How to prepare my child to read and write?
- Dec 18, 2020
- 3 min read
As kids begin their school life where more advanced skills are needed such as comprehension, turn-taking skills, more of them are expected, in particular, literacy skills are one of the most important in determining school success.
To start, let's look at the word literacy.
If you haven't already checked my Pinterest post about different literacy skills, check it here.
Literacy skills simply put is the ability to read and write from the age of 5 to 12. Preliteracy, aka Emergent literacy, similarly is the primitive reading and writing abilities children develop from birth to age 5. Literacy difficulties are a significant sign of developmental language disorder (DLD), this includes decoding different contexts, reading comprehension, though symptoms are not apparent until later (grades 4-6) where literacy skills are highly demanded.
Since today we are focusing on the first step- how to prepare to read and writing, or in other words, how to develop preliteracy skills?
Based on Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998) there are 3 code-related skills- phonological awareness, print knowledge, and emergent writing. What do they mean respectively and how do we develop these skills?
Phonological Awareness:
This refers to the ability to manipulate and identify sounds/syllables within words (the structure of a word). This includes 3 abilities:
Syllable awareness: the awareness that there are different sounds and syllables within a word.
a. Counting the number of syllables in a word e.g. how many syllables/sounds are there in the word 'animal'?
b. Dividing syllables within a word e.g how does 'animal' sound like without the sound 'a'?
Onset rimes awareness- the awareness that words can have the same sounds.
a. Rhyming words: What word rhymes with the word dog?
b. Blending of onset words: What is this word- d-og?
Phonemic awareness: the awareness that syllables contain phonemes e.g. knowing that the syllable 'buy' in the word 'buyer' starts with the b sound.
a. Which word has the same first sound as buy among the three: but, lot, cut?
b. Blending of sounds in a word: what is this word-to-ma-to?
Print Knowledge:
The basic awareness of how print works e.g. reading from left to right, top to bottom, and the fact that there are spaces in between words.
a. Interactive book sharing is highly recommended. This incorporates the development of language and print knowledge. Reading with your child regularly familiarizes them with the functioning of prints. To start, introduce your tiny tots to reading from a young age. Remember, Preliteracy skills are skills developed from birth to age 5, so there is absolutely no harm in starting our child with the journey of reading from a young, in fact, it is extremely beneficial!
Emergent Writing:
This refers to one's initial attempts at writing, simple writing skills.
a. Learning to write different alphabets
b. Learning to write their own name
c. Holding a pen to draw freely
The idea here is simple and straightforward. Be it color pencils or pens, have your child start writing! This would not only benefit their development of preliteracy skills but also their motor skills when handling a pen with their fingers.
*As you can tell, Preliteracy development is a massive topic itself, the above is an introduction to the idea of preliteracy and some practical exercises to help develop those target skills. There will be freely downloadable cheatsheets illustrating how to target each sub-skills of preliteracy to prepare your child to achieve academic success to stay tuned!
As mentioned, literacy is a crucial skill in multiple contexts, especially in schools. It allows them to understand how books, sounds, songs work, development of reading, and writing skills from birth, namely preliteracy skills are determining factors for later literacy skills.
One practical way to practice preliteracy skills is watching educational videos such as USYD playroom on youtube. The following video is one way to practice syllable awareness (phonological awareness) with your child at home during the holidays! Cost-free and a way to have some fun time together.
That is all from me this week, hope you have all enjoyed this week's topic, have a great weekend and most importantly, have a fruitful and wonderful Christmas!
Don't forget to smile!
Joyce Lau
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