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.