Six Skills of Early Literacy

Early literacy is what children know about reading and writing before they can actually read or write. There are six skills of early literacy that will help your child get ready to read.

1. Print Motivation

Print Motivation is getting your child interested and excited about books and reading. From birth children should have positive connections with books, especially when stories are read aloud to them. A child with good print motivation enjoys being read to, looks at the illustrations in books independently, and likes trips to the library. Research shows that children who have three books read aloud to them each week do better in school than children who do not have positive experiences with sharing books.

What can you do?

Make sharing books a time to be close to your child. Allow them to sit in your lap and have your undivided attention.
Encourage your child to select the book to be read and turn the pages.
Use a puppet or stuffed animal to help tell the story.
Read aloud using fun voices and noises and using loud and soft sounds.
Let your child see that you enjoy reading.

2. Print Awareness…

Print Awareness is noticing print, not only in books but words in their environment. Print is everywhere and children need to learn that it has meaning and purpose. Knowing how to handle a book and how to follow words on a page (from top to bottom, left to right) are also important components of this skill.

What can you do?
When sharing books, follow the words you are reading with your finger.

Point out signs everywhere you go… at the grocery store, while you are driving, labels, and menus.

Help your child recognize his/her own name.

Label items in your home (couch, table, chair, etc).

3. Phonological Awareness…

Phonological Awareness is when children connect the sounds of words through rhymes, stories, songs and play. It is also being able to hear and manipulate the smaller sounds in words. Understanding that words are made up of smaller sound is key to successfully learning how to read.

What can you do?
Help your child think of words that start with the same sound as his/her name.

Clap the syllables of a word, like two claps for kitchen.

Make up silly words by changing the first sound in a word.

Recite and repeat favorite nursery Knowing words is directly related to learning how to read.

4. Vocabulary…

Vocabulary skills help young children learn how to name things and communicate with others. The more words they are exposed to, the more words they will know. Most children enter school knowing between 3,000 and 5,000 words!

What can you do?

Talk to your child about everything you are doing during the day and why. For example, when in the kitchen cooking explain how you follow the recipe, cut up vegetables, or why you keep food in the refrigerator.
Use magnetic letter to for words.
Use a variety of descriptive words in your own vocabulary. For example, “The apple is red, crunchy, and sweet.”
When driving around town, talk about where you are going, why you are going there, and the places that you pass along the way.

5. Narrative Skills…

Narrative Skills help your child describe things or events and instill a deeper understanding of how stories work. This includes telling and retelling stories, describing ideas, and putting events in chronological order.

What can you do?

Make stories interactive by asking, “What do you think is going to happen first… next… last?”
Ask your child to tell you about something that happened during the day.
Encourage your child to use puppets, stuffed animals, or other toys to make up their own story.
Inspire imaginative and dramatic play by providing your child with a dress-up box.
Encourage your child to tell you about things that have a regular sequence to them; for example how a seed becomes a flower or how to get ready for bed.
When your child tells you a story, write it down in their words.

6. Letter Knowledge…

Letter Knowledge is discovering that letters in the alphabet are different from each other, that there are capitol and lower case letters, that each letter has a different sound, and that letters are everywhere. The more experiences young children have with looking at, talking about, and drawing letters, the better prepared they will be to learn to read.

What can you do?