teacher to retell the same story several days in a row. The children become very familiar with the language, characters, and plot, and incorporate them into their own play through drama--living out the story again and again.

 The Waldorf kindergarten builds a foundation for the literacy learning that will happen when the children reach first grade, where their familiar characters and stories take on new life in writing. But I think that may be a blog post for another day.

(Want to know more about life in a Waldorf early childhood room? Sneak a peek here.)