Jones Family/ Building Literacy Foundation

"The Jones family has viewpoints on literacy- that literacy is uplifting and empowering, important for building relationships with others, a potential pastime, and a practice accomplished with others- to which young Kiki has been exposed since before attending school" ("The Jones Family Culture of Literacy 41)

This quote reminds us as teachers of a very important fact: every child, before entering any formal classroom setting, has some amount of baggage. They have preconceptions about everything, including literacy, from how they were treated, what they witnessed, and the kind of behaviors they modeled in their family culture. Whether or not a child enters school like Kiki, with a strong grasp on the importance of literacy, or quite the opposite, the teacher has the opportunity to foster a passion for learning in every one of their students' lives.
Classrooms that Work references the importance of pre-educational literacy experiences, as well as tips for teachers to use in their classroom. I remember fondly my refrigerator being filled with my personal "creations" , need they be pictures I then explained to my parents or written text, the making of such an important learning mechanism for developing the habit of reading and writing before maintaining an ability to do so. The book also focuses on phonemic awareness, which can be fostered through comparing words, letters, and sounds, clapping syllables, or repetition and rhyme.
The video below is a rhyming song; this helps children to build their active vocabulary through pairing words with pictures and to better remember what rhymes with "pig" by setting it to an infectious tune. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOu-QkmInKc

1). How could you, as a teacher, learn more about a child's intergenerational culture of literacy? What kind of questions could you ask a elementary-age student that would lend you this type of insight?
2). Children have been compared to small sponges. They are apt to "model" any behavior that they see around them. What type of behaviors could you model to young, pre-literate children that would help them become more prepared for school and learning to read?
3) Would you consider yourself more a proponent of the whole language or phonemic awareness approach? Why?

Cunningham,  Patricia and Richard Allington. "Classrooms that Work: They Can All Read and Write."    Chapter 3
Johnson, Amy. "The Jones Family's Culture of Literacy."