Early Literacy: Building a
Strong Foundation
Dr. Denise P. Gibbs, Director
Alabama Scottish Rite Foundation
Learning Centers
gibbsdenise@aol.com
In this session, we will….
• get familiar with essential early literacy
skills including: oral language, print concepts
(experiences with books) and phonological
awareness.
• Learn about techniques, which can be used in
every day interactions with children to
stimulate oral language development.
• Learn about techniques, which can be used in
every day interactions with children to
stimulate development of early print concepts.
• Learn about techniques, which can be used in
every day interactions with children to
stimulate phonological awareness skills.
Emergent Literacy:
Infant’s environment…
• Skills which lead to
literacy begin in earliest
infancy as the baby has..
– interactions involving talking
– interactions involving print
Five Key
Environmental Factors…
• “Good” language partners
• “Positive” experiences with print
• Phonological awareness and letter
recognition
• Family attitudes
• “Effective” storybook activities.
Importance of early
experiences…
• Research indicates that the
environment of infants, toddlers,
and preschoolers plays a critical
role in their successful reading
development.
– What we do every
day (from the day
we bring them home
from the hospital)
really matters!
Creating positive
experiences involving talking
• Talk or sing during most interactions
with the baby.
– Do use correct speech sounds-”NO
BABY TALK”
– Don’t use long sentences
– Do talk/sing directly TO the baby
– Do use a gentle and loving tone of
voice
– Make intonation “interesting” and
varied
– Do say baby’s name often! (it cues
them to listen to what comes next as
they get older)
Never too young for positive
experiences with talking
Creating positive
experiences involving talking
• Some things to say….
– While changing a diaper
• Ooo, Cam you’re wet! Wet-all
dry, stinky-all clean, wet
diaper, stinky diaper, clean
diaper
• Change your diaper-all done
– While giving a bottle
• Time to eat, you’re hungry,
hungry baby, mmmm good milk,
all gone milk
Create positive experiences
involving talking
• While giving
a bath
– Water, soap,
wash your arm,
wash your leg,
wash your…
– All clean, towel,
dry your….
Create positive experiences
involving talking
• While feeding
– Mmmm yum
carrots!
– More carrots
– Want some carrots
– Another bite
– Eat carrots
– All gone carrots
Create positive experiences
involving talking
While holding or
rocking
– SING!
– Snuggle
– speak your
heart – I love
you. you’re a big
boy, my sweet
baby, I love you’re
fingers, sweet
little fingers
Create positive experiences
involving talking
Morgan-3 yrs
Cam-3 mo
• Include
siblings/cousins!
– Babies like
to listen to
people who
are closer
to their size!
Cam-3 yrs
Aubrey-17 mo
Good language partners
provide indirect language
stimulation
• Indirect language stimulation
– do not tell the child to “say
this” or to “say that”!
• Child may withdraw from speaking
due to the pressure to perform.
– Do provide words to “frame”
the child’s play and activities.
Indirect language
stimulation techniques
• Parallel Talk (child-centered)
– Adult describes what the child is doing,
hearing, seeing, etc as he does it
• You’re building the fence.
• You see the horse.
(adult gives the child 4-5 words to
describe the action that child is
involved in)
Indirect language
stimulation techniques
• Self-Talk (adult-centered)
• Adult describes what she is doing,
hearing, seeing, etc as she does it
• I’m washing your foot.
• I got the soap
(give the child words for what he sees
you doing)
Indirect language
stimulation techniques
• Description (object-centered)
• Adult describes the objects the child
sees or interacts with.
• That car is broken.
• That block is big.
(give the child words to describe
things he seems to be interested in
looking at)
Indirect language
stimulation techniques
• Comments
• Adult gives information or describes
upcoming activities.
• We are going to go outside.
• We need to put on our shoes.
• This is our new friend.
(provides words to help the child begin
to think with words)
Indirect language
stimulation techniques
• Open-ended questions (can not be
answered yes or no nor with a single
word answer)
• Adult asks questions to get the child to
verbalize their thinking.
• What do you think will happen if the
lid gets stuck?
• I wonder what we use this thing for?
Indirect language
stimulation techniques
• Expansion
• Adult repeats the child’s short sentences or
single-word utterances as an adult would
have said them.
• Child says “ball”
– Adult says “It is a ball.”
• Child says “doggy run”
– Adult says “Yes, the doggy is running.”
(Lets the child know you understood
them and that you were paying
attention!)
Indirect language
stimulation techniques
• Expansion Plus
• Adult lengthens the child’s short
sentences or single word utterances
and adds a new bit of information.
• Child says “ball”
• Adult says “It is a ball. It’s a red
ball”
(Lets child know you understood them
and have words to say more soon!)
Indirect language
stimulation techniques
• Repetition
• When child says something with speech
sound errors, the adult repeats the
utterance with correct sounds.
• Child says “wed wabbit”
• Adult says “red rabbit”
(Lets child hear correct sounds
without being “corrected”.)
Use everything in the
environment for language
learning
Pets!
Anything
that moves
is interesting
Cooking!
Snack time
A word about vocabulary
and ses….
• Average child from welfare family hears
about 3 million words per year while
average child from professional family
hears about 11 million words per year.
– By age 4 the gap is 13 to 45 million words
heard!
– Child from professional family speaks more
than adult from welfare family
(Hart and Risley, 1995)
Creating positive
experiences involving print
• Start book play early.
– Earliest books need to
• Have good pictures of
familiar things
• Not have page clutter
• Be durable!
• Be “played-with” every day
(over and over and over)
Creating positive
experiences involving print
• Let’s see some in sequence….
– Single items on page with very familiar
things
– Multiple pictures on the page but
separated
– Touchy Feely
– Repetitive and predictable
– Rhyme
– Tag - Big brother “reading” to little
brothers!
Touchy Feely
Books
Adjectives
Repetitive
Familiar things
Familiar and
connected
And rhyming!
Repetitive
and
predictable
and
rhyming
Children sharing books
• What is Morgan doing?
• What is Jordan doing?
• Can you tell what Cameron is doing?
Tag (from Leap Frog) – Morgan can read to his brothers!
Dialogic Reading: the “right
way to do books”
•
•
First described by Whitehurst in
1988.
Wonderful way to use books for:
1.Language growth
2.Social connection
3.Positive print experiences
Dialogic Reading – Little
one takes the lead
• Don’t worry about the baby not “sitting
still.
• Coming and going is really fine!
Dialogic Reading: Question
types-CROWD
• C – Completion questions (e.g., Baby bear said,
somebody's been sleeping in my bed
and________!)
• R – Recall questions (e.g., Can you remember
what happened to baby bear's chair?)
• O – Open-ended questions (e.g., What is
happening in this picture?)
• W – Wh-questions (e.g., Who ate baby bear's
porridge?)
• D – Distancing questions to connect to world
knowledge (e.g., Have you ever been for a walk in
the woods? Tell me about your walk.)
Dialogic Reading: PEER
• P – Prompt - Ask child to respond to the story
through using any of the CROWD questions. (e.g.,
Can you remember what happened to baby bear's
chair? Student answers It got broken.)
• E – Evaluate - Evaluate or affirm a child’s
response. (e.g., That's right.)
• E – Expand – Add information to the child's
response. (e.g., Goldilocks sat in it and it got
broken.)
• R – Repeat – Ask the child to repeat your
expanded comment. (e.g., Can you say that?)
Bed-time stories…Good
Night Moon …yet again!
• What things happen during these minutes?
That’s Not My Tractor
How about phonological
awareness and then phonemic
awareness
• Thinking about words
– Words in phrases
– Words in sentences
• Thinking about syllables
– Compound words
– Two syllable words
• Thinking about sounds
– Rhyming words
– First sound in the word
Powerful (and fun)
Phonological Awareness Tool
• Goldsworthy, C.L. (1998). A Sourcebook of
Phonological Awareness Activities: Children’s
Classic Literature
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Word-level activities
– Counting words
• That chair is too soft.
– Identifying missing words
• forest, window, flowers / window flowers
– Identifying missing words in phrase/sentence
• Goldilocks woke up at once. / Goldilocks woke up at __.
– Supplying word
• She tasted the porridge in the big __.
– Rearranging words
• Girl little; I sleepy am; three Goldilocks and bears
the
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Syllable-level activities (use pictures from
the story and print contexts)
– Syllable counting
• Papa, nobody, porridge, chair, shiny, middle,
Goldilocks
– Syllable deleting
• Say bedroom without bed; say sleeping without -ing
– Syllable adding
• Add stairs to the end of up; add –est to the end of
for
– Syllable reversing
• Add some to the end of body (bodysome) what do you
think the word was before we switched the parts
– Syllable substituting
• Say asleep. Instead of sleep, say cross (across)
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Phoneme-level activities: 25
different types of activities
– Beginning with sound matching (initial)
– Includes sound blending, recognizing and
producing rhyme
– Identifying and matching sounds at the
beginning, middle, and end of words
– Concludes with deleting sounds, pig
Latin, and phoneme switching.
Report of the National Early
Literacy Panel (NELP) 2009
11 Skills and Abilities that Predict Literacy Success
• alphabet knowledge (AK)
– : knowledge of the names and sounds
associated with printed letters
• phonological awareness (PA):
– the ability to detect, manipulate, or analyze
the auditory aspects of spoken language
(including the ability to distinguish or segment
words, syllables, or phonemes), independent of
meaning
• rapid automatic naming (RAN) of letters or
digits:
– the ability to rapidly name a sequence of
random letters or digits
Report of the National Early
Literacy Panel (NELP) 2009
11 Skills and Abilities that Predict Literacy Success
• RAN of objects or colors:
– the ability to rapidly name a sequence of
repeating random sets of pictures of objects
(e.g., “car,” “tree,” “house,” “man”) or colors
• writing or writing name:
– the ability to write letters in isolation on
request or to write one’s own name
• phonological memory:
– the ability to remember spoken information for
a short period of time.
Report of the National Early
Literacy Panel (NELP) 2009
11 Skills and Abilities that Predict Literacy Success
• concepts about print:
– knowledge of print conventions (e.g.,
left–right, front–back) and concepts
(book cover, author, text)
• print knowledge:
• .
– a combination of elements of AK,
concepts about print, and early decoding
Report of the National Early
Literacy Panel (NELP) 2009
11 Skills and Abilities that Predict Literacy Success
• reading readiness:
– usually a combination of AK, concepts of print,
vocabulary, memory, and PA
• oral language:
– the ability to produce or comprehend spoken
language, including vocabulary and grammar
• visual processing:
– the ability to match or discriminate visually
presented symbols.
Some awesome resources
Preschool Early Literacy
Assessment Tools
• Test of Preschool Early Literacy
–
–
–
–
Authors: Lonigan, Wagner, Torgesen & Rashotte
Publisher: ProEd www.proedinc.com
Ages 3 yrs to 5 yrs 11 mos.
Assesses print knowledge, definitional
vocabulary, and phonological awareness
– Provides standard scores to compare child’s
performance to same-age peers
Preschool Early Literacy
Assessment Tools
• Individual Growth Development Indicators
(IGDIs) http://igdis.umn.edu
• Picture naming, alliteration, rhyming
• Ages 3-5
• Can graph results and provides
instructional suggestions
Get Ready to Read
(www.GetReadytoRead.org)
• 20 question early literacy online
screening test
• Literacy environment checklists
• Literacy activities and materials
– Print knowledge
– Emergent Writing
– Listening (phonological) awareness
Read Together, Talk
Together Kit A and Kit B
• Materials for dialogic reading!
• Kit A for 2-3 year-olds / Kit B for 4-5
year-olds
• Includes 20 picture books
– both fiction and nonfiction titles
• Teacher and Parent Notes for each
book
• Program Handbook explaining the
dialogic reading technique
• Teacher Training Video
• Parent Training Video
Every Child Ready to Read:
Literacy Tips for Parents
(Lee Pesky Learning Center)
Topics are individually tailored for three age
ranges–infant, toddler, and preschool–and
include:
• read-aloud books to develop sound awareness
• perfect picture books for encouraging letter
knowledge
• ways to promote verbal language and build
vocabulary
• the benefits of symbolic play
• fun (and educational) games for car trips
• helping youngsters “write” at home
• Literacy gift ideas for kids
• warning signs of a learning disability
Thank you!
gibbsdenise@aol.com