Innovation Configuration tool

       Literacy is such a vital aspect of life and when introduced earlier on in life it can have a positive impact on children. In the article "Building Preschool Children’s Language and Literacy One Storybook at a Time” by Katherine A. Beauchat, Katrin L. Blamey, Sharon Walpole, talks about useful tool called the Innovation configuration tool. This tool is a form of implementation through shared reading with teachers and students that will actively engage students curiosity for reading. This partnership between students and teachers during shared story time opens many doors of literacy aspects to be received. Teachers can ask open ended questions and make intelligent observations that can make reading a story fun and exciting to a child in an early childhood setting. 

The main idea of this article is to demonstrate how literacy in early childhood can have a successfully established foundation. The article expresses a useful tool that can be implemented with planning from the teacher and provides a powerful lasting effect on the child’s learning. The Innovation Configuration tool or IC for short can serve as a means for engaging in reflective responses from the children after shared reading. 

The Innovation Configuration tool can be used in conjunction with planning a lesson or even used as an assessment method for teachers. IC allows teachers to set goals and track progress for a whole class or even by student. The potential language and literacy targets that teachers could introduce and track the progress of during shared storybook readings are oral language development, vocabulary development, comprehension development, phonological awareness and print awareness. The various exposures of these skills during the shared reading engages students’ curiosity when teachers do things like pause through the story and asking questions or making comments.  Modeling during this time is also very imperative. Holding the book the proper way as well as which is the correct direction to read.   Being able to highlight rhyming words or defining new words can enhance a shared story time. These enhancements allow the children to be comfortable and more likely to engage in a response fostering a better establishment of literacy in the preschool classroom.

Literacy Autobiography

“Twas the night before Monday and all through the house only one creature was stirring and it wasn’t a mouse, just a young girl eager to learn, a grin crept across her face with every page she turn.  Sitting under her covers and flash light in hand, traveling by reading to an uncharted land…” (Brittany Evans-Campbell adaptation of Clement Clarke Moore’s “Twas the night before Christmas”)

Reading has always played a significant role in my life as early as I can remember. From the exposure in the daycare that I attended with early sight words to my attempt in the first grade to read full pages of literature until now as an adult, reading novels at my leisure, each played a role in my love for reading.  I remember the first book I learned to read right before I entered 1^st grade. It was Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. I was so excited to be able to read aloud on my own without having to wait for my mother or grandmother to read it to me. I read that book to everyone that I knew! It was a sense of accomplishment. I remember one day getting in trouble by my grandmother because I taunted my cousin who was a year older than me, but could not read the book like I could. I even offered to teach her.

As the contents of the books became more then 3 and 4 letter words my grandmother felt it necessary to invest in “Hooked on phonics”. This literacy tool was all the rave at one point in time and in order for me to stay ahead of the curve, my grandmother thought a nightly dose after my homework but before dance practice was the answer. So for majority of my elementary school career “hooked on phonics” was a part of it. Some days I enjoyed it, some days I tolerated it and some days I just did not want to be bothered. About the 6^th grade is when reading actually felt like a chore. I did not enjoy the selections that were given, I did not like the written assignments given, I did not want to do my extra lessons at home; I just wanted to dance, WAS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK? My love affair with reading started to dwindle and my passion for dance has taken over. Less time was had for leisure reading adventures; more time was placed in traveling with my dance team.

In high school a spark had ignited the flame that illuminated the words on the pages of books and back into my heart again. I truly believe that reading can transport you to another place and let you experience traveling and the journey to foreign lands through literature was amazing. In my world literature class reading works of great eastern philosophers, Lao Tzu and Confucius opened my eyes to a world that the urban area I resided in did not allow me to view from my window.  Novels such as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” by Ken Kesey spoke to my creativity.  Reading has always kept my mind actively engaged with the world as I see it and still prompts my curiosity daily. If it is an article online, in a magazine or a new novel or self-help book I pick up, reading has and will always take me on a journey, and who knows where I will land.  Are you ready for your next journey?