Essential Early Literacy Teaching Strategies

In the article, "The Essentials of Early Literacy Instruction," there are 8 instructional strategies listed that have been linked through strong research to early literacy skills. Although this article may have intended these strategies to be used by teachers in the classroom, there is no reason that they could not be incorporated into a child's home life as well. I will list the strategies accompanied with a brief description and some examples of how each can be used by your family at home.


1. Rich teacher talk
          Although the word "teacher" is explicitly used in the title of this strategy, any adult could engage in rich conversation with children. The goals of this strategy are to provide new vocabulary, extend children's language by adding onto their ideas, discuss cognitively challenging content, and listen and respond to what children have to say.
          This could be done at practically any time within almost any context. Seek out opportunities to engage your child in rich and interesting conversation. It might be most productive to begin with your child's interests or an experience that your child enjoyed. Remember to highlight new vocabulary and emphasize the importance of description.

2. Storybook reading

          This strategy is simply reading aloud to your child. The goals are to expose children to numerous enjoyable types of literature, provide supportive conversations, and build familiarity with books by repeated readings.
          Perhaps your child already has some favorite books or stories, and these are great choices for read alouds. Another option is to take a trip to the library with your child to explore and choose books that you could read together.


3. Phonological awareness activities
          Phonological awareness refers to the awareness of the sounds of language. The goal of this strategy is to provide experiences and opportunities to increase children's awareness of these sounds.
          These experiences and opportunities include games, stories, songs, and poems that involve rhyme, alliteration, and sound matching.



4. Alphabet activities
          The goal of this strategy is to engage children with materials that promote and support the identification of letters of the alphabet.
          This can be done with ABC books, magnetic letters, alphabet blocks/puzzles/toys, and ABC charts.



5. Support for emergent reading
          This strategy means to encourage children to attempt to read books and other types of print.
          At home, this can be done with favorite books, repeated readings, environmental print, and any other print that your child is either familiar with or interested in.

6. Support for emergent writing
          The goal of this strategy is to encourage children to use emergent forms of writing, including scribbling, random letters, and invented spelling.
          This can be done by providing fun writing materials, shared writing demonstrations, and writing down what your child says as they watch. Let your child watch as you write down a grocery list and then ask for their help.

7. Shared book experience
          Though it sounds similar to storybook reading (strategy #3), this strategy focuses on introducing and drawing children's attention to the basic concepts of print. These include the distinction between pictures and text, proper reading directionality, and book concepts/parts.
          This can also be done using favorite books or stories in which you are reading aloud and pointing out these basic concepts.

8. Integrated, content-focused activities
          This strategy calls for providing opportunities for children to investigate interesting and engaging topics. The goal for this strategy is for children to use oral language, writing, and reading to learn about the world.
          Some ways to use this strategy are to collect informational books about a topic that your child is interested in. You can then read these books and help your child to gather more information about the topic through observation, experiments, and research. You can also encourage your child to record their observations and the information that you collect. Dramatic play is another in which your child can consolidate and express what they are learning.

Using these strategies at home is a great way to support and extend your child's literacy development and build connections between home and school.

To read this article and learn more about the implementation and benefits of these strategies, follow this link:
http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/200303/Essentials.pdf