Ready to Read and Write in the Early Years

Meeting Individual Needs

Angela Glenn, Jacquie Cousins, Alicia Helps

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134024452
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Focusing on the crucial area of early literacy, this book aims to provide an easy-to-understand guide to inclusion for pre-school practitioners. Includes:

• how to establish strong foundations from which to develop reading and writing skills
• individual, paired and group reading and writing
• photocopiable record sheets
• short case studies that illustrate how strategies work in practice.

Written for practitioners in all pre-school settings and parents.

Section 1
Developing literacy skills

Communication development

Getting ready to read

Getting ready to write

Able children

Sensory processing

Developing thinking skills

Self-esteem and motivation

Special needs

Reading and writing are two skills that many people look at in relative isolation. It is generally expected that when a child starts school they will be taught to read and write. Some parents are understandably very proud and pleased when their pre-school child begins to develop these skills prior to starting school but it will be important that the child is developing a holistic approach to literacy development and learning. Reading and writing are both complex, high-level skills and all children benefit from sound preparation in 'getting ready' to read and write.

As a starting point we need to recognise that reading and writing are methods of communication. Reading is about gaining information and ideas from another person through decoding an abstract symbolic code. Writing is about sharing information with other people also through using an abstract symbolic code. It is essential to recognise that effective reading skills are about understanding the meaning behind a communication; good writing skills involve being able to express an idea or piece of information in words and being able to record in a way that other people can understand.

Communication development

Basic communication is the way that a message is passed on to another person. Before this communication can begin there are a range of steps that need to happen. First of all, the child needs to have good reasons to want to communicate and find out or give information. Motivation is absolutely vital for early communication and the later development of literacy skills and the focus in the early years should always be on this. If the child develops good verbal communication skills in a fun way, the likelihood is that reading and writing skills development will also be seen in a fun way.

According to Weitzman (1992) there are seven stages of communication and language development for normally developing children. These stages are outlined on the following page.

In order to be able to read and write a child will need to build up a large bank of words and be familiar with the way language is structured. It is very important therefore to encourage children's talking and listening skills. From the moment they make their first babbling noise and an adult responds, babies are beginning to learn how to communicate. Every opportunity should be taken to talk with pre-school children, especially those who — for whatever reason —are 'vulnerable' in terms of language development.

Early years practitioners should be aware of all the different ways to engage children in speaking and listening, and planning can include useful prompts. (See 'Water play — speaking and listening' (p. 4) for planning speaking opportunities around play with water.)

• Comment on what the children are doing — give them the language to give back to you:
  Adult: 'I can see that you like painting, Kerry. Those flowers look like daisies in a lovely green field.'
  Child: 'Yes ... daisies in lovely green field.'
• Ask questions, both 'open' and 'closed'. A closed question is where there is a right or wrong answer: 'Amjit, how many ducks can you see in the water?' Young children can often cope with this sort of question quite well. Open questions can have several appropriate answers: 'Lily, what do you like to eat for your tea?' Children can find this sort of question very difficult and the adult may need to offer support by reducing the number of answers possible: 'Matthew, what do you like best for tea? — jacket potato or pasta?'
  By saying the child's name first — before the question — you are alerting them to be listening and paying attention and increasing their chances of being able to respond. Get into the habit of giving children time to think before they answer (perhaps count to five); sometimes it is tempting to jump in and answer for them — but this is not always necessary if you can give them a little time to think.
  Build up a repertoire of responses to wrong and inappropriate or irrelevant answers and avoid saying 'No', or, That isn't quite right,' or, 'That's wrong.' Negative responses can damage a child's self-esteem and discourage them from volunteering answers next time. (See below for some suggested responses to inappropriate answers.)

• Model good language structures. There is a subtle but effective way of doing this without seeming to correct the child.
  Adult: 'Suzi, what have you got in your cafe for me to eat today?'
  Child: 'Me got cake.'
  Adult: 'Oh good! I've got some cakes at home, but can I have one of yours to eat now, please?'

Getting ready to read

Most children learn to read — in their own good time — without too much difficulty. For some, however, the process can be much harder, often because the 'pre-reading' skills are not well established. There are lots of ways to prepare children for learning to read and many teachers believe that more time needs to be spent on these areas.

Language experience

This has been touched on above — the better a child can speak, the more words he or she knows and the better they can understand others, the more prepared they will be for reading. It is important to remember however, that books are not always written in the same way as we speak.' W'im goo-in t'the chippie' will be a familiar phrase used by families in the Midlands, but in a story book may well appear as 'We're going to the chip shop.' Children who hear stories read to them from an early age can understand these differences and learn to take them in their stride.

Phonological awareness

Learning about letter sounds (phonics) and being able to put them together to build words, is an important part of both reading and writing. To be able to do this, children have to be able to hear sounds clearly and differentiate between similar sounds. The incidence of 'glue' ear or other problems, can seriously affect a child's ability in this area. In the early years, games to practise sound differentiation can be great fun, and repeating rhymes also provides valuable experience in phonological awareness. For example:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great_(Let children provide the rhyming word, point out that 'fall' rhymes with 'wall' — they sound alike.)

Check that children can:

• hear that two or more words begin with the same sound
• identify the odd one out
• pick out two words that rhyme

Understanding books

Children need to know that the print in a book conveys meaning. The pictures can give us clues about a story — but the words are where we look to get most information. They also need to know:

• about holding the book the right way up
• how to turn pages — one at a time
• where to start reading — left to right along the line — and about the 'return sweep' to the next line and that the story goes from front to back (usually)
• that one word on the page matches one word spoken

This knowledge comes from sharing books with adults, following the finger-pointing as the reader moves along the line of text (progressing to the child pointing at the words) and being involved in the whole process rather than being passive.

Visual discrimination and memory

Children have to be able to see the difference between similar-looking squiggles on the page and remember which sounds they represent: p looks very much like q, b like d, m like n. Before practitioners embark on letter-sound recognition, activities to develop visual discrimination (sorting, matching, spot the difference, find the odd one out etc.) can provide useful practice in this skill, Kim's game and other visual memory activities are also useful. There are many words in the English language which have to be remembered from the way they look rather than from their individual letter sounds — the, why, could — so visual memory plays an important part in learning to read.

Prediction

Early readers need to be able to have a good guess at what a word might be, using all the clues available:

• Look at the picture
• Look at the first letter — what sound does it make?
• Think about what sort of word would fit there
• Think about what makes sense

If a child has a good experience of the world and a good vocabulary, he or she will guess the last word of this sentence:

It was raining so Kim put up her umbrella.

There might be a picture to check against — and if he or she knows the sound made by the first letter, the child can be pretty sure that the word is 'umbrella' even if they have never seen it before.

Context

Early readers will be most comfortable with stories set in familiar contexts and introducing the book to them before reading begins, will help to establish the context and explain any new vocabulary. Even before children have begun to read for themselves, looking at the cover of the book and the pictures inside can help to 'set the scene' and 'cue in' the audience for what they can expect to happen.

• Talk about key aspects of pictures drawing attention to main characters or objects
• Ask questions about what might happen next. Involve the child in thinking ahead
• Was the child right in what they thought?
• Keep checking to ensure the child is able to understand

Getting ready to write

The developmental pre-writing stages that children seem to go through include:

• making random scribble patterns
• arranging scribbles in lines
• making squiggles and letter-like shapes which may include a few real letter shapes
• using letters to represent one or more sounds, e.g. S for Samantha
• some complete words appear

During these stages, children are learning how to hold and control a pencil or crayon and those with motor co-ordination difficulties will benefit from support in choosing an appropriate size and thickness of pencil, using the right amount of pressure and practising an appropriate pencil grip. Children who are left handed have particular issues to manage and practitioners need to know strategies to show them. (See Handwriting by Taylor (2001) - details are provided in 'Further reading'.)

Most children will want to copy adults and will attempt to 'write' letters and cards. Encouraging this is very important because by doing this they are learning about sending messages and communicating. Adults in the early years setting should model writing in a variety of situations and the setting up of a post office or writing corner/table can provide lots of opportunity for this.

Able children

There will be those children who show a particular interest in the world around them and present as very able children. There is now a greater inte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Section 1 Developing literacy skills
• Section 2 Case studies
• Section 3 Activities
• Section 4 How adults can help children to learn to read
• Appendix 1 Checklists
• Appendix 2 Recording pack
• Appendix 3 The parent workshop
• References
• Further reading
• Useful addresses