The Origin of Literacy: Young Children Learn to Read

The Origin of Literacy: Young Children Learn to Read

We have seen that children produce shapes on paper, which define the shapes of objects. We have also seen children use drawing to represent the movements of objects. Another kind of action is also represented in drawing. Very young children start to realise that they can represent, with their own marks on paper, the sounds of their own voices and the speech of others. We have seen some examples of this already, where Hannah counted her own drawing actions or made vocalisations in time with her drawing movements, or when Ben drew music going through a trumpet (see Figure 80).

Very young children look for the deep structures which ...