I was struck today thinking about how early literacy experiences involving patterns and repetition are crucial in young students developing the ability to read...

I was in a kindergarten class today and a girl came up to me and asked if she could "read me a story." Kindergarten students can't really read, so I was intrigued and told her to pull up a chair and get her book. The book was Eric Carle's "Brown Bear Brown Bear, What do you See?" And is basically a repetitive pattern of Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see a red bird looking at me. Red bird, red bird what do you see? And so on and so on. Well, she opens the book, and from memory, without even noticing the text on the page proceeds to "read" me the entire book, error free. One clue that she wasn't actually "reading" was that see would need to peek ahead every once in awhile to see what the picture on the next page was.

What it really made me think about was how much reading is expectation and prediction - and just one giant pattern - if you can figure out the pattern, you can read. How lucky it is to one of the children whose parents spent time during their early years reading, singing and playing with them.