Literacy Beginnings: A Prekindergarten Handbook

“The knowledge that forms the foundation for reading and writing is built throughout early childhood through play, language, and literacy experiences.” –Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell Play and language are critical early literacy learning tools for the prekindergarten child. Through play and language, they learn about their world and about themselves. Like all emergent readers and writers, children make no distinction between play and literacy—both involve curiosity, excitement, learning, and discovery. In Literacy Beginnings, Third Edition, Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell bring a refreshed perspective along with their characteristically rich, comprehensive, and practical insights to the frontier of early literacy. Now grounded in research and their own extensive experience in prekindergarten classrooms they demonstrate how to: Create a classroom community that is play-based, and prepares children for the literacy-rich world in which they live Promote constructive learning through inquiry Recognize the language and literacy behaviors and understandings that are appropriate instructional goals for preschoolers Use powerful and playful ways to guide children to learn about letters, sounds, and words Support emergent readers and writers through an array of literacy activities. This comprehensive volume, now with refreshed content and a four-color design, is full of practical resources like familiar children’s songs, rhymes, and poems and related activities; theme-based text sets and book lists; inquiry projects; and thirty-five simple, generative lessons that support children in their discovery and exploration of language, reading, and writing. It also includes the prekindergarten continuum, which describes the trajectory of literacy learning and development of competencies for these young, emerging readers and writers.