3.1 Concepts of Print & Early Literacy

Concepts of Print

Concepts of print are the understandings a child has about how written language works. Before a child can decode, they must understand that print carries meaning, that English text moves in a particular direction, and that spoken words map onto written words. Marie Clay's Concepts About Print (CAP) tasks remain the touchstone for assessment in Georgia kindergarten classrooms.

The major print concepts include:

• Book handling — front of the book, title page, holding the book right-side up, turning pages from front to back.
• Directionality — print (not just pictures) carries the message; reading moves left to right across a line and top to bottom down a page.
• One-to-one word matching — each spoken word corresponds to one written word; children point under each word as they read.
• Return sweep — at the end of a line, the eye returns to the beginning of the next line rather than continuing across the page.
• First and last — the first and last letter of a word, the first and last word on a line, the first and last word on a page.
• Capital letters and punctuation — capitals signal sentence beginnings and proper nouns; periods, question marks, and exclamation marks signal the boundaries and tone of sentences.

Assessing Concepts of Print

A teacher sits beside a child with a familiar, predictable book (such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?). The teacher says, "Show me the front of the book," then "Where do I start reading?" and "Show me one word. Show me one letter. Show me a capital letter. Show me a period." Each correct response is noted. Errors indicate teaching points for the next two weeks of small-group instruction.

Environmental Print

Environmental print is print children recognize from everyday contexts: a McDonald's arch, a STOP sign, a Target bullseye, a Coca-Cola logo. Children read these symbols long before they decode. In a Pre-K classroom, a teacher labels the cubbies, the sink, the book bins, and the door with the same font the children will see in predictable books. Recognizing environmental print is logographic recognition — the child reads the whole symbol as a picture, not by letters. It is a bridge into formal print awareness, not a substitute for explicit alphabetic instruction.

Stages of Early Orthographic Development

Ehri's theory of orthographic development describes how children move from treating words as pictures to treating them as sequences of letters mapped to sounds. The Georgia K-3 ELA standards (GSE ELAGSE.K.RF.1–3) build directly on this progression.

The stages are not rigid ages — a child moves through them at different rates, and instruction must meet the child at the observed stage rather than at the grade-level average.

Emergent Literacy Behaviors

Emergent literacy describes the reading and writing behaviors children demonstrate before conventional reading. Sulzby and Teale's work shows these behaviors are real literacy, not pre-literacy. In a Georgia Pre-K room, a teacher watches for:

• Picture reading — telling a story while turning pages, often using the pictures.
• Reading-like behaviors — holding the book correctly, sweeping a finger left to right, turning pages one at a time.
• Mock handwriting — wavy lines, letter-like forms, repeated strings of familiar letters (often from the child's name).
• Logographic writing — the child's name, environmental-print words, family members' names.
• Rhyming and sound play — making up rhymes, alliterative phrases, syllable clapping.
• Story language — using the syntax and vocabulary of books the child has heard read aloud ("Once upon a time," "said the bear").

Each behavior is a teachable moment. A kindergarten teacher who hears a child say, "Mommy, that says STOP," can respond, "Yes! S-T-O-P. What's the first sound you hear in stop?" That five-second exchange nudges the child from logographic toward early alphabetic processing.

Role of Oral Language

Oral language is the substrate on which all of literacy is built. A child who enters kindergarten having heard roughly 30 million fewer words than a peer (Hart & Risley) starts with a smaller vocabulary and less syntactic control. In a P-5 classroom, teachers build oral language through:

• Interactive read-alouds — teacher reads, pauses, asks open questions ("Why do you think the character felt that way?"), and requires children to use complete sentences to answer.
• Talk-rich centers — dramatic play, blocks, sensory tables; the teacher joins briefly to model academic language.
• Explicit vocabulary — teach 3–5 tier-2 words per week (e.g., enormous, scolded, sly) with student-friendly definitions and multiple exposures across contexts.
• Sentence frames — "I agree with ___ because ___"; supports both ELLs and children with limited school-language exposure.

Research is consistent: oral language measured in kindergarten predicts reading comprehension in grade 3 better than letter-name knowledge does. A Georgia teacher cannot remediate this in a single lesson; daily, deliberate talk must be built into every content block.

Connecting to the GACE Framework

GACE Objective 2.A expects candidates to recognize the foundations of literacy and the stages of early orthographic development. On the exam, a scenario will often present a kindergarten child's behavior (e.g., "Jana points to the first letter of a word but guesses the whole word from the picture"). The correct answer places Jana in the early alphabetic stage and prescribes explicit letter-sound teaching plus phonological awareness — not more whole-word flashcards.

The two biggest content errors candidates make on Objective 2.A are (1) confusing logographic reading with sight-word reading, and (2) treating oral language as separate from reading. Logographic reading uses visual features; sight-word reading uses letter-sound retrieval. Oral language is prior to and intertwined with decoding, not optional.