What IS literacy, exactly?

Literacy is a term you are going to hear a lot as a parent. I find that it's a term that everyone uses, especially educators, but it means different things to different people. You may have heard the term used in phrases like "early literacy," "home literacy," "health literacy," "financial literacy," and "literacy skills." Do all these terms refer to the same concept?

Well yes! And no. Literacy is a large "umbrella term" which covers all the skills that a human being can use to communicate and make sense of our world. So while the traditional definition of literacy was the ability to read and write, the modern use of the term in education encompasses language AND literacy AND background knowledge: the ability to read, write, listen, speak, view, and more in multiple content areas. All of us are continually developing our language and literacy knowledge, not just children.

This definition encompasses literacy in specific content areas. For example, when we talk about financial literacy, we are talking about knowledge about how to make a budget, how to balance a checkbook, how to file taxes, and understanding of how interest works on things like credit cards, student loans, and mortgages, the difference between pretax and aftertax income, and the various vehicles out there for saving and investing money! Adults are continuing developing and refining their knowledge in the areas, as I did this summer when we bought our first home!

When we discuss young children, however, we usually talking about the skills that children need to develop before they learn to read. Learning to read is like an iceberg. You can see the reading happening, but a number of important skills are working below the surface to make that reading possible. This understanding -- that early skills pave the way for reading development -- is one of the most important breakthroughs in reading science in the past 20 years (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002)! Historically, these skills have been described as "prereading"  or "emergent" reading skills. Now, the term "early literacy" is generally used to describe all of the language, sound, and print knowledge that a child needs to develop before they start reading. So, even though my son is very young, he is engaging and developing his literacy skills every day.

This is early literacy:

And so is this:

And so is this:

And even this:

In future posts, I'll talk about each of the foundational early literacy skills in turn; what they look like, why they matter, and how we are working on developing them at home. Until then, happy reading!

References:

Whitehurst, G. J., & Lonigan, C. J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child development, 69(3), 848-872.

Storch, S. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2002). Oral language and code-related precursors to reading: evidence from a longitudinal structural model.Developmental psychology, 38(6), 934.