April 1-5, 2019

Growing Up to Read

Birth Through Age Four:

 Children begin to develop their language skills in infancy. Even their babbles and coos and the ways their families speak to them before they really understand can help them to become speakers of their native tongue. When an infant shows excitement over pictures in a storybook, when a two-year-old scribbles with a crayon, when a four-year-old points out letters in a street sign—all these actions signal a child’s growing literacy development.

The more children already know about the nature and purposes of reading before kindergarten, the more teachers must build on in their reading instruction. Research reveals that the children most at risk for reading difficulties in the primary grades are those who began school with less verbal skill, less phonological awareness, less letter knowledge, and less familiarity with the basic purposes and mechanisms of reading.

To prepare children for reading instruction in the early grades, it is best that they be exposed to high-quality language and literacy environments—in their homes, day care centers, and preschools. The best time to start sharing books with children is during babyhood, even when they are as young as six weeks.

Here are some concrete, activities, and ideas for how families, early childhood educators, health care professionals, and communities can bring literacy into the lives of young children:

Everyday Literacy: One Family Home

Promoting literacy at home does not mean creating an academic setting and formally teaching children. Parents and other caregivers can take advantage of opportunities that arise in daily life to help their children develop language and literacy. Often, these are unplanned, casual acts, like commenting on words on an article of clothing or engaging children in conversation. At other times, it is a conscious effort to read good books with children or provide toys that promote good literacy development.

Extended Vocabulary and Language Development

Children who are exposed to sophisticated vocabulary in the course of interesting conversations learn the words they will later need to recognize and understand when reading. Vocalization in the crib gives way to play with rhyming language and nonsense words. Toddlers find that the words they use in conversation and the objects they represent are depicted in books—that the picture is a symbol for the real object and that the writing represents spoken language. In addition to listening to stories, children label the objects in books, comment on the characters, and request that an adult read to them. In their third and fourth years, children use new vocabulary and grammatical constructions in their own speech. Talking to adults is children’s best source of exposure to new vocabulary and ideas.

Enjoy,

Ms. Nora Sierra

Early Childhood Assistant Principal

Discovery School