A Parent's Guide to Early Literacy
Introduction
Literacy is fundamental to all areas of learning. Our use of language is at the centre of our development and our ability to express our emotions, our thinking, our learning and who we are.
Our aim at Nursery is to encourage our children to embrace and enjoy all aspects of literacy and to develop the skills to become effective and enthusiastic communicators with the ability to experience literacy for enjoyment, communication and to gather information, knowledge and understanding through appropriate play based activities.
We will lay the foundations necessary for your child to be able to engage in the lifelong skills of listening and talking, reading and writing by immersing them in a language rich environment.
Listening and Talking
Listening and talking skills are of particular importance in the early years. Children will be unable to read and write unless they can speak and understand speech. In developing listening and talking skills children will gain an understanding of the variety of purposes of spoken language. Expressing your own ideas, thoughts and feelings appropriately and understanding those of others plays a huge part in the activities in Nursery across the curriculum areas.
To effectively take part in listening and talking children must be able to:
• Focus attention;
• Have the confidence to contribute Opportunities to listen and talk will help children to develop the skills to:
• Use language appropriately;
• Explore sounds and rhythm of words;
• Verbally construct sentences of increasing complexity;
• Ask questions.
In Nursery children will develop skills in listening and talking through:
• Talking in small and large groups with each other and with adults;
• Being encouraged to express their feelings and share ideas;
• Experimenting with language in different contexts to describe, explain, discuss, predict, ask questions and develop ideas, eg planning, role play, investigative/problem solving;
• Taking part in more extended conversations;
• Listening and responding to a variety of stories, songs, music and rhymes;
• Listening and responding to the sounds and rhythm of words in stories, songs, music and rhymes;
• Listening for information and following instructions of increasing complexity.
Staff in Nursery will:
• Listen;
• Be interested and animated;
• Talk and reflect with the children;
• Share books, rhymes, songs;
• Involve themselves in play;
• Give children time to listen, to think and to respond;
• Use straightforward sentences;
• Use repetition;
• Use concrete items when necessary;
• Copy and extend the child’s language;
• Use open questions to promote thinking;
• Get down to the child’s level;
Reading
Our aim in Nursery is for children to see the connection between the rows of shapes on the page and the everyday words we speak. We want children to see the point of reading and motivate them to learn how to do it. We take it for granted that we can find out where we are going by reading signs, or information sheets, we can read detail on goods in shops and find out information in books and newspapers. Exploring the purpose and importance of reading with children is crucial.
Reading to children is an essential aspect of development of knowledge and skills required for later reading. Children need to be able to tell a story before they will be able to write one.
Reading to Children:
Motivates children to become readers; Gives children opportunities to develop favourite stories/books; Enables children to experience both the familiar and the new; Helps children to develop an “ear” for book language; Helps children to develop their imagination; Develops pre-reading skills.
In Nursery staff help children to develop a range of pre-reading skills including:
• Recognising the link between the written and spoken word;
• Book handling skills;
• Understanding the language and layout of books;
• Developing an awareness of letter names and sounds in the context of play;
• Recognising some familiar words and letters;
• Recalling;
• Predicting.
In Nursery staff will help children develop these by:
• Being enthusiastic with stories, rhymes, poems and books
• Valuing books and reading/demonstrating how to care for books;
• Using voice; thinking about tone, tempo, quality, suspense, highlighting emphasis;
• Explaining book language – looking at the author and illustrator, showing the direction of print, discussing large text, exclamation marks, speech bubbles;
• Promoting reasoning and thinking skills by asking children to think forward;
• Talking about the characters;
• Looking at the pictures to understand what is happening;
• Providing opportunities to predict to join in, recall;
In Nursery children will develop skills in reading through:
Listening to and sharing stories, rhymes, poems and songs at storytime, in the bookcorner, at the listening table and on the smartboard; Using resources such as jigsaws, odd one out, spot the difference, matching and sorting games, lotto games to help with visual discrimination;
Using memory games, eg Kim’s game, what’s missing, etc; Using resources such as the listening table, sound lotto’s, rhyme and letter bags, guess who is calling you, to develop children’s discrimination between sounds;
Using sequencing cards with pictures, story jigsaws Using name cards to vote, choose resources, register for snack, to recognise their name;
Exploring what letters look like – sorting letters according to which have curves, straight bits, which ones look similar, using letter bags and IT resources;
Looking at environmental print –shop signs, packaging, menus, catalogues, etc.
Writing
Our aim in Nursery is to develop children’s understanding of the reasons for writing as well as provide opportunities for children to increase the strength and manipulative movements to engage in the act of writing.
The skill of writing is directly linked to children’s physical development and in particular the development of fine movements in children’s fingers and hands. It is extremely important that children are not rushed into formal writing before they are physically able and all children develop at different rates. Early scribbles are early attempts at writing which gradually develop into conventional writing.
In Nursery we will be engaging children in activities to promote fine motor skill development and hand eye coordination necessary for drawing and writing in later life.
Such play-based activities include:
• Dressing/undressing buttons and zips etc;
• Using playdough and modelling materials;
• Jigsaws;
• Scrunching paper, cutting and sticking;
• Threading items on to necklaces;
• Using pegs and boards, hammers and nails, etc;
• Using construction toys;
• Cooking activities – chopping, mixing, kneading, pouring.
The development of large gross motor skills is also important in introducing the four basic formation of letter shapes used. You can help your child by encouraging them to work through the following large movements:
Top to bottom
Anti-clockwise circular
Bouncing on top
Bouncing underneath
Using scarves and ribbons or just arms and hands in the air, writing on blackboards with chalks, painting on large sheets of paper, using brushes with water outside on the wall.
Once children have mastered the large movements and have developed the strength and control to reduce these into a smaller scale, name writing can begin. It is better to start with lower case letter first. Children are encouraged to write the letters of their name individually – bad habits in terms of letter formation can be very difficult to correct later. Children can then begin writing letters which are formed in the same way.
In exploring print children will also learn that writing:
Has a purpose; Holds a message; Tells the story Is different from other patterns; Has a range of uses and is powerful; Has a particular directionality; Is made of letters, words, phrases, etc.
Staff in Nursery will:
Provide opportunities for experimenting with emergent writing, e.g. themed writing opportunities, labelling work; Provide meaningful and contextual environmental print; Model writing for different purposes; Display and value children’s writing; Scribe for children; Create texts with children; Discuss their work.
You can help your child at home to develop literacy skills by:
Engaging in some of the activities we do in nursery to develop gross and fine motor control
Teaching your child nursery rhymes – they help with speech segmentation and sounds awareness and are an important aspect of later reading
Modelling reading and writing for your child so they can see you reading for information and enjoyment. Read packets and labels, menu’s, instructions to play games. Model the way we read text following words with your finger from left to right and top to bottom. Write for different reasons – cheques, shopping lists, cards, telephone messages, invitations, filling in forms etc
Letting your child use old forms or unwanted junk mail to fill in with pretend writing
Providing writing and drawing materials, valuing and discussing their marks – give children enough space to make big marks if they need to
Reading to your child – share stories together and make it enjoyable – encourage your child to join in with familiar parts.
Try to use different voices for the characters to make it more enjoyable. Sometimes you can talk about the characters, their favourite parts, what might happen next. You could look at the writing talk about why it is big or small. Look at speech bubbles. Your child could try to find some familiar letters in writing such as the ones in their name. Talk about and describe what letters look like with your child.
Tips
Playing odd sound out – give your child words beginning with the
Playing games like I spy
When you are out and about – looking at names of streets, road
Making a game of spotting letters. Reading out where same sound and one that doesn’t – can they identify which is different? signs, shop signs.
the bus is going to from the front. Talking about what the L stands for on a car and trying to spot some.
DON’T rush into using published writing materials before your child is physically able to move onto this small scale.
DON’T get your child to trace their name when starting to write it - rather take one letter at a time and show them how to write it correctly giving them a big piece.
DON’T worry about how your child is doing in comparison to other children –everyone develops at different rates.
Remember these are just suggestions, it is not an exhaustive list and there are lots of other ways you can help your child’s literacy development. Please do not feel you need to do all of them all of the time. Above all have fun and explore the pleasures of literacy. If you have any questions about the content of this guide, please do not hesitate to ask any member of the Nursery staff.
