home

Literacy is reading, writing, speaking and listening, and involves the knowledge and skills required to engage in activities required for effective functioning in the community (Hill, 2006 p.3). Learning to read, write and gain world knowledge is a developmental process (Hill, 2006 p.5). Children go through many phases when developing early literacy, these include;
 * Home**
 * 1) Beginning (0-3 years of age) During the beginning stage the child explores books and magazines by touching, looking, tasting, smelling and listening to the words read aloud. They also learn how to turn pages, look at pictures, hold crayons and pencils, and to scribble (Hill, 2006 p.3).
 * 2) Early emergent (3-5 years of age) During the early emergent phase children scribble random numbers or letters, memories favorite stories and rhymes and even begin to write initial letters of words. For example write 'D' for Dog (Hill, 2006 p.3).
 * 3) Emergent (P-Kindergarten) During the emergent phase children are able to record initial and final sounds in a word, begin to grasp concept of words, read word-by-word, writes words leaving spaces between and begins to understand a sentence and some punctuation (Hill, 2006 p.3).
 * 4) Early (K-Year 1) During the early phase children can write many high frequency words, can write 3 and 4 letter words, adjusts reading style to the text, reads word by word matching each spoken word with a printed word, can write simple sentences and writes about topics that are meaningful (Hill, 2006 p.3).
 * 5) Transitional (Years 1-2) During the transitional phase children are fine-tuning their reading and writing strategies. They are now more fluent when reading out aloud, have developed greater ease with the art of handwriting, are writing more efficiently, have a better understanding of the meaning of the text and use a variety of spelling strategies (Hill, 2006 p.3).
 * 6) Extending (Years 2-4) During the extending phase children use many strategies to spell words, understands that some sounds are made by two letters, use a range of reading strategies to identify new words and comprehend texts, can write a range of text types, revise edit and proof read their work and uses a range of punctuation (Hill, 2006 p.3).

This wikispace consists of many different elements children encounter when developing early literacy, which include:
 * Learning to read
 * Teaching Reading
 * Learning to write
 * Teaching writing
 * Phonics
 * Literacy activities
 * Multiliteracies

By Ashleigh Smith 700180008