What's environmental
print?
Children
can feel successful at "reading" at an
early age because they can often read
environmental print in context.
Environmental print is the print we see
all around us--the print in our
environment. It's the print on
commercial signs, billboards, and labels
of all kinds and the logos of the
products we use each and everyday. It's
not the print we recognize so much
becuase of the words and letters, but
the print that becomes familiar to us
because of colours, pictures, and shapes
surrounding the print. It's the first
print a child recognizes as literacy
skills begin to develop.
Outcomes:
Use
reading skills and strategies to
understand a variety of informational
resources to support literacy learning (
e.g., environmental print; written
directions; signs; caption; labels;
informational books).
Understand level appropriate sight words
and vocabulary
Read and
interpret a pictograph with each picture
representing a single unit
Increase
amount of independent reading
Use
meaning clues to aid comprehension and
make predictions about content.
Environmental print
presentation
Discuss
with children what environmental print
is:
the print
in our environment. It is the print on
commercial signs, billboards and labels
of all kinds and the logos of the
products we use everyday. It's the
print we recognize not so much because
of the letters or words, but because of
the colours, pictures, and shapes
surrounding the print.
Discuss
examples of environmental print.
-
Stop
sign at the corner
-
Sign
on the grocery store
-
The
wrapper on a favourite candy or
lollipop
-
Box
of a favourite cereal or soup
-
Label
on a bottle of juice
-
"Exit"
sign above a door
-
Sign
for your favourite restaurant
More
examples:
-
Calendars
-
Catalogs
-
Labels
-
Menus
-
Containers
-
Flyers
-
Greeting cards
-
Snack
bags
Ask
children to start collecting samples of
environmental print to bring to school.
Send home
a letter or a note asking for
environmental print samples. Provide
each child with a bag or envelope to
save the samples.
Note for parents
Dear
Parents
Your
child will start off this school year
reading what we call environmental print.
Your child "reads" it everyday and
typically he or she is comfortable with
it. We consider that reading
environmental print is a good place for
your child to begin to learn to read.
To
support the environmental-print
activities I want you to save labels.
Here is how. When your child eats at his
favourite restaurant, buys a toy at his
favourite store, eats his favourite
cereal, save the labels. Besides
all your child's favourites, help us
collecting empty boxes or labels for
bottles at home. Send it to school. I
will store it to your child's " EP bag."
The bags will hold all of the examples
of environmental print that your child
has brought to school.
We will
read print from the reading bag daily,
so send examples just as soon as you
can. Save those labels!
Thank you,
Miss...
You can prepare a
letter asking for specific samples of
environmental print according to what
fits the month, for example, wrappers of
easter eggs in april, candies in october,
...
Make some games...
duplicate samples of environmental print
( EP) to make bingos, memory cards,
tic tac toes, dominoes, board games,
puzzles
Download
Language connection
Read from a
reading bag: Encourage the children
to bring EP from home. Store the print
in individual ziplock bags or paper bags.
Label each bag with the child's name.
Match letters in EP:
Have the children find letters on one
EP. For example; find all the "g"s or "br"s
on a Colgate toothpaste box.
Find
similarities and differences in similar
EP
Match identical EP:
Use two identical EP for matching (like
matching cereal or soap-box letters).
Put them in a basket and have the
children find match them.
Find upper-, lower-,
case EP letters: Put the letters in
a basket for the children to separate
into the categories (i.e., upper, lower).
Find EP consonants and
vowels
Find EP consonant
blends
Find rhyming words on
one or more EP
Find short- and long
vowel examples of EP
Find hard and soft "c"
and "g" sounds in EP and other "c"
and "g" sounds; have the children sort
them.
Find diphthongs in
EP.
Make an "Eat the
Alphabet" book: Have the children
collect EP that of foods that can be
eaten; put the book next to the
corresponding alphabet letter.
Build EP word families:
Find words that fit into a family of
words you are studying.
Sort by beginning and
ending sounds: Find a variety of EP
that has different beginning and ending
sounds; ask the children to sort it.
Sort by syllables:
Collect EP words with different numbers
of syllables. The children can sort the
words by number of syllables. Also, find
words that have "ing" and "s" endings.
The children sort the word by how the
ending of the word is changed.
Alphabetize EP:
Collect EP for the children to
alphabetize.
Download
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