Print Awareness Paper

The city of San Antonio continues to grow in population and within the NISD school district the Hispanic population is 68.4% and continues to rise above all other ethnicities within the school district each year. The U.S Census Bureau projects the Hispanic population will become the country’s largest minority group in less than five years. By 2050, Hispanics are expected to make up one-quarter of the population (Joinson, 2000). Due to many Spanish speaking families coming into the district speaking little to no English gives our library the opportunity to reach out and offer a number of services to these patrons. Children from the ages of 3-5 rapidly develop print awareness when adults engage in activities to build their early literacy skills. Without print awareness children will not develop letter sound correspondence, word reading skills, or the ability to read and understand text.
The majority of households that are moving into our schools are typically households of 4-5 family members who have pre-school children that range between the ages of 3-4 years old who speak no to very limited English.

The librarian will develop and lead, with other literacy staff members, such as the reading specialist and Academic Support teachers an in day reading program held for 1 hour twice a month for non school age children and caregivers. During this time our goal is to align pre-school print awareness skills to students who are not in a pre-school program by helping understand that print has a function by modeling for caregiver an effective read aloud and print referencing