Förberedande läsning och skrivning i förskolan

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study has been to investigate if pre-school children are able to profit from a program in early reading and writing skills and investigate if there are possibilities to give children this stimulation in pre-school. Are teachers, in dialogue with children, able to give them a preparedness for reading and writing? Are parents interested in supporting their children at home with reading and writing activities?The theoretical grounding of the study proceeds from a Vygotskijan perspective. Emergent literacy perspective is rooted in Vygotskijs theory of the zone of proximal development.The notion of this theory is that learning is in advance of development and that children learn in interaction with adults and more competent peers. This development is gradually going on and is related to cognitive development and how children develop their use of tools. (Lurija 1983). Children learn by making concepts which develop into cues and hypotheses which can be generalised to other situations (Bruner et. al.1956).Thirty children between three and six years of age were offered opportunities to develop early literacy skills in an environment where meaningful texts and activities were guiding principles. The study went on for three terms. The empirical study has been undertaken through an interview with the teachers about their experiences of the teaching experiment and a questionnaire to the parents about their children´s activities of reading and writing at home. The data was gathered from children´s drawings and from children´s efforts to write and read. Assessment tools designed for this research were used before and at the end of the intervention. The theory of proximal development (Vygotskij 1978) has been used to evaluate the results. The children´s results in reading have been compared with the results of a comparative group in another day-care centre.It turned out that the children´s drawing development was important for their reading and writing development. Children at any age who were not able to draw with a purpose had difficulties in writing their names. The children in the study tried different tools. They often returned to tools which had been used successfully and repeated activities. All the children found tools and cues for learning on different developing levels. The children in the reading-group made more steps forward in reading letters and single words compared with the comparative group. As the activities, name games and dictations continued, an interplay between adult and children and between children increased. The teachers´opinions were that they forestalled the development of the children by taking too many initiatives to direct the children. They wanted to give the children a social competence. The parents showed an active interest and shared their children´s reading- and writing activities. Their opinion was that children have a natural interest in early literacy and that the subject ought to be stimulated both at home and at day-care centres.