Page 47 - Reading Nest - The Supportive Literacy Environment Handbook

The following chapter handles all four aspects in more detail: physical and mental
environments, activities and games in the nest and teacher’s role.

In 2014, Anneli Laamann carried out a study on the literacy environment in Estonian

kindergartens. Her master’s paper “Literacy environment in a standard group and

a group with a reading nest in a kindergarten” had a sample which included 15
groups in Tallinn, Tartu and Harju county. Eight of them had no reading nest and

seven groups had a reading nest. In addition to observations, 15 teachers were
interviewed, one per group.

The results showed that in groups with a reading nest the environment supporting

literacy was better in several aspects as compared to standard groups. Books were
better organised and displayed, special spots had been set up for working with books.

Groups with a reading nest gained better results in the curriculum and learning
environment in terms of textual richness and support given to literacy. The following

sections describing aspects of literacy environment, present major outcomes of

Laamann’s study in parallel with international studies and views of other authors

Teachers often ask: what if children misspell words and other children see this, the latter

may begin misspelling due to poor example? It should be noted that the written speech
develops similarly to the verbal speech. Younger children often make mistakes – say

‘calvary’ instead on ‘cavalry’, or ‘liibry’ for ‘library’, get their plural forms wrong, e.g.

‘yous’, or err in forming the superlative, e.g. the bestest, etc. When a group comprises
children with Estonian as a second language, one can hear even more intriguing phrases.

Should the teacher then prevent children speaking out loud to stop others repeating their
mistakes? Certainly not – on the contrary, children need more stimulation to speak more and

more, provide them with examples to formulate more complex forms, acknowledge children
and gradually their speech becomes more accurate and understandable. The same applies to

writing – the teacher can provide samples of key words, recognise children’s writing

attempts, trying to decode their message and encouraging everyone to present their ideas in
writing - exactly as well as they are able to at the time. Only practice makes perfect!

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