How to determine what early literacy looks like in another culture?

This morning as I couldn't sleep, I was pondering this question.  What will this look like for the children of Nabisooto?

One of the ideas that I had and have put into practice with my little ones on Molokai is reading a story and having the children draw a picture re-telling the story.  This idea was based on this book...

But it still left me needing other ideas of how to see if reading storybooks to children builds early literacy. 

So I went under ERIC and searched for "early literacy" to see what I could find.  Found a great paper entitled "Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel.  A Scientific Synthesis of Early Literacy Development and Implications for Intervention." put out by the National Institute for Literacy. 

The techniques they recommend...

• one on one
• small group activities
• occur frequently
• adult directed

As mentioned in this paper, I plan to implement a pre- and post- test design of what the children know about books and the story before and after reading.  The responses will be videoed so I can later go back and analyze the children's literacy skills.  Some of the things I will be looking for include... concepts about print: knowledge of print conventions (e.g., left–right, front–back) and concepts (book cover, author, text) ... and oral language: the ability to produce or comprehend spoken language, including vocabulary and grammar.

I also plan on looking at the shared-reading interventions.  What is the child's reaction when read to?  Is the child interested or disengaged?  What questions do they ask in relationship to the story being read?

Tying reading into an oral culture and bringing in the families also interest me so I think having the children draw a story they have heard at home. And then writing on the picture their retelling of the story will be an interesting pre-test.  A baseline of how they tell stories within their culture.




 
SOURCE:

National Institute for, L., & National Center for Family, L. (2008). Developing Early Literacy:      Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. A Scientific Synthesis of Early Literacy Development and Implications for Intervention. National Institute For Literacy,

Purposeful storytelling

I am a graduate student at University of Hawaii- Manoa working on an action research project.  This blog will follow my journey as I gather data.

 

How this all started??? 

 

The topic that I am looking at exploring is how sharing storybooks with children in Uganda effect their interest in reading and their pre-literacy skills.

 

Uganda is an oral culture with their stories being shared verbally. When I was in the village visiting in March, it caught my attention how interested Hannington (a 50 year old Ugandan father of five) was on a child's storybook. When I inquired about books within the village, they just don't have them due to cost.

 

 

Hannington

 

 

Due to moving down to Uganda for the next year this topic is relevant to me as I love books. From a very young age I was always seen with books so it is something that I am interested in because of my passion for the written word. As an early educator I find storybooks a vital part of how children are taught and I think that the findings of the research will be beneficial not only to me but my Ugandan staff as well as teachers in the Western culture.