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!

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.