Six Pre-Readings Skills

SIX PRE-READING SKILLS YOUR CHILD CAN START LEARNING FROM BIRTH!

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP PRE-READERS: THREE-FOUR-AND FIVE-YEAR-OLDS

Narrative Skills: being able to describe things and events and tell stories. Being able to tell or retell a story helps children understand what they read.

What you can do to help:

1. Listen to your child carefully when he talks.
2. Ask your child to tell you about something that happened. Let him tell you about a picture he drew.
3. Share books together.
4. Stories help children understand that things happen in order—first, next, last.
5. Read a book together that your child already knows. Switch what you do. You be the listener and let your child tell you the story.
6. Ask “what” questions. Point to a picture and say, “What’s that?” or “What is happening here?”
7. Add to what your child says. If your child says, “big truck” then you say, “Yes, a big red fire truck.”
8. Ask open-ended questions like, “What do you think is happening in this picture?”
9. Help your child relate to what is happening in the story to her own experiences. For example, “What happened when we went on a picnic?”

Print Awareness: Noticing print, knowing how to handle a book and knowing how to follow the words on a page. Being familiar with printed language helps children feel comfortable with books and understand that print is useful.

What you can do to help:

1. Read aloud everywhere you see print; labels, signs, lists, menus. Print is everywhere!
2. Point to some of the words as you say them, especially words that are repeated.
3. Let your child turn the pages.
4. Let your child hold the book and read or tell the story.
5. Hold the book upside down. See if your child turns the book around.

Letter Knowledge: Knowing letters are different from each other, knowing their names and sounds and recognizing letters everywhere. Knowing the names and sounds of letters helps children figure out how to say written words.

What you can do to help:

1. Write your child’s name.
2. Make letters from clay or use magnetic letters.
3. Point out and name letters when reading alphabet books, signs or labels.
4. Show your child that the same letter can look different. Write words that interest your child (like “dinosaur” or “truck”) using crayons, magnetic letters or pencil and paper.
   

Vocabulary: Knowing the name of things. Research shows that children who have larger vocabularies are better readers. Knowing many words helps children recognize written words and understand what they read.

What you can do to help:

1. Talk with your child about what is going on around you. Talk about how things work, feelings and ideas.
2. When your child talks with you, add more detail to what they say.
3. Speak in the language that is most comfortable for you.
4. Read together everyday. When you talk about the story and pictures, your child hears and learns more words.
5. Learn together by reading some true books on subjects that your child likes.
   

Print Motivation: Being interested in and enjoying books. Children who enjoy books will want to learn how to read.

What you can do to help:

1. Make book-sharing time a special time for closeness between you and your child.
2. Let your child see you reading.
3. Visit your public library often.
   

Phonological Awareness: Being able to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words. Most children who have difficulty reading have trouble with phonological awareness.

What you can do to help:

1. Ask whether two words rhyme. "Do cat and hat rhyme?" "Do cat and dog rhyme?"
2. Say words with sounds or word chunks left out. “What word would we have if we took the hot out of hotdog?"
3. Put two chunks together to make a word: “What word would we have if you put cow and boy together?"
4. Say words with sounds left out: “What word would we have if we took the buh sound away from bat?”
5. Say rhymes and make up your own silly, nonsense rhymes together.
6. Sing songs. Songs have different notes for each syllable in a word.
7. Read some poetry together. Make up short poems together. Say the words that rhyme. Say rhymes and sing songs in the language most comfortable for you.
   

Source: The Early Literacy Initiative: a Partnership between the Public Library Association and the National Institute of child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
This information was created by Dr. Grover(Russ) White hurst, Leading Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York and Dr. Christopher Lonigan, Associate Professor of Psychology at Florida State University.
Funding was provided by the Public Library Association (PLA), a division of the American Association.