Reading and Environment Go Hand-In-Hand

Chapter 1 focuses heavily on the importance of early childhood literacy, and the positive effects children receive from being exposed to literature/literacy early on. Before reading this, If someone would have asked me why I thought reading came so easily for me upon starting grade school, I would have solely said “because my parents read to me a lot.” What I did not realize until now is how much my day-to-day living environment and way of life affected my literacy development. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household with a stay at home mom, who not only engaged in various activities with me such as reading, but also took me everywhere she went. In the text there was a story about a little girl named Natalie who was out shopping with her mother and said, “Look, Mommy, I can read those letters: T-A-R-G-E-T. Those letters spell Marshalls.” (page 2) Natalie was correlating literacy with different environments she had been in. This is a perfect example of why I feel so lucky to have had a mom who took me all sorts of different places throughout the days. I can remember strolling through the mall or the grocery store, and sitting in a cart and seeing all the different labels and signs, and then hearing my mom and other people say them out loud. I was visiting these various places so often that I began recognizing pictures, letters, and words, and therefore my mom was furthering my literacy development without even realizing it. I think literacy development in children is so greatly affected by one’s daily environments, not just how often they are read to. From this realization I now wonder, how can a child’s early literacy development reach its full potential if they come from a struggling home?

I have to stop and wonder the type of literacy development opportunities that children receive who come from financially struggling homes, where the parents, or parent are working 2-3 jobs everyday  to support their families. Though I am sure many of those parents wish they had more time to invest in their child, some just don’t have the opportunity. Children too young to begin school may often get sent to a babysitter or care center, and therefore stricken to the same environment all day everyday. Though some development could take place during that time, does the consistency in environment put a slight hold on literacy development? This is why I so highly admire teachers who think more out of the box with their teaching styles. In grade school whenever we read in our science text books, we would often go outside and sit in different areas, correlating the nature surrounding us to the text we were reading. This made me have a deeper and more memorable understanding of the context. I believe my literacy growth as a child was deeply impacted by my daily environments, and I have to wonder the type of growth young children receive that only go to one or two different places every week. Though of course being introduced to books early on is very crucial for early literacy development, I think daily environmental change along with daily reading is just as crucial.

An outside source that speaks about "Literacy-rich Environments" is http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=684

This article expresses different ways to use the environment to promote literacy skills. It states, "A literacy-rich environment does more than provide visual exposure to print. It also provides opportunities for meaningful interaction with it."

Children cannot have "meaningful interactions" in their environments if nothing ever changes within them.