Literacy Portrait of a Five-Year Old Child

EDR 101: The Reading Process

University of the Philippines Diliman

By Danna Mae T. Yuzon

I. INTRODUCTION

Knowing the child more and evaluating his/her skills carefully are two of the

major things that a teacher does in a regular classroom situation. In line with this, the project

aims to establish a deep understanding on the roles of the literacy learner as proposed by

Luke and Freebody: the learner as a code breaker, text participant, text analyst, and text user.

It targets to gather evidences of how the child performs those roles so that there will be a

substantial evaluation of his readiness for reading instruction.

The project also seeks to ascertain the factors that may affect the child’s reading

development—whether these factors can help or hinder in his/her development. This project

may not be able to cover all the smallest details or aspects in the child’s literacy

development, but more importantly, it looks forward to providing an efficient description of

the child’s readiness for and skills in literacy. By delving into the more apparent aspects in

the child’s literacy development, such as his/her immediate environment and language

proficiency, the project (upon completing all the required data and conclusions) also

endeavors to assess what actions are necessary or better for the child’s advancement in the

reading process.

II. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

As a child explores a wider world through the different things he encounters,

whether concrete or abstract, there are many factors that affect how he perceives and learns

those things. Similarly, in learning how to read, there are many factors that influence the

child throughout the reading process and there are also roles which he/she performs as a

literacy learner. These are the main concepts which build up the framework for this project.

These factors would include the child’s literacy environment, physiological

development, cognitive development, and language development. They all contribute

significantly for the improvement of the child’s understanding and skill in reading.

The child’s literacy environment involves his/her immediate surroundings at

school, at home, or in the community. Like for instance, if the school provides the basic

instructional materials such as the alphabet charts and books for the children see and use,

then they can already help a lot for the child. For the physiological development, the child’s

visual and hearing capabilities are also needed for him/her to participate successfully in the

process of reading itself. Another essential factor is the cognitive development because it

involves the children’s way of thinking. There are two major aspects to this theory: the

process of coming to know and the stages the children move through as they gradually

acquire this ability. Language development is another major factor since aside from the

physiological and cognitive facets in the child, it is also needed to encode and decode the text

being read.

The four roles of the literacy learner by Luke and Freebody were also used in this

project. The learner as a code breaker deals with his/her ability to encode and decode which

comes from culture and experience. As a text participant, the learner becomes a meaning

maker who gives literal and inferential meanings of texts. Also, as a text analyst, the reader

focuses on the intentions of the writer and how the text, being a product of a certain social

context, influences him/her. Lastly, the learner as a text user means that he/she is able to

apply the texts in real-life situations.

III. METHODOLOGY

The project has been accomplished through conducting formal and informal

activities for the child and interviewing her parents regarding some components of her

expressive, self-help, and social-emotional domain.

The Early Childhood Care and Development Checklist (ECCD Checklist) by

Lourdes Ledesma is the screening tool which was used as basis for the formal activities

which assessed the development of the child in terms of five domains: gross motor, fine

motor, self-help, receptive language, expressive language, cognitive, and social-emotional.

Materials and procedures were prepared in order to carry out naturally the formal activities

such as making the child walk and jump for the gross motor, scribble and draw for the fine

motor, follow instructions for the receptive, use pronouns and speak grammatically correct

sentences for the expressive, and sorting shapes/colors for the cognitive.

The informal activities include one-on-one conversations with the child while she

was resting and walking on her way home, bonding with her through making jokes, and

playing with her whenever she feels bored.

Since parental report will suffice for some parts in the ECCD Checklist and a

sociodemographic profile is needed, an interview of the child’s mother was conducted in

their residence. The questions came from the checklist and the conversation at hand.

IV. DATA GATHERED

Sociodemographic profile

The name of the child is Reishi Angela P. Asin. She is a female and was born on

June 16, 2005. Her exact age at the date of assessment is five years eight months and twenty-one

days old. She lives at Carissa 3A, City of San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan (Region III). She is left-

handed and is presently studying at Carissa Homes School of St. Therese. Her father’s name is

Ricardo C. Asin, fifty-five years old and currently working as an instructor at Bulacan State

University and also an author of Math books for the St. Augustine Publishing Company. He

graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Reishi’s mother is

Resie P. Asin, forty-two years old, housewife. Associate in Criminology is her educational

attainment. The child’s (Reishi’s) number of siblings is three, so they are all four children in the

family. She is the second from the eldest child.

The results of the assessed domains from the ECCD Checklist are as follows:

Child’s literacy environment

DOMAIN Raw Score

Gross Motor 12

Fine Motor 11

Self-Help 5

Receptive Language 8

Expressive Language 18

Cognitive 23

Social-Emotional 22

Sum of Scores 99

Interpretation Average overall development

As I have seen, their little school is a print-rich environment. There are different charts

from various subjects for pre-elementary such as the alphabet, numeral system, body parts, and

arts. Moreover, there is a big bookshelf at the back of the tables where the pupils sit. So anytime,

when the child wants to read, she is free to get any book that she likes. There is also enough

ventilation and since the school is situated in a street, there are no noise distractions such as the

honking of vehicles. The environment outside or the community is ideal too since there would be

no noise that would disturb the pupils from studying.

As for the family environment, the house where the child lives is quite small for their

family and it is messy inside because I saw many things, like boxes and bags scattered around. I

have not seen much educational materials but I was just touched when I saw one pseudo-

phonetics chart in which they have improvised an old calendar. The chart was written at the back

of the calendar, and some of the consonant-vowel combinations written were ‘ba be bi bo bu’.

Physiological Development

There is no problem with the visual acuity and hearing ability of the child. She can see

well enough the printed text on books, charts, and other materials. Also, she is attentive to my

instructions so it just proves that she can also hear accurately.

Cognitive Development

The child exhibits logical and systematic thinking since she already knows how to group

concrete objects and identify picture-word associations. Moreover, egocentric thinking

sometimes predominates. The good thing is she can also think about abstract or mature concepts

such as the difficulty to teach, etc. There was one situation in which she was very excited to tell

me that she already knows how to make a star through a rubber band. She was very proud to say

that she can already do the said thing all by herself without the assistance of her elder brother.

Afterwards, she taught me how to make it (the star) and since I could not easily learn how to do

it, she told me how it was very hard to teach me— “ang hirap mo naman turuan”, she said.

Language Development

Her pronunciation of English words is noticeably good and she can effectively use

language to communicate or express herself. But of course, she still gropes for words or stutters

most of the time when she narrates her own story. When she talks about a long story/experience,

the way she narrates is not clear enough because she could not yet utter the right word for a

certain thing which she wants to say.

V. DICUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

According to the results of the assessment based on the ECCD Checklist,

presently, there is an average overall development for the child. Even before I started

working with the child, I could notice in her actions that she was developing literacy and

learning in a positive pace. For one thing, I was informed that she is one of the outstanding

pupils. Also, when I visited her at their house, she was responsible or sensitive enough to

inform her mother immediately that there is a visitor. This proves that the social aspect of his

development is already beginning to grow. The other developmental aspects, namely the

physical, mental, emotional, and moral were also significantly becoming evident in the

child’s words and behaviors already.

Since these developmental aspects have been modified and expanded in the

EECD Checklist, they were changed into the five developmental domains: gross motor, fine

motor, expressive and receptive language, self-help, and social-emotional domain. For all of

these domains, the child was not able to perform only ten items. Moreover, for each of the

domains, only a few behaviors to be observed are lacking. The child actually got perfect

scores in the fine motor, receptive, and expressive language domain. All these results show

that there is also a balance in the overall growth of the child because she could not only

perform well in one domain, but in all of the domains. There are things which I did not

expect her to do so but she can already do them. Like for instance, in the self-help domain,

she already prepares milk for her baby brother.

There are also some remarkable transformations in the behavior of the child.

Whenever she is in school, she is quiet and behaved. It seemed like she was very shy to talk

or interact with her classmates. But when she is at home, she becomes naughty and energetic,

and is mo longer ashamed to talk. According to her mother, when there are visitors, she

unhesitatingly welcomes them and uses cultural gestures of greeting like ‘pagmamano’. This

shift in the behavior of the child may imply that there are certain mitigating factors in the

school which makes her behave in a way which is different from her usual behavior. The

teacher may be quite strict or her classmates may be very naughty that she feels being

overshadowed by all of them. But this is one thing that a teacher should become sensitive of.

While it is good to discipline the children, it does not mean that they will be totally deprived

of being who they are. It is perhaps better if they are allowed to act or behave the way they

are and then the teacher would just shape some aspects of their behavior so that they would

be able to adapt to the environment in school.

Looking into the other factors that influence her reading development, the child’s

parents are supportive of her development in learning. They always advocate any project, or

activity that would help enhance their child’s basic literacy skills. But since there are four

siblings in the family, and the youngest is still a baby, her mother really tries very hard to

provide a follow-up for her child. As much as the mother wants to give her child a follow-up,

she could not do so because no one else would take care of her baby brother.

Although they have no enough educational materials at home, it is clearly seen

that the child’s interest in learning does not rely on the availability of those materials,

because she really gets excited upon going to school. Although we knew each other

beforehand, I was still surprised when she was actually the one who went immediately

(earlier than me) in the school, which is our place of meeting.

The child is able to execute the roles of a literacy learner: being a code breaker,

she can encode certain texts and of course, decode what is written in a printed text, she can

also make literal meanings of texts but not much with the inferential (text participant), being

a text analyst, she understands that there is some intention behind a story because she is

curious about why things happened the way they were and why did the writer chose to write

it in the way he did so, and lastly, as a text user, she can apply the lesson she has learned

from a story. She can relate the lesson with her experiences in her family.

Furthermore, as the data suggests, she is currently in the pre-operational stage

wherein her use of language matures. It proves so in what I have observed and confirmed

from her mother. She knows how to voice out if she has the reason to do so and she insists on

what she likes. She does not want repetitive actions such as a certain lesson in school being

discussed redundantly. When there are exams, there are times when she no longer reviews

because she says that she knows them all— which is an evidence perhaps of egocentric

thinking. She likes all subjects and her mother would want her to really develop in reading.

As early as two-years old, she already dreams to be a Miss Universe and a doctor.

All these behaviors, attributes, and facts about the child show that she is already

well-equipped with the necessary skills for literacy development, but there are still some

factors which may affect her progress positively or negatively. The family, school, and

community should join hand-in-hand to aid the child in her journey towards her reading

development. At home, there must be more educational materials such as story books, charts

or toys to further support the child’s literacy development since the focus/ attention in

learning how to read is not only being fostered at school, but also sustained at home. The

school can also undertake more innovative projects to stimulate the child’s interest in

reading. They may do book fares, or storytelling contests in which the children will read their

favorite story. The community can build up a playground and a garden with many colorful

notice boards of maxims or quotations to enhance the reading abilities of the children while

they are applying those concepts in their interaction with fellow playmates, hence making

their learning something holistic— not just limited in one aspect of development but in the

entire learning, reading, and personality development itself.

VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pflaum, Sussana Whitney. (1974). Language and Beginning Reading. The Development of

Language and Reading in the Young Child. (pp.112-117). United States: Charles E. Merill

Publishing Company

Walpole, Sir Hugh. (1927). Reading, an essay. New York and London : Harper & brothers  

Stovall, Evelyn L. (1940). You and your reading. Boston : Ginn and company

http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cogsys/piaget.html

http://www.reading.org/General/Default.aspx

VII. APPENDICES

1) Letter for the Parent

2) Literacy Environment

3)

The Child

4) Materials

5) Actual student works

5) Formal/ Informal Activities

6

6) Interview with the child’s mother

7) Video clips on the formal activities