What is early literacy?

In my last post, I talked about the various ways we have conceptualized a child's entry to read over time. But how do we think about learning to read now?

We now understand a lot about what is happening before children learn to read -- and it's a LOT! We usually think of reading education as beginning in kindergarten or first grade, but in fact, traditional reading and writing behaviors are like the visible parts of a plant: they don't exist without an extensive network of roots underground. In fact, when you see the plant, you're seeing the culmination of something that has been developing underground for a long time.

So, what research has established over the last twenty years or so is what those roots are made up. These early skills and forms of knowledge lay the groundwork for later reading and without them, reading can't happen. These skills have been called "prereading" (Chall, 1983), "emergent literacy" (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998), and now are commonly referred to as "early literacy" (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). 

Early literacy includes all the things kids need to know before they start to read and write in conventional forms. As identified by the National Early Literay Panel, key early literacy skills include:

• Oral language: first and foremost, children need to learn to understand and speak their own language(s). This knowledge includes vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatics (how to communicate). Children need to develop both receptive vocabulary, which is words they can understand, and expressive vocabulary, which is words they can use themselves. Children start to develop this knowledge the first time you speak to them! This is why you hear about studies that identify the language exposure and vocabulary of very young children as important precursors of academic success. 
  
  

  

  This guy is still little, but his receptive vocabulary is "so big"!

• Phonological awareness: once children develop speaking knowledge of their own language, including lots of words, they need to develop an awareness of the sounds within words, or phonological awareness. It's one of the best predictors of learning to read (NELP, 2008).

• Print concepts: children need to learn how books and print work, including how books are organized, the direction that print travels across the page, even what a word is! (Flanigan, 2007).
  
• Alphabet knowledge: finally, children need to learn the uppercase and lowercase letters, how to form them in writing, and how they correspond to the sounds in words. This step represents the final bridge into reading and writing.

So, for various reasons you may decide you do or do not want to teach your child to read at home -- either way is fine. But in fact, you are already teaching your child to read, by providing the foundation for reading that they will build upon for the rest of their lives! When you enjoy speaking and singing with you child, or reading books, or playing with magnetic letters, or laughing at silly poems, you are teaching your child to read!