Emergent Literacy: Reading

"Reading aloud to young children is so critical that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that doctors prescribe reading activities along with other advice given to parents at regular check ups."

Start Early, Finish Strong. U.S. Department of Education. America Reads Challenge, 1999.

Basic findings: What children need to acquire in order to learn to read.

1. The ability to distinguish pictures from print.
2. An awareness that once something is written it says the same thing no matter who reads it.
3. An awareness of the left to right and the top to bottom progression of text.
4. The knowledge that there are spaces between words.
5. A familiarity with the configuration or basic structure of words.
6. An awareness of the function of letters in the formation of words.
7. The ability to pretend read, to tell the story from the pictures or from memory.
8. Phonetic awareness, the understanding of the relationship between letters or groups of letters and the sounds they represent.
9. The recognition of individual words.

 

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