Literacy begins to develop with the birth of a child. Parents have the biggest role in educating the young reader through their example and attitude to books. When the child starts attending kindergarten parents begin also to collaborate with a kindergarten teacher. We have to be aware that the child enters the first grade of basic school with specific knowledge, abilities and skills, which will affect his learning success. Among them the achieved level of literacy is very important.
In the Master's Thesis I am interested in understanding the concept of press in pre-school children. In the theoretical part, I want to define the concept of literacy, especially family and early literacy. The role of parents and pre-school institutions in the development of the concept of the press is important, as they offer certain activities to encourage children to develop and understand a book as a source of information. During the period of early literacy a child takes note with the press (books, reading and writing). He develops graphical and phonological awareness, learns about relations between the letters and the voices and finally begins to »read«. In theory we can come across a number of instruments to measure the understanding of the concept of the press and assess the achieved abilities of pre-school children. The second part of the Master's Thesis includes a survey, in which I will present the results of the child's understanding of the concept of the press that I have gained by observing and completing a check list, created by the authors M. Barone, M. Mallette, and S. Hong Xu (2005). The survey includes 140 children of the second age period (aged from 3 to 6 years), who attend the Preschool Institution Ciciban in Ljubljana.
The results of the survey showed that the understanding of the concept of the press in children was much better at the second than at the first testing. Among the children of the second age period there were no statistically significant differences about the understanding of the book; and the five-year-old children did not have statistically better understanding compared to younger pre-school children. The results show that no statistically significant differences in the understanding of the concept of the press appear among boys and girls. The comparison of the results of the first and second testing on understanding the concept of the press shows that several-month of a planned work is essential to develop the concept of the book in a child. The findings of the survey will significantly influence the improvement of language practice in preschool.
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