Transfer Stage

Overview

This lesson describes transfer stage and distinguishes

specific literacy experiences for meaningful transfer of
children’s learning and skills. Particularly, this lesson
recognizes the value of reading and specific reading
activities. Further, a discussion on systematic phonic
instruction is provided to explain phonemic awareness,
sight-word vocabulary and letter-sound relations.
Transfer Stage

Balance in reading and language activities, in writing and

language activities, allows children to progress and to
increase their understanding about language of writing.
Therefore, language skills are evidently transferred to
literacy activities with creativity and intellectual challenge.
Emergent literacy
Refers to
Competencies
And literary skills
in early childhood

Donaldson (1978) described that children first try to make

sense of situation, then use their knowledge to make sense
of what has been said to them. Children bring and use their
home literacy as they enter formal preschool learning and
they apply their knowledge of language, language skills to
listening and speaking, reading and writing activities.
Transfer is a crucial stage since it is an indicator of the
significant learning of children. The knowledge input
and the literacy output must be processed
meaningfully so hat children can maximize their
learning. Thus, the school must provide meaningful
interactions in its literacy activities which allow
extension of learning and develop these interactions
from the school to the homes where parents and other
family members like sibling or literate adults, recognize
and provide opportunities for the children’s application
of knowledge and for continuous and holistic learning.
Process of Transferred Learning

transfer
• Vocabulary • writing
• reading • speaking

• Language input output

Specific Literacy
Experiences:
The Reading Act
Everyday, in the classroom, children engage in reading
like self-reading, story telling and phonies, sight word,
letter-sound relations. Therefore, the teacher must
plan specific activities to help children use their
knowledge and their developing abilities so that they
can get and make meaning from printed literacy
materials. These activities must promote children’s
expression of their creative ideas and critical thoughts.
Story Reading / Story Telling

The use of story reading not only for the story itself, but as a
means of generating other activities aids transfer. Story
reading provides various encounters with language from
which children can build their data pool. Children can
memorize familiar stories that can join in adult reading or
shared reading. Gradually, children can link the events of the
story to picture cues and can mark beginning reading of story
texts. Hopefully, in the final stage, they can read unfamiliar
texts independently.
Story reading is an immersion to literacy. Through a
story, children learn about language – new words, new
syntactic words, meanings and ways of organizing
discourse. Similarly, reading aloud enriches vocabulary
and sense of story. Story reading or reading aloud
allows children to make comments about the
characters, objects, book cover, to join in with parts of
the text like rhymes and repetitions, to predict events
and ending, and to relate the text to their lives. Story
reading promotes interactive reading, like interaction
with the teacher, as he/she encourages the children to
comment and to question and interact with the text
directly or indirectly.
 Transferred Learning
Input Process > Transfer
Story Reading or Reading aloud, attentive
Story Telling and appreciative listening,
social interaction
Vocabulary Structural analysis, context
clues, determining
synonyms or antonyms
Independent Reading Silent Reading, think aloud
Output
Vocabulary knowledge,
picture analysis, prediction,
comprehension, interactive
reading, shared reading,
retelling
Use in meaningful context
(written or oral),
comprehension
Creative version of the story,
imaginative drawings or
illustrations of characters,
memorized familiar or
favorite story, retelling
reading fluency, creative
writing
Wells (1987) identified the importance of story telling in
providing kids access to narratives. Story telling is an important
feature of literacy development and is a central component of the
literacy children encounter subsequently in the more formal
setting. Story telling helps children to deduce meaning of and
from narrative texts.
Story reading or story telling develops among children
shared reading and retelling. Children themselves develop
respond to the subsequent telling and retelling. These become
possible when children are exposed to and provided with Big Book
as early in their beginning reading since through big Books, all
children can follow reading and can learn from it.
Writing after Story Reading /
Story Telling
Temple, Nathan, Temple and Burris (1988) described writing of
emergent learners as something that cannot be deciphered
easily but does demonstrate their knowledge about letters and
in some cases, sound-letter relations. Their writing usually
illustrates pseudo-letters and joined and joined-up writing of
which loops, circles, vertical lines are all linked together, to
express their ideas. Gradually, they become oriented with
letters, shapes and sequence, until they learn to write
conventional letters and to form words to label objects and to
name characters.
Differentiated Instruction

To support the development of emerging learners, the

teacher must create stories through socio-dramatic play.
Roskos (1988) recognized the significant relation between
dramatic play and early literacy enumerated below:
• Dramatic play encourages symbolic play including
experimentation with literacy.
• Dramatic play converts children’s pretend-play stories into
language-experience charts.
• Dramatic play provides language use and speech
development, and
• Dramatic play indicates literacy understanding.

Free play and guided-play equally help young learners in

their literacy. Free play discovers many of the kids’ abilities
which are naturally developed through social interaction.
Guided – play improves the learners’ through close
supervision of the teacher.