EMERGENT READING

TEACHING AND LEARNING HOW TO READ AND WRITE IN A SIGNIFICANT AND FUNCTIONAL MANNER

Aims of the project

•  Develop a work plan for classes in which children MAKE A START WITH THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE according to the proposals of the EMERGENT READING approach

As Ana Teberosky points out (1966), reading and writing cannot be conceived simply as skills that involve peripheral, basically visual, motor and auditive processes. It is much more complicated and widespread.

Reading and writing are acts of communication and as such are not solitary actions restricted to a single issuer and a single receiver. They are interactive processes between the person who reads and the text that someone has produced, and between the person who writes and the text that is being constructed.

READING IS UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS WRITTEN.

WRITING IS FUNDAMENTALLY BUILDING A WRITTEN TEXT

Writing does not only involve writing letters, joined together in order to form words and texts, therefore anyone who learns how to read and write most develop a series of MENTAL OPERATIONS, not only psychomotor, but visual and auditive.

What is the best way of acquiring reading and writing skills?

THE EMERGENT READING APPROACH TO LEARNING PROVIDES US WITH THE ANSWER.

Whoever learns, "learns better" when HE or SHE does so by reconstructing knowledge, based on what he/she knows or thinks he/she knows, and the new thing to learn has meaning for him/her.

He/she plays a LEADING ROLE IN HIS/HER LEARNING PROCESS. Based on his/her PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE, by making HYPOTHESES and by checking if these are correct or not, he/she advances towards the adult model in REAL SITUATIONS IN WHICH WRITTEN LANGUAGE IS USED.

General pedagogIC principles

• THE STUDENT becomes the driving force of his/her own learning process.

• THE TEACHER provides students with guidance by placing their previous knowledge and experience into contact with new objectives, with new contents and proposes a sufficient VARIETY OF TEXTS to favour the acquisition of a communicative capacity.

• PARTICIPATIVE METHODOLOGY: It is important to provide dynamics to foster WORKING IN GROUPS, reflection and JOINT DECISION-MAKING, etc., in order to favour COOPERATION, EXCHANGE AND THE COMPARISON OF OPINIONS and non discriminatory attitude.

• TEACHING THEM TO LEARN BY THEMSELVES: Teachers provide their students with techniques, methods and procedures that help them to learn by themselves and to gradually make them more self-sufficient in their own learning process.

• GAMES are seen as the correct resource for motivation and inter-group relations.

• ATTENTION TO DIVERSITY: Our work as educators takes into consideration the different learning rates, interests and motivations of students.

OUR TASK CONSISTS OF TEACHING THEM TO "USE THEIR OWN RESOURCES AND TO GRADUALLY INCREASE THESE IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE, PROCEDURES AND CONDUCTS THAT INCREASE THEIR OWN KNOWLEDGE"