Did you know that spoken language and literacy skills such as reading and writing are connected? This means that children who enter school with weaker verbal abilities are much more likely to experience difficulties learning literacy skills than those who do not. Children need to have a basic understanding of emergent literacy skills at a young age in order to help them be successful with reading and writing. What is Emergent Literacy? According to the American Speech-Language Hearing Association or ASHA–”Children learn to understand and use language to express their ideas, thoughts, and feelings, and to communicate with others. During early speech and language development, children learn skills that are important to the development of literacy (reading and writing). This stage is known as emergent literacy and generally begins at birth through the preschool years.”
Let’s break this down into the 4 stages of literacy development:
- Awareness and Exploration Stage: Babies and Toddlers
- Early Learning Reading and Writing Stage: Kindergarten To First Grade
- Transitional Reading and Writing Stage: Second and Third Grade
- Competent Reading and Writing Stage: Fourth Grade and Beyond
Signs that may indicate later reading, writing and learning problems include persistent baby talk, absence of interest in or appreciation for nursery rhymes or shared book reading, difficulty understanding simple directions, difficulty learning (or remembering) names of letters, failure to recognize or identify letters in the child’s own name. Children with speech and language disorders, physical or medical conditions, developmental disorders, children in poverty or a family history of language or literacy problems can have major concerns with their literacy skills. As a Special Education Teacher, I work with many students that have reading, writing, developmental and language concerns, which in turn affects my students’ emergent literacy skills. I work with a lot of older students that still struggle with these skills, even well into their teens. It has been my mission to create materials for this age group to help them be successful in mastering their emergent literacy skills. I have worked hard to create age appropriate materials for teenagers in special education, with a focus on emergent literacy skills.
You may be wondering what emergent literacy skills could be. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES:
Print Motivation
Put very simply, print motivation is developing a love for reading and an interest in books. This is the very first stepping stone in being ready to read. Reading books to children at a very young age can help them to develop a love for reading.
Vocabulary
At an early age, vocabulary is when young children start to understand and put together words and their meanings. Vocabulary is the key to children’s comprehension and understanding of books. Children who develop a substantial vocabulary are often able to think more deeply, express themselves better and actually learn new things more quickly.
Print Awareness
Print awareness is understanding that print is organized in a specific way. For example, knowing that when you read a book, you read from left to right, top to bottom. It is also understanding that words consist of letters and have spaces between them. Most children become aware of print long before they enter school. They see print all around them-in books, on signs, billboards, menus and more. The ability to understand how print works does not emerge magically and unaided. This understanding comes about through the active intervention of adults and other children who point out letters, words, and other features of the print that surrounds children. In addition, the more they are exposed to books and have interactions with adults reading books, they begin to understand the features of a book-such as the title, author, illustrator, page numbers and how to turn a page.
Narrative Skills
Narrative skills are basically a child’s expressive language skills. How well they are able to retell a story, describe things, and tell events in order are some examples of this.
Letter Knowledge
Letter-sound knowledge is an early basis for an alphabetic writing system and overall spelling success. Explicit instruction in sound identification, matching, segmentation, and blending, when linked appropriately to sound-symbol association, reduces the risk of reading failure and accelerates early reading and spelling acquisition for all children.
Phonological + Phonemic Awareness
According to Reading Rockets, “Phonological awareness is a broad skill that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language – parts such as words, syllables, onsets and rimes. Children who have phonological awareness are able to identify and make oral rhymes, can clap out the number of syllables in a word, and can recognize words with the same initial sounds like ‘money’ and ‘mother. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Children who have poorly developed phonemic awareness at the end of kindergarten are likely to become poor readers.”
You can read more about specific emergent literacy skills here The 6 Emergent Literacy Skills That Your Child Needs To Know. Ultimately, these emerging literacy skills help students to have a good foundation for reading and to prepare for the 5 pillars of reading:
- Phonemic Awareness
- Phonics
- Vocabulary
- Reading Comprehension
- Fluency
Here are some simple activities you can do to help develop emergent literacy skills in children:
- Rhyming
- Matching Pictures to Words
- Counting Syllables in Words
- Segmenting Words into Sounds
- Read picture and story books that focus on sounds, rhymes and alliteration.
- Encourage your child or student to take the lead with reading – for example, ‘Where do we start from?’ Every so often, stop reading and ask your child what she thinks will happen next.
- Play games like ‘I spy’ using colours. For example, ‘I spy with my little eye, something that’s green. What’s something green I might be looking at?’
- Help your child use playdough to make the letters of the alphabet or numbers.
- Give your child opportunities to use letters of the alphabet in different forms – on blocks, magnetic letters that stick on the fridge, and puzzle pieces.
- Ask your child to tell you about their day.
I hope that you were able to take away some helpful tips and have a better understanding of what emergent literacy is.
Happy Teaching!
-Jessica