Emerging literacy in the second age group in the Kočevje kindergarten

Emergent literacy is a term that is used to explain a child’s knowledge of reading and writing skills before they learn to read and write and is the first stage of literacy that is developed in a child. It is of critical importance in the preschool period. The development of “prereading” and “prewriting” skills is vital in this stage. It ends when the child starts elementary school, where the stage of beginner literacy begins. The purpose of this thesis is to test the level of phonological awareness and print awareness and the understanding of the book’s concept. Two groups of children partook in the study. 24 children from the first age group (4–5 years old) and 24 children from the second age group (5–6 years old). The number of boys was equal to the number of girls. In the first part of the study I performed tasks individually with each participant that tested their phonological awareness and print awareness. In the second part of the study I again performed tasks individually with each participant that tested their understanding of the book’s concept. This study proves that preschool children find it harder to find rhymes but easier to recognize the first phonetic sound in a given word. They also have a hard time differentiating between longer and shorter words. I have also found out that younger preschool children have somewhat of a less developed level of print awareness and the understanding of the book’s concept