Reading Instructional Resources Database - Instructional Activities (Search Results)

Concepts About Print

What is Concepts About Print?
Understanding print involves recognizing and understanding the mechanics of text. A reader must understand that text contains a message; that it flows from left to right and from top to bottom; that individual words on the page correspond to individual spoken words, and so on. Written English has a structure, and understanding that structure is prerequisite to good decoding skills.

What does teaching Concepts About Print look like?
Concepts about print activities should help children to understand the mechanics and purpose of text, and may also emphasize characteristics of text (such as capital letters and punctuation). For young children, the emphasis may be placed on finding text in books or in the environment and developing awareness of the fact that written words represent spoken words. For older children, the emphasis may be placed on the subtleties of text mechanics or on the different types of text (lists, stories, signs, etc.).

ACTIVITY: On a chart tablet, write one sentence that the student dictated as daily news. Write and speak the words of the sentence simultaneously so the child can learn one-to-one correspondence (between spoken words and written words). Children also can be shown the function of capitalization and punctuation as the need arises.

Notes:

Reader Type: Pre-readers

Language: English

ACTIVITY: Collect stories children have dictated, illustrated, and shared. Help children notice various aspects of how print works (e.g., text is read from left to right and top to bottom). Show students that each word they say is encoded as a written word with a space on each side. Show them that punctuation reflects their reading pauses.

Notes: It is especially powerful for young children to see that the words they speak can be written down.

Reader Type: Pre-readers

Language: English

ACTIVITY: On an easel, have a big book as the tool for instruction. Introduce the basic parts of the book, and then proceed on to the first page. Using a pointer, read the text (it is best to have one sentence on a page) orally while pointing to each word stressing the directionality of left to right. Reread the first page and then have children place a colored dot under each word. This process allows the children to "see" the words and how they are used to construct a sentence. Continue with the process also using highlighting tape or different types of pointers.

Notes:

Reader Type: Pre-readers

Language: Spanish

ACTIVITY: The teacher needs to begin by discussing the purpose and meaning of green and red lights in a traffic signal. The teacher places a green color coding label under the first word in a sentence, and a red color coding label under the punctuation mark. This activity works best with an emergent Big Book, which has only one line of text per page, or with sentences written on sentence strips and placed in a pocket chart. The teacher then models for the students where to start reading (green label), and where to stop reading (red label).

Notes: This activity can also be used to help children to see how we read individual words from left to right. Young children have a tendency to look for distinguishing features of words (like the "m" in the middle of the word "camel"), and this activity can help them to understand that words are "sounded out" from left to right.

Reader Type: Pre-readers

Language: Spanish

ACTIVITY: Students dictate to the teacher predictions of activities which will transpire throughout the day. The message is written on the board by the teacher. (in many cases the message is in English and Spanish.) The teacher emphasizes the aspects of the written message she wants the children to understand. One day, the teacher may emphasize word boundaries; the next, she may emphasize punctuation. Every day, she shows that she is writing, word for word, what the children are telling her to write.

Notes: If this activity was modified, it could be used to teach the alphabetic principle — in that case, the teacher would need to emphasize the fact that she is writing down the sounds the children are making (not just the words). To emphasize the alphabetic principle, she will need to ask students to carefully enunciate each word so she can write down each sound they make.

Reader Type: Pre-readers

Language: English