Learning how to read doesn’t happen overnight. It is a lifelong process that begins at birth when
children are immersed in literacy. Child care providers and parents play an important role in supporting
children’s literacy, simply by reading to children.
they are important foundations that will help children read later on.
Early literacy plays a key role in enabling the kind of early learning experiences that research shows are
linked with academic achievement, reduced grade retention, higher graduation rates and enhanced
productivity in adult life. This report synthesizes the body of professional knowledge about early literacy
and offers research-based recommendations.
highly correlated with school achievement.
All of the domains of a child's development —physical, social-emotional, cognitive, language and
literacy—are interrelated and interdependent.
The more limited a child's experiences with language and literacy the more likely he or she will have
difficulty learning to read.
and influence one another. What children learn from listening and talking contributes to their ability to
read and write and vice versa. For example, young children's phonological awareness (ability to identify
and make oral rhymes, identify and work with syllables in spoken words, and the ability to hear, identify,
and manipulate the individual sounds— phonemes—in spoken words) is an important indicator of their
potential success in learning to decode print. Early vocabulary development is an important predictor of
success in reading comprehension. Both phonological awareness and vocabulary development begin
early with participation in rhyming games and chants, shared book experiences, and extended
conversations with adults.6
Children who fall behind in oral language and literacy development in the years before formal
schooling are less likely to be successful beginning readers; and their achievement lag is likely to persist
throughout the primary grades and beyond.
2. Children are capable of constructing their own meaning – they are driven by their interests to know
and understand more
Children are communicators – Children are listened to with respect, believing that their questions and
observations are an opportunity to learn and search together. It is a collaborative process; rather than
the child asking a question and the adult offering the answers. The search is undertaken together.
The environment is the third teacher – The environment is recognised for its potential to inspire children.
Whether a playroom or a classroom, each material is carefully selected to encourage children to delve
deeper into their interests
3. Phonics Method
The phonics approach to reading focuses on the individual sounds made by letters.
The meta-analysis revealed that systematic phonics instruction produces significant benefits for
students in kindergarten through 6th grade and for children having difficulty learning to read. ... Across
all grade levels, systematic phonics instruction improved the ability of good readers
to spell.
part-to-whole processing of text. Students learn to use decoding, or the process of sounding out words,
to begin to read and understand new words.
. Letter recognition is an important early step in learning to read. Students begin by learning the letters
of the alphabet and then associating the with the corresponding printed letters on the page.
begin to blend letter sounds to form words