Literacy development early childhood: Literacy Development in Children | Maryville Online

Language and Literacy | ECLKC

Language development refers to children’s emerging abilities to understand and use language. Language skills are receptive—the ability to listen to and understand language—and expressive—the ability to use language to communicate ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Children’s language ability affects learning and development in all areas, especially emerging literacy.

Emerging literacy refers to the knowledge and skills that lay the foundation for reading and writing. For infants and toddlers, emerging literacy is embedded in the Language and Communication domain. This reflects how closely connected these emerging literacy skills are to very young children’s beginning receptive, expressive, and vocabulary skills. For preschoolers, Language and Literacy are distinct domains. They reflect children’s growing skills as they begin to grasp differences between spoken and written language, as well as how they are connected.

Language and literacy skills can develop in any language, and for the most part, they develop first in the child’s home language. Supporting development of the home language helps prepare young children for learning English. Head Start and Early Head Start programs must promote language and literacy goals for all children that are age, culturally, and linguistically appropriate and responsive. However, children who are dual language learners (DLLs) need intentional support to develop their home language as well as acquire English. For example, this may include creating environments that include their home language and culture; planning and organizing thematic instruction; and supporting them through transitions.

Language and Literacy for DLLs

To learn more about language and literacy development for DLLs, view the Dual Language Learners video. Review the following resources under the Planned Language Approach:

Research Base

• Hearing Language Is Learning
• Growing Up As a DLL
• Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism
• Same, Different, and Diverse: Understanding Children Who Are DLLs

Home Language Support

• The Importance of Home Language Series
• Hearing Language Is Learning
• Growing Up as a DLL
• Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism

Planned Language Approach (PLA): Big 5 for ALL

• Alphabet Knowledge and Early Writing
• Background Knowledge
• Book Knowledge and Print Concepts
• Oral Language and Vocabulary
• Phonological Awareness

Specific Strategies to Support DLLs When Adults Do Not Speak Their Language also offers a variety of resources for supporting infants, toddlers, and preschoolers who are DLLs and their families.

Language and Literacy Domain

To read more about the Language and Literacy domain, visit the interactive Head Start Early Learning Outcome Framework (ELOF). There are two domains under the Language and Literacy domain: Language and Communication, and Literacy.

Language and Communication Sub-Domains

The Language and Communication domain includes the following sub-domains for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers:

• Attending and Understanding
• Communicating and Speaking
• Vocabulary

The Language and Communication domain also includes the following sub-domain for infants and toddlers:

• Emergent Literacy

Literacy Sub-Domains

The Literacy domain includes the following sub-domains for preschoolers:

• Phonological Awareness
• Print and Alphabet Knowledge
• Comprehension and Text Structure
• Writing

Effective Teaching Practices

The effective teaching practices that follow are grouped in three categories: Interactions, Environment, and Individualization. Examples of ways to support goals for children are provided by sub-domain. It is likely, however, that these practices will also support goals for children in additional domains and sub-domains. This is the nature of teaching and learning in the early years.

Home Visitors

Teaching practices in home visiting are the ways that home visitors work with families to provide experiences that support their child’s development and learning, engage in responsive interactions, and use the home as the learning environment.

Home visitors:

• Facilitate parent-child interactions
• Engage parents in focusing on their child’s development
• Directly encourage parents to teach, talk, and interact with their child in responsive and warm ways
• Use family activities, routines, and materials in the home for learning
• Collaborate with parents to plan activities and experiences

Home visitors may consider using group care teaching practices in the “Know,” “Do,” and “Improve” sections during home visits and group socializations. They can engage with parents to identify, adapt, and use these practices, or when appropriate, model the practices.

Language and Communication Sub-Domains

Explore Resources

Attending and Understanding

View Resource

Communicating and Speaking

View Resource

Vocabulary

View Resource

Emergent Literacy

View Resource

Literacy Sub-Domains

Explore Resources

Phonological Awareness

View Resource

Print and Alphabet Knowledge

View Resource

Comprehension and Text Structure

View Resource

Writing

View Resource

Read more:

Literacy

,  School Readiness

Resource Type:
Article

National Centers:
Early Childhood Development, Teaching and Learning

Last Updated: May 14, 2020

Literacy | NAEYC

Home / Resources / Topics / Subject Areas / Literacy

Book

Excerpt from So Much More than the ABCs: The Early Phases of Reading and Writing

Members Only

Book

Excerpt from Spotlight on Young Children: Exploring Language and Literacy

Members Only

Book

Excerpt from Learning About Language and Literacy in Preschool

Members Only

Article

Reading Your Way to a Culturally Responsive Classroom

Members Only

Article

The Book Matters! Choosing Complex Narrative Texts to Support Literary Discussion

Members Only

Blog

Playing with Stories: Using Books to Inspire Play

Members Only

Article

Now Read This! Rosemary Wells

Members Only

Article

Now Read This! Curious George

Members Only

Article

Now Read This! Hervé Tullet

Members Only

Article

Now Read This! Tried and True Read-Aloud Strategies for Classic Children’s Books

Members Only

Article

Now Read This! Steve Light

Members Only

Article

Now Read This! Books That Encourage Making

Members Only

10 Ways Babies Learn When We Sing to Them

Members Only

13 Things Babies Learn When We Read with Them

Members Only

Math and Literacy—The Perfect Pair

Members Only

Early childhood literacy

Preschoolers learn a lot about written language long before they learn to read and write in traditional ways. And this is quite natural: children live in a world full of written symbols. Every day they observe and themselves take part in various activities related to books, calendars, lists and inscriptions. Gradually, they learn to understand how written symbols convey meaning. Children’s active efforts to develop literacy skills through informal experiences are called emergent literacy.
nine0003

Younger preschoolers look for familiar elements of written speech when they “read” fairy tales that they remember and recognize familiar inscriptions. However, they do not yet understand the symbolic function of the printed word. Many preschool children believe that one letter stands for a whole word. At first, they do not even distinguish between drawing and writing. Around the age of four, some of the distinctive features of block text appear in their writing, such as the alignment of figures. However, at the same time, children often use drawing elements – for example, write the word “sun” with a yellow felt-tip pen or draw it in the form of a circle. They express their understanding of the symbolic function of drawings in the “drawing” of letters.
nine0003

The development of literacy skills is based on speaking and knowledge of the world around. Over time, children’s progress in language acquisition and literacy skills begin to support each other. Phonological awareness, that is, the ability to analyze and use the sound structure of colloquial speech, which is evidenced by sensitivity to changes in the sounds that make up words, as well as to rhyme and mispronunciation, is considered an indicator of advanced emergent literacy. Combined with an understanding of the correspondences between sounds and letters, this ability allows children to isolate fragments of speech and associate them with the corresponding written characters. Vocabulary and grammatical knowledge also play an important role in this process. In the course of story conversations between an adult and a child, various speech skills are improved, which are of great importance for the development of literacy.
nine0003

The more informal opportunities for learning literacy skills that preschool children have, the better their speech and emergent literacy, and subsequently their reading skills, are developed. By drawing children’s attention to the fact that letters stand for sounds, by playing games with speech and sounds, adults increase children’s awareness of the sound structure of speech and how it is displayed in written text. Interactive reading and discussion of the content of the book with preschoolers stimulates different aspects of the development of speech and literacy skills. Children benefit greatly from adult help with writing assignments in the form of a composition, such as writing a letter or a story.
nine0003

Read about how to support self-learning in early childhood literacy in the Idea Fair section.

Based on materials from the book “Child Development” by Laura Burke.

How to improve your child’s literacy: practical advice

A child’s literacy is important for most stages of his life. How to develop it from preschool age? How can parents help their children learn without doing the work for them?

In this article we will talk about how you can teach a child to express his thoughts competently. nine0003

What research says about children’s literacy

A new study from Australia has shown that regularly engaging children in literacy-enhancing play and activities contributes to good outcomes.

There are ten main ways to improve literacy. They include communication and entertainment technology, arts and crafts, writing on paper, screens and other surfaces such as sand and concrete, reading and drawing, and speaking, telling and acting out real or imaginary stories. nine0003

The Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research found that daily reading for young children improves school outcomes, regardless of marital status and home environment.

Results from the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) also indicate a strong relationship between parental reading and storytelling at an early age and love of reading in secondary school.

However, just reading is not enough. The interaction between adults and children is also very important. nine0032