Starting Out Right: A Guide to Promoting Children's Reading Success (1999)

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 of 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 have to 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. In this chapter, we offer concrete examples, activities, and ideas for how families, early childhood educators, health care professionals, and communities can bring literacy into the lives of young children.

Early research dating back to the 1930s suggested that there was little use in teaching children how to read until they had already conquered specific readiness skills, such as certain fine motor skills and the ability to tell right from left. Today, researchers know more. They know that growing up to be a reader depends mostly on the child’s knowledge about language and print. A wide range of experiences with printed and spoken language, from infancy through early childhood, strongly influences a child’s future success in reading. What is good for a six-year-old, however, is not necessarily good for a three-year-old. Children need activities they will enjoy and can succeed at, without being pushed uncomfortably beyond their current developmental stage. Even when children cannot yet spell, they learn from trying to write. Even when children cannot yet read, they learn from being read to.

The following pages describe key aspects of language and literacy for children from birth through age four, along with activities that can be woven into daily life. In this section, we address parents, teachers, uncles, aunts, grandparents, babysitters, and day care providers—in short, everyone who is important in the child’s life, everyone who cares, everyone who is willing.

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.

Activities

Labeling games are just right for little ones, for example, “Where is your nose?” Verbally label objects and events in your child’s world, for example, “Nina is on the swing.” Encourage your child to label objects and events, helping him or her with vocabulary and pronunciation. Do these types of labeling games with pictures in magazines, books, etc.

During necessary routines like baths, reading, and eating, be sure to make time to talk with children. Turn off the car radio and talk while you drive together. Watch children’s TV programs together and talk about them. Instead of channel surfing, turn off the TV and use the time to talk.

As adults, we sometimes view conversation as a luxury—an extra in our busy lives. But for young children whose developing minds are striving to become literate, talk is essential—the more meaningful and substantive, the better. Set aside a regular “talk time” for adults and children, when having conversations about their lives is your main focus.

When you take your child on outings, surround these new experiences and events with lots of comments, questions, and answers between you and your child. Talk about what you are going to do before you do it and, afterward, talk about what you did. Structure these conversations to encourage the children to do more of the talking by asking questions and sharing interest in your child’s thoughts and opinions. Support your child’s efforts to communicate complex thoughts by waiting patiently, suggesting words as needed. Let your child sometimes control the subject of the conversations, and encourage her or his efforts to use new words and to describe complex or distant topics.

Pick books that connect to a child’s life and talk about those connections. For example, when you read Green Eggs and Ham you might ask your child, “What color eggs do you eat?” “Shall we look for purple eggs in the store?”

Try turning the tables during reading time. When most adults share a book with young children, they do the reading and the child does the listening. But once children reach preschool age, parents and teachers can encourage them to become the reader or teller of the story instead. Start by prompting the child to say something about the book. (You can get the ball rolling by asking a question or making a comment yourself.) After the child responds, rephrase his or her answer and expand it by adding information. Continue along in this manner, each time, encouraging the child to expand further on the narration.

During the preschool years, most children gradually become sensitive to the sounds, as well as the meanings, of spoken words. They demonstrate this phonological awareness in many ways; for instance: they notice rhymes and enjoy poems and rhyming songs; they make up silly names for things by substituting one sound for another (e.g., bubblegum, bubblebum, gugglebum, bumbleyum); they break long words into syllables or clap along with each syllable in

a phrase; they notice that the pronunciations of several words (like “dog” and “dark” and “dusty”) all begin the same way.

Although younger preschoolers rarely pay attention to the smallest meaningful segments (phonemes) of words, gaining an awareness of these phonemes is a more advanced aspect of phonological awareness that becomes increasingly important as school approaches, because these segments are what letters usually stand for. That’s the alphabetic principle. A child who has attained phonemic awareness, for example, understands that there are three phonemes in the spoken word “mud.” Many activities can nurture phonological awareness in the preschool years.

Activities

Songs, rhyming games, language play, and nursery rhymes—these are all excellent ways to spark children’s awareness of language and sounds.

For example, sing the Teddy Bear song.

Take advantage of everyday activities to talk about words and sounds. For example, when buying fruit at the market, you might ask the child which sound is the same in the words peach and pineapple, or in peach and tea.

Choose some books that focus on sounds. For example, the Dr. Seuss books can lead to lots of chanting and fun with sounds—but don’t let the author do all the work. Invite the child to supply the last word of each rhyme. Follow the model the book provides and make some silly rhymes that are special for each child.

Make up your own games with rhyming words, silly sounds, and chants, like this one:

Have fun creating new verses by substituting different consonants for the letter B. If the child’s name is Sam, use “his” letter: Sa Se Si So Su-dle-oo-dle-oo!

Or try this traditional song made famous by the children’s performer, Raffi.

Apples and Bananas

Falling in Love with Words “Comfortable.” How I loved that word, the meaning, the times to use it, the rolling jumble of consonant sounds. If only I could pronounce it! Though I tried and tried again, only strange sounds came from my mouth,“comdafable” or “cofdumfable.” Sometimes I got so mad I threw a tantrum. Why could everyone say it but me? My mother, amazingly in tune with my spirit, gave me a great approach. “Remember,” she said. “Comfortable has two parts: comfort and table.” She had me practice the parts, then say them fast together. So comfort-table it was—a bit funny with the long “a” in table, but oddly enough, that didn’t bother me—it was a wonderful reminder of my mother helping me. After a while, I just started saying the word the same way everyone else does. But to this day, I always say “comfort” and “table” under my breath when I am writing or typing the word. Years later, I still marvel at how easily my mother seemed to help me get ready to become a reader. By teaching me things like how to say “comfortable,” she helped me understand that a word is not just something that lets you say what you mean, but is also a thing with a form and substance. A word is something you can take apart and put together. This is a key insight in word attack for reading. It’s not just the meaning you attack, but the form. Of course, as it turned out, “comfortable” has more than two parts when it comes to reading the letters. But my mother’s advice was a great start on the central idea that you can think of and talk about a word separate from what it means. She helped me fall in love with words.

Most young children can accurately perceive the difference between similar-sounding words (“coat” and “goat,” “three” and ”free,” “witch” and “wish”), even though they may mispronounce words quite often in their own speech. Clearly, if a child cannot reliably make such distinctions, it will be difficult for him or her to engage in activities that help to develop phonological awareness, described above.

Activities

A simple game of pointing to pictures can be used to confirm that speech discrimination is reasonably accurate in a 3- to 5-year-old child. In a quiet place, show the child the array of pictures on page 25.

Speaking very clearly, say “Listen carefully. Show me the _________,” filling in the blank with a word from the list below. (For fun, you can sometimes let the child quiz you by naming a picture for you to find.) The words are printed here in similar-sounding pairs, but you should jump around, not asking for the two members of a pair in succession. Ask only for words that you’re sure are in the child’s vocabulary, and don’t do this when the child has a bad cold or ear infection.

If the child makes more than a few errors, repeat the exercise several weeks later. If performance is not any better, this could indicate a difficulty in hearing or speech perception, and a more thorough evaluation of these skills could be conducted by a professional speech pathologist. Many colleges and universities have clinics where children can be tested, with the cost based on ability to pay. Also, pediatricians can usually provide the names of private speech pathologists in the local area.

Show me the:

Once children reach school age, stories will become a central part of their reading classes, so it is helpful for young children to become comfortable with narrative and its elements, such as characters, dialogue, and “what happens next.” Young children are sensitive to sequence in language, such as following directions, and to sequences of events in stories.

Activities

Storybooks: From infancy on, mothers, fathers, babysitters, uncles, aunts, grandparents and day care workers can help children learn about narrative simply by reading and enjoying good storybooks with them. Storybooks can be shared anywhere—at the breakfast table, in line at the supermarket, on the bus, and, of course, at bedtime. Daily reading periods can be brief but frequent for very young children. Encourage children to start to pretend to read by listening attentively, making appreciative comments, etc. Encourage children to start these emergent reading events by saying, “Now how about you read to me?” or “Your turn,” after a book has been read (and liked) numerous times.

Oral storytelling: Children also learn about narrative through the oral stories they hear in the world around them. When they witness one adult telling another, “You’ll never believe what happened to me on the way to the store,” they begin to learn the magic, fun, and purpose of stories. Tell children some of your own stories, about when you were a child, or about your own parents or grandparents. With encouragement, parents and teachers can get children to tell of their own adventures in the form of a story. Encourage children to tell about special events, like holidays or trips. Use photo albums to remember and prompt these kind of stories.

Pretend storytelling: Puppet shows and formal storytelling events are thrilling and valuable experiences for children. But at home

and at school, children also benefit from acting out stories that have been read to them using their own simple puppets or dolls. The action often goes well beyond the original story line. Also, encourage children to talk about books they already know and ask them to elaborate or add to the story line with their own creations, such as new endings or new circumstances for characters.

A child’s sensitivity to print is a major first step toward reading. Young children can begin to understand that print is everywhere in the world around them, and that reading and writing are ways for them to get ideas, information, and knowledge. Children quickly settle into book-sharing routines with primary caregivers. Infants often kick their feet, make eye contact, smile in response to your talking,

and look where you point, as you read the book and share the pictures. Toddlers start recognizing favorite books by their cover, pretend to read books, and understand that books are handled in certain ways. As they reach their fourth year, children increasingly come to understand that it is the print that is read in stories, and that this print contains alphabet letters that are a special category of visual items, different even from numbers. They recognize print in their home, their neighborhood, and other local environments.

First Attempts: Pretending to Read—Emergent Reading “Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown,” proclaims a three-year-old girl, who pretends to read the cover page and author’s name. With great relish, she opens the book and recites much of the book from memory. Her mother knows that she is not yet reading the print but encourages her just the same. Intuitively, she suspects what has been found by research to be true: that children who pretend to read at this early age are more likely to become successful readers later. “… and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon,” continues the girl. She lifts the book close to her eyes and scrutinizes the print on the page. “A-B-A-B-Z,” she recites, while pointing to the word “cow.” This is an important connection. Already, she knows that words are made of letters that can be named. She resumes the story word for word, turning pages slowly. “Goodnight noises everywhere,” she whispers, then suddenly shifts her voice, loudly pronouncing “The End” and proudly snapping the book shut.

Activities

At home, at day care, at preschool, provide print-rich environments, including access to high-quality books , writing materials, and toys like alphabet blocks and alphabet refrigerator magnets. High-quality books are different for young children of different ages. For example, it is best to use cloth or cardboard books for babies because they will chew on the ones they like.

In the daily routine of life, point out and read print in the environment—such as words on a restaurant menu, labels on food containers, posters on a bus, and signs out on the street. Remember that, at early ages, children may not notice that what you are reading is the letters, not the entire sign or label. Help them notice how important small differences in the letters and words are, even when the general label or sign is the same. For example, when they pay attention to a product like ice cream with a favorite logo, help them notice the differences in flavors indicated by words on the label.

Label some of the important things in the child’s universe. To make it fun, explain what you are doing and get the child involved in making artwork on labels for items like videos, books, and art supplies. Be sure to put up some signs that use the child’s name, for example, “Marie’s Room,” “Sam’s Treasure Box.” Have the child decorate the sign.

Children need to understand that print is meaningful in their daily lives and has many functions. For example, young children can learn that print gives us information—such as directions to a friend’s house, how to bake a cake. They can learn that print helps us solve problems, like written instructions for assembling a toy.

Through exposure to a wide array of books, children learn that print can entertain us, amuse us, and even comfort us. Through experiences with “writing,” children learn to distinguish between drawing and writing. Their scribbling becomes more purposeful, and as older toddlers they make some scribbles that, to their total joy, look somewhat like English writing. In the preschool years they can be encouraged to write (scribble) messages as part of playful activity.

Activities

Show children how different sorts of written and printed materials work and give them a chance to imitate. For example, when ordinary texts come into the house—bills, mail, take-out menus, announcements—share some of them with children, pointing out what the print is intended to do. “Now I know that you are having a party at school next week,” a parent might explain, after reading a flyer from preschool. Similarly, the day-care teacher can talk with children about flyers and notes being sent home with the children.

When jotting down a shopping list or leaving a note on the table or bulletin board for a family member or another staff person, occasionally explain to the child why you are doing it and what it says. Make writing materials available so that children have the chance to write (or scribble) pretend items like lists, letters, and menus themselves.

Make a point of looking up answers to questions. For example, when deciding what to wear for the day, you and your child can find out what the weather will be by reading the newspaper. “Cold and windy, chance of snow,” reads one father aloud. “We’d better put on our coats today.” When several of the preschoolers are arguing about what kind of dog they saw outside the playground, a teacher can use a book to settle the question.

Adults sometimes forget that children have to learn the most basic conventions that govern written language, such as the spaces that separate the words. The words of English text run from left to right and from top to bottom. That means that a sentence starts at the upper left of a page and continues from left to right. At the end of the line, the sentence continues until the punctuation indicates the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next.

Activities

During regular reading and writing sessions, adults can explain how print works. For example, before reading a book, look at the cover and read the title and author ’s name. While reading the book itself, occasionally run your finger along the text so children can discover that text is read from left to right.

When you need to take a break from reading, for example to answer a question, use the opportunity to point out something that experienced readers take for granted—that there are stops built into text. Say to the child, “Let me finish this sentence before I answer that question.” Then point to the period when you get there. “There—that’s the end of the sentence. Okay, now let’s see if we can figure out your question.” This helps children learn one aspect of how print works—that there are parts to it, such as sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, and that the end of a line or a page is not necessarily the end of a unit of meaning.

Preschool-age children can begin to recognize some printed alphabet letters and words, especially the ones in their own names. Many children learn the names of the letters first by singing the alphabet song or reciting them to pushes on the swing. At three and four they begin to attach the names of letters to their shapes. With help, they may soon begin to attend to beginning letters in words that they are familiar with in printed form.

Activities

Help children to find the initial letter of their own names. Many three-year-olds delight in identifying “their letter” printed in signs and on labels in the world around them.

Write, display, and point out the child’s name often. Print it on their artwork and help them recognize it. As children get older, help them learn to recognize additional words they frequently see printed in the world around them: for example, a word on a favorite t-shirt, “STOP” in stop signs, and other favorites such as “zoo,” “mom,” and “dad.”

Watch TV programs such as Sesame Street with your child and learn the letter songs with them.

The Most Important Letter Three-year-old Cara has just discovered the first letter in her name and suddenly she is in a world of “Cs.” Walking around the house, clutching the letter “C” from her alphabet block set, she is on the lookout. “Hey, there’s my C,” she cries pointing to a tin of cocoa in the kitchen. She notices the letter again, when she and her babysitter are reading a book about cats. Later that day, while riding on the bus, she looks out the window and calls out excitedly, “There’s my letter!” while passing by a large neon sign for Carl’s Restaurant.“There’s my C!”

As children move from toddlerhood to school age, they should increasingly be able to grasp the meaning of language they hear spoken in everyday conversation, as well as in narrative forms, such as books. They show this understanding through their questions and comments. When reading a story, they should freely relate information and events in the book to real-life experiences. As they get older, they should become comfortable with following who said or did what in a story.

Activities

Listen to an audio recording of a book on tape. This can be done while looking at the accompanying book or listening to the tape alone. Then have the children draw a picture of their favorite part of the story and talk with them about it.

While reading a book together, ask children questions to help them think about or reflect on vocabulary words, the plot, or something about a character.

Children need to feel positive about reading and literacy experiences. They often make displays of reading or writing attempts, calling attention to themselves: “Look at my story.” And the adults around should take time to find out about the child’s work.

Activities

Create a warm atmosphere around storytime, reading, and pretend play activities. Once in a while, invite other favorite people to join in during reading time. Respond to children’s remarks and observations about books, and take time to answer their questions while reading. Make literacy activities fun and a part of play—events they look forward to, rather than those they feel forced into. Give them a chance to choose the books they want to read, but you should choose a few too—both to make sure that you have some manageable selections in the pile you bring home and to let them see you participate in the fun of the choosing.

Take children to the library regularly, and remember to offer them many kinds of books. One child may dislike all storybooks, but fall in love with nonfiction books about dinosaurs, trains, animals, or nature. Other children love nursery rhymes and poetry. All young children will want you to read favorite books again and again, but four- and five-year-olds will also develop a frequent need for new and different books.

For children who love TV, videos, and CD-ROMs, connect these visual experiences to reading and books. For example, after watching a nature program about animals, get a book on a similar topic and extend their knowledge and enjoyment. Act out scenes from a favorite video. Or create homemade books with themes from television shows or videos. Use pictures cut out from magazines or catalogs, the child’s drawings, and labels written by an adult to create the child’s very own book.

Parents can influence their children’s literacy by involving them in a wide variety of play and everyday activities that involve language. Talking to toddlers, sharing in making and using grocery lists, singing songs, telling stories—all of this helps children build literacy skills. Another important influence is having a positive attitude about learning. Children whose families communicate that achievement is expected and appreciated tend to do better.

Parents can learn a great deal about their children’s learning. For example, they can be on the lookout for potential difficulties and discuss some of their valuable observations with teachers. Starting at age three or four, parents can observe whether or not children remember nursery rhymes and can play rhyming games. At about age four, parents can notice if children have trouble getting information or directions from conversations or texts that are read aloud to them. Once children are in kindergarten, parents should be attuned to whether they are beginning to name the letters and numbers that they see in different contexts and to write them. Five-year-olds should also be happy and able to play simple alliterative games, enjoying, for example, “I’m thinking of something that starts with the letter ‘b’” as a way to pass the time on longer trips in the car. As a child gets to be five and six, parents can observe whether the child acts as if he or she understands that spoken words can be broken down into smaller parts (for example, noticing “big” in “bigger” and the “egg” in “beg”), and that you can change a small part of a word and it becomes a very different thing (for example, changing initial consonants to make “cat,” “hat,” “sat”). That said, it is critical that parents always be aware of the tremendous variability among normal, smart children, and that it can be difficult to measure progress.

Babysitters and day care providers have an important—and growing—responsibility for children’s early literacy and reading development. They must understand that oral language is fundamental to reading, and they should have frequent one-to-one conversation with babies, maintaining eye contact with them. All day care settings should involve singing songs, reciting nursery rhymes, talking to babies in the course of everyday activity, and repeating back to a baby those “ba ba ba’s” and “ga ga ga’s.” As coos and gurgles give way to real words, caregivers should encourage children to talk, repeating what the child is saying and elaborating for the child when appropriate. (Appropriate language and literacy activities for very young children are featured earlier in this book. See pages 19-37.)

“We don’t drill toddlers with their ABCs. Instead, we create a language-rich environment. We have circle time, when we sing songs and use hand gestures to accompany the words. When I read The Three Little Bears, I don’t just tell stories. I’ll show them three stuffed animals. I’ll find three chairs. When the kids do begin to speak, I try to figure out what they’re saying and repeat it back—even if it’s not entirely comprehensible. I help them understand that language has a lot of power and they can get what they want by using language.”

—Scott Hirose

Teacher/therapist

Queens Child Guidance Center

Therapeutic nursery for children age 0 to 3

Jamaica, New York

High-quality preschool programs can boost language and literacy skills and, ultimately, reading achievement. But quality is essential, and many preschools fall short in promoting language and literacy.

In a high-quality preschool, the teacher should provide a good model of verbal language throughout the day. For example, when a child points a finger and says “Dat,” the teacher has a number of good choices. She could expand for him and say, “You want the red ball?” or she could say, gently, “Tell me what you want,” or “Tell me what you want in words.” Some teachers say, “Use your words” but accept the closest approximation that they think the child can produce. She should also have informal conversations with each child every day, encouraging them to use language by asking open-ended questions, such as why, how, and what-if.

Preschools should help children to learn, think, and talk about new domains of knowledge. They do this by providing opportunities for children to use language in a variety of ways, by ensuring lots of interesting conversations in which children are involved, by offering opportunity to play with language in ways that support phonological awareness and by incorporating meaningful uses of literacy into everyday activities. Children who have a wide body of background knowledge and life experiences are more likely to succeed in reading. They are more likely to relate to stories, recognize words in them, and to understand events described in books.

Children in America need more opportunities to attend affordable preschools where they will experience high-quality language and literacy environments. If we are to prevent reading difficulties, then children must start school motivated to learn and with the language skills they need in order to learn.

All too often preschool and day care settings for young children provide poor language and literacy environments—particularly for those whose families have limited resources. It is critical that these settings be designed to support language and literacy. As part of this effort, parents, teachers, pediatricians, social workers, speech language therapists, and other preschool practitioners should strive, using research-derived guidelines, to help children overcome language problems as early as possible.

Earlier in this chapter, Growing Up to Read, we presented language and literacy activities for adults and children in a variety of informal settings. In this current section we present activities for the preschool. As with the first set of activities, our main purpose is to illustrate the underlying concepts important for preparing children for reading instruction. We expect that the individual activities included will be helpful for most children; however, they are examples rather than comprehensive curricula in themselves.

As mentioned earlier in this book, phonological awareness involves an appreciation of the sounds, as well as the meanings, of spoken words. A child who is phonologically aware can demonstrate this, for example: by perceiving and producing rhymes (fan, tan, man, etc.); by dividing words up into their syllables (hel/i/cop/ter) and smaller components (sn/ake), and putting them back together; by noticing that groups of words have the same beginning (star, story), middle (bag, cat) or ending (pinch, lunch). Recent research has confirmed that children who have a greater degree of phonological awareness when they enter school are better equipped to learn to read.

A more advanced form of phonological awareness, called phonemic awareness, is the understanding that speech can be broken down into even smaller units (phonemes). This is very important for learning to read, because phonemes are what letters usually stand for. (The idea that letters, or groups of letters, represent phonemes is called the alphabetic principle.) For example, the word “book” is made up of three phonemes, represented in writing by “b,” “oo,” and “k.” Few preschoolers spontaneously attain phonemic awareness, but many studies have shown that they can acquire this understanding by engaging in activities that draw their attention to the existence of phonemes in spoken words.

Preschool teachers can use many appropriate activities to help build phonological awareness in young preschoolers and phonemic awareness in older children. Rhyming songs, syllable-clapping, and grouping objects according to how their names begin can all be used to draw children’s attention to the sounds of speech. Later, to promote phonemic awareness, the activities can include:

• isolating the first segment of a word (Say the first little bit of “snake”);

• finding all the objects on a poster that begin with the “nnn” sound;

• discovering what is left when a particular segment is removed from a word (e.g., Say “smile” without the “sss.” Say “team” without the “mmm”);

• breaking one-syllable words into their phonemes; and

• blending phonemes to make a word (What word does “mmm…ooo…nnn” make?).

Commercial products (books, software) for preschool teachers, with games involving these kinds of activities, are becoming more and more available. Talking about phonemes can also be integrated with letter learning, so that children can be introduced to the sounds of letters (i.e., the phonemes that they stand for) as well as to their names.

Activities

Children should play with sound and rhymes through a variety of games and songs. Examples of these games and songs follow

Sing songs that play with sound

I Can Hear the Rain

Sing songs that play with rhyme

This Old Man

Refrain

Read rhyming poetry and rhyming stories

The Spider

Through teacher and peer interactions in sociodramatic play, children use new language as they plan, negotiate, compose, and carry out the “script” of their play. In addition, they practice verbal and narrative skills that are important to the development of reading comprehension.

Activities

Every preschool classroom should have special materials and play areas geared toward encouraging children in particular domains while appealing to their interests. Such play centers might include an art center, a nature center, a puppet center, and real-world play areas, such as a store or a restaurant.

These areas should be stocked with writing supplies and printed materials that can be incorporated into play. For example, in a block area, maps and labeled photos of buildings and construction sites could be provided. In a toy area, use some originally labeled toy containers for storage. In a woodworking area, add tool catalogs, home repair magazines, and picture reference books about building. In a house area, include food packaging, menus, appliance instructions, plane tickets, travel brochures, and computer keyboards. In the outdoor area, provide colored chalk, gardening books, and bird and tree guides.

Integral to speech discrimination and phonological awareness is the basic ability to listen carefully.

Activities

Teachers can have children listen to books on tape in small groups or one at a time. Teachers can organize play activities, songs, and dances that involve listening to directions. Simon Says is an old favorite and can include sequences of directions at one time, once the children learn the basic game.

Through interesting conversations with teachers and peers, children learn vocabulary and language structures that will later help with reading. The key is to prepare for content that is rich and important to the children.

Activities

Make time each day for individual conversations with children. Give each child your full attention during the discussion and be

sure to spend enough time listening to what he or she has to say. Give the child the chance to take the conversational lead. Add your own brief responses and comments to draw him or her out. Although they may not always be factually accurate in their responses, it is important for children to learn how to use language to express and describe their impressions and ideas.

Encourage conversation when children are in a comfortable setting. They’re more likely to open up and talk when they are in a nonthreatening situation, such as a one-to-one reading session, a walk outside, and during snack time. Perhaps the most effective way to converse with children is to take time to join in their play.

Make a Personal Experiences Center in the classroom, where young children can talk with teachers about events in their lives while the teachers listen, prompt discussion, and record the experiences. Tell children personal stories. Talk about things that interest you. Acknowledge uncertainty about some things, and show children how you find answers to your questions.

Use readings of high-quality storybooks to lead children to reenactments and discussions during class. Have a child dictate his or her own story—”You tell me the story and I’ll write the words”—and then act out the story, including other children in the performance.

In story dictation, the teacher should move from taking verbatim dictation to asking the child questions about sequences that are unclear—like “Where did the ogre come from?”—and edit accordingly. Many teachers dramatize children’s stories and edit when the children recognize that something is missing.

Encourage children to write their own story. Tell them, “It doesn’t have to be like grown-up writing, use your own kid writing.” Encourage them to “read” it when they are done. Videotape them “reading” their stories from this emergent writing.

Through teacher-child readings of books, young children learn many of the key aspects of literacy such as book and print awareness, functions of print, and listening comprehension.

Activities

With storybooks or big books, children should have shared reading experiences each and every day. The teacher must not only read out loud, but develop routine practices that will actively engage the children.

Children need to have high-quality books become a part of their daily experiences.

Activities

The classroom library should be well stocked with a variety of high-quality books and magazines. Children should have the opportunity to select their own books, and the teacher should also suggest books to extend an idea for a classroom activity or to suit an individual child’s interest.

Child Care and Literacy Increasing numbers of very young children are spending time in day care settings, where the main focus has traditionally been on providing good physical care. Literacy enrichment has not been a high priority. One major obstacle to high-quality day care is the lack of good books in many day care and preschool settings. In one interesting program, a private foundation, a major city library system, and five surrounding county libraries teamed up with a university researcher, early childhood professionals, and day care teachers to bring literacy to the care of children from infancy through age five. The goal: to increase exposure to print and meaningful language among very young children. In what they called the Great Book Flood of 1996, 322 child care centers serving 17,675 mainly poor children received large quantities of high-quality books—at a ratio of five per child. They also received materials needed to create book areas and library corners. Teachers received 10 hours of training in early literacy development, storybook reading techniques, book selection, and book-related activities. Libraries participated by offering speakers, activities, and celebrations focused on books. At the end of the program, teachers reported that they read more frequently and for longer periods to their children each day, in addition to giving them greater access to books in the classroom. Children showed substantial benefits, with improvements in their competence at narration, concepts of print, concepts of writing, and letter knowledge. The children continued to show gains at a follow-up study during their kindergarten year.

Teachers should help children recognize at least some of the letters of the alphabet. Preschoolers who can recognize and print some letters have an advantage at school entry. Therefore, children should have easy access to letters in many forms: alphabet blocks, letter cards, board games, and ABC’s on wall charts at the child’s eye height, to name a few.

Activities

Include a number of alphabet books in the library. Share them frequently, inviting the children to name each letter and the pictures on the page that go with it.

Have a Letter of the Day for each of three days in a row. For each letter, decorate a big poster with the uppercase letter in the middle. Ask the children whose first name starts with that letter to come and tape their name cards to the poster. On the second day, compare the posters from the two days. On the third day, compare all three posters. Have all the children find the

From a Well-Known Book on Beginning Reading When challenged to name these two letters (“C” and “G”), my daughter, now just three years old, looked me squarely in the eye and said firmly,“I call them both ‘C’.” It is not that she could not discriminate their shapes: she regularly performs perfectly on an uppercase letter-matching game on the computer. Nor is she unaware that I like to call these letters by different names: her answer was clearly intended to preempt the correction that she knew I would produce. But she has a point. In what reasonable kind of world would people agree to call a dachshund and a St. Bernard “dogs” while calling one of these characters a “C” and the other a “G”? To us, the answer is obvious: in the kind of world where people use “C’s” and “G’s” discriminately for reading and writing—which, of course, she does not yet do. —Marilyn Jager Adams

letter in their deck of letter cards and organize a treasure hunt to find the letter in other places in the room. Later, make a big version of the letter on the ground outside—have the children line up and march along the letter shape while chanting something rhythmic about the shape. For example, while marching along the letter “B,” they might chant, “Down up, around, around.” For the last two days of the week, play games with all three letters, encouraging children to see similarities and differences between the letters. Repeat the activity with additional letters. Start with the letters that start the children’s names.

When the children are pretending to write, be aware and congratulate them when they start to make letter-like forms. Talk with them about the difference between drawing and writing and, later, between letters and numbers. Encourage them to copy the letters from the wall chart, to sign their drawings, and to label them.

Remind them to use the letters of the day. When they ask you to label a picture or write down a story, let them print some of the letters they know and like.

Ask the children to bring in their favorite letters for show-and-tell. They can be on a t-shirt, in a book, or on a cereal box. Ask the children to talk about what helps them recognize the letter. One child might say, for example, that a lower case “b” looks like a baseball bat with a ball stuck to it.

Through early writing experiences, young children learn many of the key aspects of literacy such as print awareness and concepts, functions of print, and possibly phonological awareness.

Activities

Children need access to a variety of paper, writing utensils, and materials for bookmaking—glue, tape, stapler, and book covers. A well-equipped art area should offer paper in several sizes and colors, paints, markers, crayons, and colored pencils. You may also wish to set up a separate writing or office area that includes blank books, paper, envelopes, mailing labels, stickers, and stamps. Don’t discourage scribbling and pretend writing, but do provide support and encouragement for writing letters. As you do so, expect, gradually, that more letters will be recognizable. As the children learn to form letters and develop phonological awareness, expect, too, that invented

spellings will appear. It may take a few years before many conventional spellings come. Some, such as the child’s own name and special phrases like “I love you,” may appear early and be memorized, but a true appreciation of conventional spelling comes later.

In addition to letting children experiment with writing themselves, make time to write down their personal dictations. Read back exactly what the child said, without correcting grammar or word choices. This shows that you value the child’s work and helps children begin to understand the connection between spoken and written language. If a child dictates in a language you do not understand, get the help of a parent volunteer as a transcriber and translator. Children can also act out their dictated stories.

Ideally, classrooms would offer preschoolers access to an easy-to-use word processor, printer, software programs for print concepts, stories on CD-ROM, and interactive programs.

Children engaged in language and literacy activities, observed at home and in preschools, appear mostly playful and exploratory, although in fact they are hard at work as scholars of language and literacy.

A particular set of accomplishments that the successful learner is likely to exhibit during the preschool years is shown in the table on page 59. Because of their importance, we present them in full, as published in Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (National Academy Press, 1998). This list is neither exhaustive nor incontestable, but it does capture many highlights in the course of literacy acquisition that have been revealed through several decades of research. Of course, the timing of these accomplishments will to some extent depend on maturational and experiential differences among children.

Preschool teachers represent an important—and largely underutilized—resource in promoting literacy through promoting the acquisition of rich language and beginning literacy concepts and skills. Early childhood educators should not try to replicate the formal reading instruction provided in schools; instead, their job is to help children develop the basic knowledge, interest, and understandings that will allow them to flourish once it is time for such instruction. Central to achieving the goal of primary prevention of reading difficulties is the preschool teacher ’s knowledge base and experience, as well as the support provided to the teacher; each of these may vary according to where the teacher is in his or her professional development.

A critical component in the preparation of teachers before they begin their careers is supervised, relevant, experience in preschools in which they receive ongoing guidance and feedback. A principal goal of this experience is to achieve the ability to integrate and apply the knowledge learned in practice.

Collaborative support by the teacher preparation institution and the field placement is essential.

Programs that educate early childhood professionals should require mastery of information about the many kinds of knowledge and skills that can be acquired in the preschool years in preparation for reading achievement in school. Their knowledge base should include (at least) the following:

• information about how to provide rich conceptual experiences that promote growth in vocabulary and reasoning skills;

• knowledge about word and vocabulary development, from early referential (naming) abilities to relational and abstract terms and finer-shaded meanings;

• knowledge of the early development of speaking and of listening comprehension skills, and the kinds of syntactic and prose structures that preschool children should be in the course of mastering;

• information on young children’s sense of story;

• information on young children’s sensitivity to the sounds of language;

• information on young children’s understanding of concepts of print and the developmental patterns of emergent reading and writing;

• information on young children’s development of concepts of space, including directionality;

• knowledge of fine motor development; and

• knowledge about how to instill motivation to read.

Young teachers need support from mentor teachers as they develop. Even after this training is completed, though, teachers need access to ongoing, career-long development.