Curriculum Design Strategies in Emergent Literacy: The Role of Developmentally Appropriate Literature Selections

Literature-rich interactions provide strategies that help emergent readers to develop knowledge about print, including the production and recognition of letters, and generate familiarity with the basic purposes and mechanisms of reading. Yet teacher understanding of these multiple dimensions of emergent literacy does not ensure that a child will break the code and learn to read. Effective teachers, administrators, and curriculum specialists integrate a variety of information to formulate design principles and develop and implement developmentally appropriate curriculum and concomitant teaching strategies. Gunn and colleagues in the National Center to Improve the Tools of Education Report (1995) suggest this may include conspicuous strategies, scaffolding, strategic integration, primed background knowledge, and thoughtful review. The relationship among these four curriculum design strategies and developmentally appropriate literature selections are discussed. Twelve current children’s books are suggested for consideration when implementing various curriculum strategies with emergent literacy learners.