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Encouraging executive function skills during emergent literacy lessons builds sustained attention, working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, planning and rejecting distraction.
These problem solving skills, so essential and developed in the early childhood classroom, form the basis of comprehension strategies readers will use during read alouds or in later grades after the students can decode.
In typical development a preschooler starts to develop cognitive flexibility, will delay gratification to solve problems, and switch between different activities. By the time a student reaches kindergarten we want to see improvements in working memory and speed of processing improve as well. In order to help executive functioning grow we encourage Intellectual Risk.
Intellectual Risk
Intellectual risks basically means a willingness to be wrong when faced with uncertain answers. This requires students with a stable interest in the literacy activities and we must build the self-efficacy around text based discussions so children can rely on the executive functioning intellectual risk taking helps to build.
Intellectual risk taking helps form key concepts, creativity, and metacognition. Early childhood educators need to build the practice into their literacy lessons. Tolerance of failure and challenging tasks can be build into emergent literacy. Mainly through play. Mapping phonemes to graphemes and learning to manipulate words to get what you want is hard enough.
Yet during classroom times such as morning meetings, interactive read alouds, or dialogical reading teachers can be explicit in their instructional routines to increase opportunities for intellectual risk taking in the early childhood classroom.
Classroom Ideas
During read alouds or morning meetings a teacher needs to create an early childhood classroom where students feel comfortable challenging one another’s ideas as well as the teachers’ thoughts. You will focus on building Executive functioning skills by ensuring students participate in a respectful manner. We might hear, “I don't think that,“ “I disagree,”. This is what I think!” You want to encourage student to student dialogue during read alouds.
When building phonemic awareness and alphabetic principle make sure to challenge the students and it is okay to offer forms of more immediate gratification when learning well structured domains. Games and points work great. Yet song and dance also provide opportunities for agency which develop intellectual risk and creativity while also building phonemic awareness. self-efficacy,a and joy of the domain.
Early childhood educators should avoid routines teaching specific discrete skills if those skills have been mastered or if students are no longer motivated. Morning meetings that may follow the same calendar routine may eventually hit a ceiling in reinforcing numeracy and literacy skills/
All students actively participate in the lesson or play activity. Students and the teacher recognize when someone is not involved. Peers and the teacher make active efforts to include all students.
Play is Essential
Play is the most important tool an early childhood literacy educator can use to encourage intelelctual risk. You need to recreate social situations where students would use words in literary events. When doing read alouds make believe you are different kinds of audiences. Adopt a “newsroom” persona when drawing stories with invented letters.
Center time also provides opportunities for intellectual risk around emergent literacy practices. You can have restaurants, puppet centers for creative drama, libraries, and post offices. You also want centers where students can play with writing stories and others for letter formation and grapheme mapping.