Özet:

Learning how to read and write is the first and most difficult stage of one’s educational life. Therefore, it is of great importance to act in accordance with scientific rules in this stage for a child’s future education. Significant differences are observed between new and older approaches to learning literate for children. Previous studies suggested that students did not attain the right level of maturity during preschool education and therefore it was not appropriate to teach literate in early ages. However, today’s brain studies reveal that infants need to be prepared for literacy starting from birth; that they should be taught to read and write at the ages of 4-5; and that the age of 7 is too late for literacy education. That children are able to acquire literacy at these ages have been experimented in various schools. It has been observed that early literacy education plays a determining role in a child’s development and achievement. The sentence method is blamed for children’s inability to acquire literacy in early ages as suggested by previous studies; and instead the soundbased method has been adopted lately. Whereas in the sentence method, words are taught as whole units, in the latter method, sounds and letters are introduced first; syllables and words are produced through uniting them. Brain studies display that the sound-based method is indeed effective in terms of establishing connections in the neural network, which in turn develops the higher processes of the brain. As a result, many countries have adopted this method in recent years. The fact that children at the age of 60 months are accepted to schools and the use of the 2004 Elementary (1- 5 years) Turkish Education program, which has been prepared following a constructivist approach in accordance with the findings of brain studies, both target the development of higher processes in children’s brains through the use of the aforementioned soundbased method to learning literate.

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