Russ on Reading: What's In a Name Chart?

Russ on Reading: What's In a Name Chart?

What's In a Name Chart?

Sylvia Ashton-Warner's book, Teacher, first published in 1963, is a chronicle of her experience teaching Maori children in her native New Zealand in the 1940s and 50s. A major insight that Warner discusses in the book is the concept of "key vocabulary." She approached the literacy instruction of her children through the words that had special resonance for them, through their own experience, much of it fraught with poverty and violence. Warner had each child come to her each day with a word they wanted to learn and led the children though various activities to make sure they learned them. These words, drawn from the "inner life" of the child, were powerful to that child and, therefore, more easily learned.

We have all had similar experiences, I'm sure, with children who can read a word like "dinosaur" before they can read the word "they", simply because "dinosaur" is a powerful word for that child, a "key vocabulary" word, if you will. As Invernizzi and Buckrup (2018) put it, "The effects of experience are personal and profound" (p 92).

Over the years, research has demonstrated the efficacy of Warner's ideas. Perhaps none more so than the research of  Treiman and Broderick (1998) who demonstrated that the identity and characteristics of the first letter of a child's name has a significant effect on the child's knowledge of letter names. If we think about it, this makes perfect sense. What vocabulary is more key to the child than that child's own name. Children's strong attachment to their own names may help them in understanding how letters work in CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: What's In a Name Chart?