Children, Inc. Literacy Initiative
Early literacy development is a foundation to future learning and cognition. By effectively learning and understanding language young children can better understand and communicate their needs and emotions. Children, Inc. focuses on research based practices to effectively develop the communication and literacy skills of children enrolled in our programs.
Through our interactions with children, Children, Inc. practices the following literacy development techniques:
- Dialogic Reading
- Oral Language Development
- Auditory Development/Listening Skills
- Visual Discrimination
- Phonological Awareness
- Small Motor Skill Development
Dialogic Reading: An Effective Way to Read to Preschoolers
Over a third of the children in the U.S. enter school unprepared to learn. They lack the vocabulary, sentence structure, and other basic skills that are required to do well in school. Children who start behind generally stay behind- they drop out, they turn off. Their lives are at risk. Why are so many children deficient in the skills that are critical to school readiness? The way a child experiences a book plays an important role. Many children enter school with thousands of hours of experience with books. Their home contains hundreds of picture books and they see their parents and brothers and sisters reading for pleasure. Other children enter school with fewer than 25 hours of shared book reading. There are few if any children’s books in their homes and their parents and siblings aren’t readers. These are real scenarios that happen on a regular basis and can be very positive or very detrimental to a child’s literacy development.
Picture book reading provides children with many of the skills that are necessary for school readiness: vocabulary, sound structure, the meaning of print, the structure of stories and language, sustained attention, the pleasure of learning, and on and on.
Preschoolers need food, shelter, and love; they also need the nourishment of books. The Stony Brook Reading and Language Project has developed a method of reading to preschoolers that we call dialogic reading. When most adults share a book with a preschooler, they read and the child listens. In dialogic reading, the adult helps the child become the teller of the story.
Dialogic reading works. On tests of language development children who have been read to dialogically are substantially ahead of children who have been read to traditionally. Simply put, dialogic reading is children and adults having a conversation about a book.
When adults comment and ask open-ended questions about a picture, they encourage children to use language and to become actively involved with the book. When adults respond by adding to or expanding on children’s language, children are further encouraged to use new vocabulary and more complex sentences. The person who uses language learns language.
An instructional DVD demonstrating dialogic reading is available for parents to borrow and view at home.
The dialogic reading method used by Children, Inc. teachers and families involves three simple prompts that adults use to encourage children to “read” the pictures in a book.
The word “CAR” helps us to remember these prompts:
Building Literacy
The process of becoming literate is a long one that seems effortless as babies learn to talk, but can become a challenge and concern when it comes to reading and writing. Researchers know that literacy is a multi-faceted process. Many activities that don't appear to prepare a child to become a reader are actually important as an indirect preparation. Children, Inc. is committed to partnering with families to nurture children’s early language development by engaging with children in a variety of activities.
Oral Language Development
Children need lots of opportunities to talk! They also need adults who will take the time to listen to them. Engaging children in discussions helps them with speech, and also builds vocabulary and reasoning skills.
Auditory Development/Listening Skills
Listening is important not just for effective communication with others, but is also an integral aspect of literacy. Listening is a skill that is learned and can be improved with practice. It involves responding to a sound, organizing the information based on previous experiences, then understanding the meaning of the sound. It involves processing, understanding, remembering, and evaluating. Children, Inc. staff are trained to utilize these practices in their classrooms.
Visual Discrimination
Some of our letters look a lot alike: b and d, m and n. Children need to develop the ability to see the difference. For young children, matching objects and pictures, sorting objects by color, classifying objects by one of the qualities, and playing with patterns are all ways to help refine their visual skills. In our classrooms we are able to use play to develop these discrimination skills in young children.
Phonological Awareness
Our words are made up of letters, and letters have sounds. To read and write, we need to be able to hear those individual sounds and blend them together. Playing with words and sounds with games such as I Spy and rhyming helps children develop the ability to decode (for reading) and encode (for writing).
Small Motor Skill Development
Holding and manipulating a pencil isn't easy! The eye-hand motor control that is necessary and begins well before the child is ready to pick up a pencil. Children, Inc. provides toys like puzzles and Legos help to develop and refine the muscles that are needed to hold a pencil.
Surround children with books. Read to them; let them "read" to you. Children can dictate stories to you as you write down what they say. When adults take time to sit and read to children they model the importance of reading and a love for books. One of the goals of Children, Inc. is to partner with parents to create a healthy environment at school and in the home.
Arts Curriculum Components
