Childrenandapos;s Literature

Course Description

Provides students with a foundation for teaching children to read and learn through reading. Students learn to identify the stages in reading development, select appropriate literary texts for diverse learners at each stage, analyze children’s literary texts, and assess the literacy and language development of young learners.

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate knowledge of phonemic awareness (e.g., the processes of rhyming, segmenting, and blending).
• Differentiate between phoneme awareness and phonics.
• Identify predictable patterns of sound-symbol and symbol-sound relationships in English (the Alphabetic principle).
• Understand and use major descriptions of developing literacy.
• Identify in both English speakers and English learners the progressive development of phonemic awareness, decoding, comprehension, word recognition, and spelling (including complexities related to the interaction of phonology, the alphabetic principle, morphology, and etymology).
• Demonstrate understanding of how these processes interact with the development of concepts, of vocabulary (including relationships among etymologies and both denotative and connotative word meanings), and contextual analysis.
• Apply knowledge in assessing literacy of the implications that language development and differences have for the processes of learning to read and reading to learn.
• Apply a range of assessment methods and instruments to the respective and interrelated developing abilities in listening (for aural/oral languages), speaking, reading (decoding and comprehension), vocabulary, and spelling conventions.
• Analyze narrative and expository texts from a range of cultures for literary elements, structural features, and representations of gender and cultural groups
• Demonstrate an understanding of the history of books for children and current trends in political and economic context.
• Demonstrate a broad knowledge of all genres of children’s literature.
• Know how to integrate and use literature across the curriculum to achieve numerous curricular objectives in various content areas.
• Understand the nature of censorship and selection of literature.
• Identify appropriate literary texts for children, with attention to developmental, cultural, linguistic, and gender issues.
• Analyze electronic and multimedia texts directed to children, identifying the assumptions of the texts and how they enhance or undermine respect for learning and diversity.

Prerequisites

• ENG240
• LIT100