Literature is part of a child’s history from the moment they are born. When families read picture books to a baby, they invite them on a journey of imagination and creativity and to see and talk about the world in different ways. From that moment on, the child is introduced to a literary universe that will unfold over time as they begin to make sense of these letters and understand that letters form words, and words communicate something.
By coming into contact with books, children learn to deal with the feelings found in different stories and gain access to cultural diversity. Besides embracing social matters, literature also embraces matters of a pedagogical nature. As such, it is a fundamental part of a child’s literacy and is a daily part of be.Living’s early childhood education routine.
“We introduce literature to young children using a variety of methods and strategies. Every day we hold a storytelling session, keeping in mind the best choice of book for each age group. As part of their bilingual education, we always keep in mind what type of text contributes to the child’s language acquisition and to a better understanding of such texts according to each age group,” explains Patricia Dominguez, coordinator of childhood education at be.Living.
Patricia explains that literature learning in the school’s routine is done through various genres of texts and is always highly contextualized, taking into account each group’s processes as well as the specific needs of the child’s age. This makes learning meaningful and a part of their development. “For the very young, we read short stories with text that is repeated to draw attention to structures and words. This helps the child to make sense of the whole plot of the book, little by little. Other skills are also introduced. For example, to introduce the skill of writing, the child writes out their name every day. Besides working with lists we also work on interviewing skills. For example, teachers ask the children to conduct a family survey. In addition, individuals are invited to come to the school to talk to the children about a particular subject that is being investigated in a project.
Literary May is an event organized by the school to share with families the child’s whole learning process through literature. The relatives of children in early childhood education were invited to come to the school to see the literary productions of each group and to discover the scope of work that is being done with the children in literature.
Year 1 produced a book inspired by the nursery rhyme Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. The teachers noticed that this song in particular really grabbed the children’s attention. “The cadence of the music together with the playfulness of the movements and the pointing and naming of parts of the body, at varying tempos, made this a lot of fun. With this we draw the children’s attention to their bodies, which is a part of building their sense of self. We also draw attention to the body in the context of school. At school, when do I use my hand? To pick up a book, to paint… Where do I put my backpack when I sing the goodbye song and then leave? On my shoulder. What part of the body do I bend when I go down the stairs or sit in a circle? The knee! So as part of the school’s daily routine they went about discovering the body while building their sense of self through the body and its movement,” says Patricia.
Meanwhile, Year 2 was inspired by Todd Parr’s book The Family Book to write a book about their family. The building of self-identity was also introduced when this work of literature was reimagined with the children as the characters. “Todd Parr’s book introduces, in a very natural way, the different types of families. This discussion was introduced to Year 2 using the differences in the group. They investigated which classmates have siblings and which do not; they understood that some children have two siblings, while others have none. To write this book, we relied a lot on the collaboration of the families, who sent a number of photos that made these conversations happen.
Year 3 also wrote a book inspired by Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. “From this reading, the children asked lots of questions about the bear and about why he was chasing the children and why he was sad. They asked where the bear’s mommy was and, through the book, began to discuss the different types of families, who is the mommy and daddy of each child and who has siblings and who doesn’t. We also built their sense of identity and expanded their literary repertoire as well as their knowledge of the world. From this discussion, the group wrote a book about them going out in search of the bear here at school. The idea was also to introduce a game where they seek the bear in the school, using their senses to explore the school, delving a little deeper into each corner and exploring what each part of the school means to them.”
Year 4 also wrote a book with children as its main characters, inspired by reading Eric Carle’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? The idea was to develop their sense of identity through discussions inspired by the book. “They explored colors a lot. Colors related to the characters and what in their lives relates to these colors. For example, some children mentioned that bananas are yellow so we riffed on this knowledge and explored colors at school. We did a colour hunt at school and they created a story, changing the characters, bringing their physical characteristics into the book, noticing similarities and differences between them.”
In the green group, an age group in which the children are already at their most verbally developed stage and are already stringing together complete sentences with a solid understanding of English, more complex situations were proposed. “The idea was for them to act out and verbalize some of the structures from the books. We work with repeating structures, thinking a lot about developing and appropriating these structures. The Green 1 group featured the plot of the book King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub in many make-believe games within the context of school. They thought about how they would get the king out of the bathtub if he were here at school and wrote their book based on these discussions. The Green 2 group put on a play for the first time based on two separate books which allowed them to write an original book. The class was inspired by the books Giant Turner and The Carrot Seed and created a story of their own called The Giant Carrot. Patricia explains that one of green groups’ projects is to learn to work together in the context of school, since at this age children are leaving the egocentric phase and entering the social phase, identifying themselves as members of a group, with rights and responsibilities.
The red groups worked with nursery rhymes, translating and concretizing their perceptions through drawings. This also helps teachers to understand the children’s understanding. “Since the red groups are already more verbally developed, the idea was that they could recite these poems at different moments of their daily school life, as it made sense to them. Besides verbalizing, the idea is to work on pronunciation, or what we call phonemic awareness, which is the development of active listening that emphasizes the perception that the second language has a different pronunciation or accent from that of Portuguese. In addition, there is rhyming and word matching, which is a play on this skill and something that children enjoy a lot.”
The blue groups continued playing with English-language nursery rhymes as well as Portuguese-language nursery rhymes, since the learning happens in both English and Portuguese. “The work of the blue groups is very much based on memory recall, since this is their last year in early childhood education. Soon, they will be moving on to elementary school. The idea is that they sense the experiences they had throughout their early childhood education and, in both English and Portuguese, we deepen the social aspect of writing. Through English, they revisit some nursery rhymes they learned earlier. Through Portuguese-language nursery rhymes, we consider the development of writing. They learn about Portuguese-language nursery rhymes, asking parents which ones they know and about what games they played as children, expanding their repertoire in the process. At school, they do writing activities where they try to find out which word, syllable, or letter is missing. In this way, literature goes a long way in helping increase literacy for this age group.
We always find it very rewarding to welcome parents and families to our school and share the child’s learning process with them. This was an opportunity to draw closer to the power of literature and to recognize its value in our child’s development. Long live the power of literature!
