Create an activity for a young child in Comprehension

An Activity for a Young Child (2-5 years old) in Comprehension
Student:
Professor:
Course title:
Date:
An Activity for a Young Child (2-5 years old) in Comprehension
Comprehension skill is the literacy skill around which an activity is created in this paper. In this essay, a discussion is provided as to why this particular skill is important for the emerging literacy of the young child and how this skill connects to other skills. Furthermore, a detailed description of a developmentally appropriate activity that would support the chosen literacy skill in a child aged 2-5 years is provided. In essence the age of child with which this activity is meant to be used is described, along with the name of the activity, the child learning objectives, the materials needed and the facilitation process. An illustration of the active/play involvement of the child is also provided in this essay. Lastly, the DC Early Learning Standards that this activity would meet are described comprehensively.
Comprehension literacy skill
Comprehension literacy skill is essentially the capability of a child to understand, interpret, appreciate and critique whatever he/she hears, views, experiences and reads. Young children usually start to make sense of their world and everything that is in it from birth. However, comprehension in school emerges with time during these early years (Al-Mansour & Al-Shorman, 2011). Miller (2010) stated that for children, meaning making takes place from birth, and reading comprehension emerges over the initial five years of a child’s life. The capacity of children to make meaning as they encounter objects, books, experiences and films develops as the young children attempt to make sense of their surrounding world. Comprehension also takes place as an extension of the child’s relationships within families, as well as in other learning situations both structured – a playground or preschool classroom –, and informal – play with others (Dooley, 2010). Reading comprehension is basically a complex process which necessitates children to: (i) track through sentence from left to right; (ii) recognize or decode by sight every word in sequence. (iii) Access the meaning of the words; (iv) process every word in sequence to get meaning of longer text or sentence; and (v) relate meaning to prior experience or knowledge so as to comprehend text (Dooley, 2010).
Importance of comprehension literacy skills to 2-5 year olds
Comprehension literacy skill is important for the emerging literacy of the young children since it is certainly the utmost goal of reading. Children read in order to understand things, to make meaning, and to work things out. The foundations of comprehension are laid within the initial five years of life through the experience and use of language, and especially story (Al-Mansour & Al-Shorman, 2011). Comprehension literacy skill is crucial for the success of children in school considering that children with poor reading comprehension would have a lot of difficulty in attaining school success, particularly in the current educational environment which gives emphasis to standardized testing as well as particular benchmarks that must be reached for the child to be promoted to the next grade. Developing the comprehension skills of a child also means a child being able to totally understand and follow information which they are watching and listening to (Miller, 2010). The objective of reading instruction is essentially to build comprehension of texts. In essence, reading comprehension calls for understanding, which will come after the child has learned how to interact with the text.
Comprehension skills connects with phonological awareness skills
Comprehension skills increases both the effectiveness and pleasure of reading and connects to other skills such as phonological awareness, given that phonological awareness is essential for learning to read and comprehend any alphabetic writing system. Studies have shown that difficulty with phonological skills such as phoneme awareness is a predictor of poor spelling as well as reading development (Dooley, 2010). Phonological awareness is basically the general capacity of attending to the sounds of language as different from its meaning. Comprehension skills connect with phonologic awareness in that young children realize that words comprise various sound units, and children phonologic awareness includes several sound-related skills required for a child to develop as a reader and have the ability to comprehend words. In essence, as children develop phonological awareness, they not only come to comprehend that words in a sentence consist of small units of sound/phonemes, they also get to understand that words could be segmented into bigger chunks of sound or syllables and each beginning with a sound/onset and ending with another sound/rime (Al-Mansour & Al-Shorman, 2011). It is notable that phonological awareness facilitates and interacts with the development of vocabulary and word consciousness which is vital in reading comprehension.
Prerequisites to learning comprehension literacy skill
The following are the prerequisites to learning comprehension skill:
Capability to quickly sound out and recognize words: it is noteworthy that reading comprehension is dependent on the capacity of a child to not only quickly sound out, but also recognize words. This will also allow the child to make connections within the story and relate with what he/she is reading to what he/she already knows (Miller, 2010).
Decoding ability: this is also a vital element that underlies reading comprehension. Decoding is understood as the ability of the child to not only recognize, but also process written information. It is of note a child might try several dissimilar, usually irrelevant strategies for decoding before becoming a skilled decoder. At first, a child learns that particular symbols represent concepts, even though these concepts are very much conceptualized (Dooley, 2010). For instance, a lot of children recognize the McDonald’s golden arches and they recognize that these arches symbolize a concept, food. The words and the symbols which the child recognizes are dependent on their context for recognition. Children may recognize the word bread when it is written on the bread wrapping, although they might fail to recognize that word bread written in a storybook. Likewise, children might recognize the word McDonalds whenever it is accompanied by the golden arches, although they may be unable to distinguish the word out of that context (Dooley, 2010).
Reading fluency: this means the ability to read quickly and accurately in a fluent way. Generally, an insufficiency in reading fluency could actually sabotage the comprehension potential of a child. Children should first be taught reading skills required to achieve reading fluency. Consequently, they would be able to more easily comprehend what they read (Al-Mansour & Al-Shorman, 2011). The more fluent young readers are, the more they automatically group and recognize words. Reading is of major importance since it serves as a bridge between recognition of words and reading comprehension.
Given that fluent readers do not need to focus on decoding the actual texts, the child may concentrate his/her attention on what the word really means. The child will be able to make mental connections all through the text, and apply those connections to the world around him/her. In other wo...