Early Literacy Development in Young Children - Building Strong Foundations
- William Brooke
- Mar 21
- 3 min read
For all children, a high-quality early education forms the critical foundation for long-term academic success. According to research summarized by Carmen Sherry Brown from Hunter College, CUNY, developing strong literacy skills in the early years significantly impacts a child's future reading ability and overall educational achievement.
The Reading Development Process
Reading requires mastery and integration of numerous skills. The National Reading Panel identified five critical areas for effective reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. These skills are interconnected and interdependent, making them difficult to teach in isolation.
Learning to read follows a developmental sequence that typically progresses from appreciation for print to phonological awareness, then to phonics and word recognition. These foundational skills serve as building blocks for later competence and proficiency.
Four Essential Foundational Skills
The research highlights four key developmental areas that support emergent readers:
1. Print Concepts
Children need to understand what print looks like, how it works, and that it carries meaning. This includes recognizing that:
- Books have a front and back, a beginning and an end
- Print, not pictures, tells the story
- We read from left to right and top to bottom
- Words are separated by spaces
Print awareness helps children connect written language to oral language and recognize words as components of communication.
2. Phonological Awareness
This umbrella term encompasses skills related to recognizing that words consist of sound units. As children develop this awareness, they learn that words can be segmented into syllables and that each syllable has beginning (onset) and ending (rime) sounds. Through language play, children learn to recognize patterns among words.
3. Phonics and Word Recognition
Research shows that phonics instruction improves children's ability to recognize words and decode text. Children learn systematic relationships between letters and sounds, that written words represent spoken words, and that recognizing words quickly and accurately aids comprehension.
4. Fluency
Fluency links decoding skills with comprehension. It begins with oral language development, as children become fluent in spoken language before transferring those skills to reading. Read-alouds, repeated readings, and opportunities for language use all support fluency development.
Practical Approaches for Parents and Teachers
Children who develop foundational skills in language and literacy during preschool enter kindergarten ready to learn reading and writing. Here are specific activities to support each foundational area:
Creating Print-Rich Environments
- Label classroom or home materials with both pictures and words (e.g., label toy bins, bookshelves, and personal belongings)
- Use environmental print to create books, games, and activities (e.g., make matching games using familiar logos or create a book of signs children recognize)
- Connect functional print to daily activities by following visual schedules, recipes, or instruction cards for classroom routines
- Create a word wall with pictures and words that children can interact with during play and learning activities
Reading Aloud with Dialogic Techniques
- Provide many opportunities for children to listen and actively participate in read-aloud sessions
- Use predictable and patterned books that encourage children to join in
- Explicitly discuss book features by pointing out the cover, title, author, and illustrator during reading
- Ask open-ended questions like "What do you think will happen next?" or "Show me where to begin reading on this page"
- Take dictation from children to create books based on their ideas and experiences
Developing Phonological Awareness
- Engage children in language play through alliterative language, rhyming, and sound patterns
- Read books containing rhyming words, emphasizing the rhyming pairs as you read
- Clap out syllables in children's names or separate words in a sentence using blocks
- Play listening games like "Simon Says" that focus on sound discrimination
- Introduce activities that progress from easier skills (identifying rhymes) to more difficult ones (isolating beginning sounds in words)
Supporting Phonics and Word Recognition
- Teach common sound-letter relationships that are meaningful to children, starting with letters in their names
- Use games to support sound-letter connections, such as tongue twisters and sorting activities
- Create class books that children can interact with frequently
- Use environmental print and name cards to help children recognize familiar words and letters
Promoting Fluency
- Re-read familiar books and stories multiple times
- Model fluent reading by reading aloud daily with appropriate expression
- Use echo reading where you read a phrase or sentence and have children repeat it
- Incorporate songs, finger plays, poetry, and nursery rhymes into daily routines
- Act out stories to provide additional opportunities to translate written language to oral language
By implementing these practical strategies, parents and teachers can help children understand why people read and write, motivating them to excel in their own literacy development. This foundation sets children on a path to becoming successful, proficient readers throughout their educational journey.
The full study can be downloaded here:
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