The goal of emergent literacy instruction is to engage preschool-aged children with oral language, print, and sound-based skills to increase their language comprehension, alphabetic knowledge, concepts of print, and phonological awareness in order to lay the foundational elements required to learn phonics skills and to develop decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) skills in their early elementary years of kindergarten through third grade (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; Shanahan & Lonigan, 2010; Campbell, 2021). This review examined how preschool teachers integrate emergent literacy instruction across classroom activities, including play-based learning and literacy centers. Data was collected and analyzed from 26 experimental, survey, qualitative case study, and observational studies and found teacher-guided or knowledgeable-other facilitated play-based learning had effective outcomes for emergent literacy skills. Large group settings were sometimes found to have negative impacts on preschool children’s emergent literacy outcomes. In intentionally-planned and well-structured free play settings where emergent literacy gains were the intended outcomes, children had literacy gains.
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