Early Literacy Skills

Contributing to your child's literacy can start as early as possible. What we hope to do in this section is reinforce to you that you are doing all the right things and add ideas to your list of extending experiences so that you incorporate as many learning opportunities as possible into your everyday activities and conversations.

For parents, the elements of literacy; reading, writing, speaking and listening often merge together. This is the best way for your child to learn. Any encouragement you give your child's attempts to accomplish any of these is just what he needs. Just in the same way as you gleefully praised your child when he babbled away at 5 months old, making sense of the sounds around him, you need to have the same approach to his attempts at literacy if you are both going to enjoy the challenge ahead.

Reading

It is important to remember that as a parent, your role in literacy is to nurture a love for books and prepare you child to be ready to read. You will do many more favours to your child's first teacher if you actually stay away from reading schemeí books simply to get your child one step ahead. What actually happens is that your child will become lackluster in her response to the school books and therefore lessen the excitement that many children feel when they realise they are learning something very important. Another crucial thing to remember is that reading books are only one aspect of the incredible journey towards literacy. For most children it is a long but mainly enchanting adventure and one that has many nooks and crannies that will be taught both implicitly and exclusively by early years teachers.

Basically, read, read, read to your child. From birth, babies will enjoy hearing your voice, the intonations and rhythm of the sentences, even though they will not understand what you are saying. It is all going in and being stored somewhere! Choose cloth books and board books so that he can mouth them and get used to the way the pages turn. As your child grows, the library can expand. Read simple stories and enjoy the simplicity of them. Read books with no words and find ANTHING to talk about when looking at the pictures. Imagine what the characters are saying and give them different accents, just for fun. Read big books, small books, non-fiction books and don't be afraid to read them over and over again.

Poetry and nursery rhymes are HUGELY important to young children. Traditional tales bring cultures together, folk tales create common interests and rhymes, on a more academic level, contribute to children recognising a pattern and relationship between words that is crucial to learning to read and spell. Many of the most popular children's stories rhyme (think The Gruffalo) and children giggle with joy a being able to predict the familiar last word in each verse. By doing that, you can explain to children that they are in fact reading. An increase in confidence in this way will ensure that children are keen to try and try (just as they did when learning to talk) when faced with written words and they therefore stand a greater chance of reading success.

Enjoying books together and reading with enthusiasm to your child will infect them with a love for stories and knowledge. Of course, there are more facets to the reading process but if solid foundations are created in the way I have outlined, the task for the teacher and child in school can be far more rewarding. The reason I suggest parents concentrate on this rather than taking a more formal approach to reading is simple. It might be different to the methodology used in school. There are different approaches and although not a sole method is the correct way, consistency and continuity is definitely more helpful for young children. There are many times a parent will hear That's NOT what Miss Davis calls it! The nurturing of books is a time consuming process and something that parents have the luxury to do when compared with a teacher of 30 children in the class. Although most teachers will have a story time at some point each day, sitting close to a parent, snuggled up with a good book and one on one attention, is a time to cherish and one which will entice children to come back again and again. Use your finger to indicate where you are reading from and reinforce that you are reading from left to right. Highlight any words written in large or CAPITAL letters and explain why this has been done e.g. shouting.

Phonics

Use the phonics section to learn how to say the phonic sounds of the alphabet. Playing with these with your child will ensure they are learning the sounds that children need to sound out simple C.V.C (consonant, vowel, consonant) words. Also, many schools will value developmental writing attempts from their young novices and these phonics are crucial ingredients of this (see more about this below in the Writing section) Phonics is an important part of reading and writing but try not to hyper focus on them. By all means, play games that reinforce initial sounds and play a snap games to recognise the letters but please do not expect children to sound out non phonetic words as only 40% of English is phonetic. It makes no sense and children need to learn a bank of whole words as shapes.

Writing

Beginning to write starts with early mark making.This is when you are sitting in the doctor's waiting room and the only thing you find to occupy your child for 10 seconds is a biro and the back of your bank statement. The scribbles will gradually turn to recognisable shapes and then, if your child has had regular exposure to written words and the right encouragement, she will make attempts to copy letters. Of course, this often starts with their name. Any attempts at mimicking writing should be encouraged before your child starts school and it will not be perfect. It is far easier to teach a child to write who believes they can already do it, than a child who has been told they need to copy Mum's writing to make sure they don't make mistakes.

The most valuable thing you can do is create real reasons for your child to write- shopping lists, cards to friends, invitations, mini books, posters and letters to Granny. Even though these will look like scribble to you, value them, praise the efforts and above all, tell your child- Wow, you can write! That way, your child will do it again, and again and again to get that response from you! As your children learns phonics through games and whole words through his favourite stories, gradually the se things she has learned will creep into her developmental writing and so, like magic, the process comes together. Of course, there are more facets to this process, but they are for the teacher to worry about! In this section, over time we will add ideas and suggestions for you to do with your children to support work in the classroom.

Speaking and Listening

This is an area that schools are concerned about as children are arriving at school with less and less language. As parents work more, TVs get left on in bedrooms, dinners are served in front of screens and we are all communicating less, face-to-face. Therefore the most important thing you can do to develop this is to TALK to your children and make eye contact with them. Read books and listen to them. Turn off your phone when you are spending quality time with your children. Make up silly plays to act out and make your child use a variety of voices (loud, quiet, silly, growling) to enhance what they are doing.